"How Are You Alive?"
“How Are You Alive?”
That was the question a neuropsychiatrist asked Scott Nelowet after a battery of tests confirmed nearly 50 years of medically resistant major chronic depression. The medical consensus was clear: Scott shouldn’t be able to finish school, let alone lead a team or sustain successful and fulfilling long-term relationships.
Instead he did
Today, Scott holds a Master’s Degree in Education. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer and an entrepreneur who has led teams of hundreds. Perhaps his most proud rebuttal of his diagnosis is that he is happily married to his beautiful wife, Jennifer, and father to their incredible daughter, Abby.
Scott Nelowet has spent a lifetime exploring one question: How do ordinary people overcome extraordinary challenges? In his case, he had to answer that question to survive, and then help the people who came after him.
After building successful businesses, helping franchise founders expand nationally, turning around educational institutions, and surviving nearly fifty years of medically resistant major depression, Scott felt called to pursue writing at a completely different level.
Although French Fry Heaven became the first published novel in The Peace Strain series, Peace Frog was the story that arrived first. It came to Scott fully formed, and over the next thirty days he wrote more than 98,000 words with virtually no planning, outlines, or notes. How Are You Alive? fulfills a promise Scott made to himself decades earlier: if he ever found a way out of depression, he would come back and help the next person find theirs.
Through French Fry Heaven, Peace Frog, and How Are You Alive?, Scott invites readers to laugh, question, dream, and discover that hope often comes from the most unlikely people. Whether writing hopeful young adult adventures, an unflinching memoir and survival guide for depression, or stories for film, every project is built on the same belief: hope can change lives.
Whether writing fiction, nonfiction, or developing stories for film, Scott’s goal remains the same: to create work that entertains, inspires, and leaves readers believing the world can be better than they found it.
The Peace Strain (YA Series)
The Story: What if world peace wasn’t an impossible dream, but a scientific discovery? Seven teenagers discover it, and those who profit from division will come from everywhere to stop it from spreading.
The Vibe: A race across the world where friendship, philosophy, humor, and adventure collide with the darkest and brightest parts of human nature.
The Crew: Meet the Brohemians Scientists, rebels, dreamers, missionaries, artists, athletes, and the blissfully average who become the family they choose.
The Hook: Every generation inherits the world it is given. These seven refuse to accept it.
How are you alive?
The Story: Not a memoir, but a practical path to hope from someone who escaped nearly fifty years of medically resistant major depression. Part survival guide, part roadmap to discovering your own way out.
The Vibe: Honest enough that depressed people will recognize themselves on every page. Dangerous enough that your depression will wish you had never opened this book.
The Mission: Give you hope, help you survive today, and find the solution that works for you.
The Hook: I promised myself that if I ever found my way out of depression, I would come back for the next person still trapped inside it. I did. This is that promise.