Hello and welcome back to Tales from the Pit.

I'm your host Michael Swain.

These are your intro notes and trigger warning.

Today I'm speaking with Jessica Ellis about her experience with COVID and long COVID specifically.

And the only particular trigger warning I feel the need to give is that it really, really sucks that this has happened to someone as

creative, articulate, and charming as Jessica. And so it's upsetting and depressing in that sense.

Welcome to Tales from the Pit. That's kind of how it goes. But I think what Jessica has to say is

equally urgent as it is a downer.

So I do hope you'll give the conversation a listen.

In my own mental health news for you's, I'm working really hard right now.

And I don't know if you can hear it in my voice.

I'm a little sick. We're a month away

from having our first child as of this recording. So I'm very, very, very, very busy. As a result,

my own mental health symptoms are kind of exacerbated right now. And I've been working with my

therapist on ways to reduce my stress. And one of those is that I have usually challenged myself to write a short story,

a thematically appropriate speculative fiction story usually, to accompany each episode of Tales from the Pit.

And this time I'm giving myself permission to not not do that, but do a lazy version of that,

which is rather than an original short story, I'm going to read you an appropriate passage

from my novel The Climb, which you can find out more about whatever.

This is not a plug for my novel, but this is about to be chapter 10 of

the section called, I forget even, and I'm not going to scroll up, whatever, page 230 of my book

The Climb, I think an appropriate passage, and then we'll head on into the conversation with Jessica Ellis.

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