Aza usually tries to handle everything by herself, so it’s hard to pull herself out of spirals of intrusive thoughts-which cause her to turn her focus inward and to feel anxious, which leads to feeling bad about herself. It absolutely isn’t, but it’s something Aza contends with, despite having a caring mom and best friend, Daisy. It can be so hard to reconcile that, in part because there are such strong cultural voices saying any kind of chronic illness is a weakness, a failure. “It’s more something I’ve lived with for a long time. “As Aza says in the book, illness is supposed to be story told in past tense-you’re supposed to share your story of how you conquered your demons. The main character, 16-year-old Aza Holmes, struggles daily with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)-which has affected Green’s life since childhood. Perhaps most importantly, Green felt like he “didn’t have a choice” in the subject matter. “When I started working on the book intensely, it was almost impossible for me to write about anything else,” Green says.

it was hard not to feel the audience looking over my shoulder.”īut Green kept creating and communicating with fans (affectionately called nerdfighters) in other ways, like the two popular video blog series (“VlogBrothers” and “Crash Course”) he hosts with his brother, Hank, and VidCon, a conference for online video creators and aficionados.Īnd eventually, writing “did start to feel like the release it had always been,” and soon he was crafting what would become Turtles All the Way Down. “For a long time after The Fault in Our Stars came out, I wasn’t able to find pleasure in writing, to find an escape from my brain,” Green says in a call to his Indianapolis home, where he lives with his wife and two children.

Thrilling stuff-but not surprisingly, it became a hard act for Green to follow. In 2014, the year the movie debuted, Green was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world by Time magazine. The Fault in Our Stars sold 45 million copies worldwide, was translated into 50-plus languages and was made into a movie. But with Turtles All the Way Down, he found a subject very close to his heart-and brain.

After his 2012 novel-the hugely popular, critically acclaimed YA hit The Fault in Our Stars-grew into a global phenomenon, Green discovered that returning to writing was not an easy task.

John green turtles