I am doing research for a new book that I am writing. Right now I am reading a book called First Person Plural written by Camerom West, Ph. D. as research into Multiple Personality Disorder. It is his personal story in dealing with someone who has Multiple Personality Disorder. He was in his thirties when the personalities first started to appear, married and with a child. It is quite interesting, reading his experiences and how his wife handled this disorder suddenly coming to light - trying to help her husband, hold their marriage together, and shield this from their young five year old son. It is one of those few cases where I am being educated while reading a memoir. I admit, I am a memoir reader, because how people handle things is interesting to me. However, I went into this knowing a bit about Multiple Personality Disorder, mostly from a clinical point-of-view, and it is really interesting learning about it from a personal point-of-view.

I need to do some more research on human trafficking, and am hoping to either speak to someone that has been a victim of this horrible act of manipulation and control, or at least find a first person account as I did with Multiple Personality Disorder.

My last bit of research I need to do is a bit scarier. I am going to be corresponding with an inmate that is on death row. The man claims that he is innocent, that there were errors in his trial, and that the police were under pressure to make an arrest and he was the one that was arrested. Back in my small town of Wisconsin, this happened to a man that was accused of murdering a woman that I knew. His case ended up getting overturned and the DA dismissed it a few days into the appeal trial because he had no real substantial evidence against this man and many of the witnesses that came forward for the prosecution had either made things up, were adding their opinion to testimony, or simply didnt remember. I have connected with a man in Louisiana and am hoping that I will be granted vistiation at Angola to properly interview him. I am still waiting for word on that.

I received an e-mail today frm one of my writerly friends, a cool little chickie that hails from CA. When I sent out my very first query letter, back in 2000, she helped me - teaching me what a query was, finding out who exactly I needed to address the query to, and helping me fine tune and leading to my very first publishing credit, an article on coping with the death of an infant, appearing in a regional parenting magazine in Washington.

We have both taken breaks from writing, her for her children, me for a nasty divorce, but we always end up coming back. This past year, her spirit has been broken, feeling like she has worked hard but has not found any writerly success. About six months ago, she received an e-mail in her inbox from an organization called Tate Publishing, telling her that they would like to publish her work. As soon as I read the words Tate Publishing, red flags went up for me. Oh no, please say she didn’t! I have received a zillion e-mails from this organization in the past x amount of years, all going directly to my spam folder. But she did it, falling hook, line, and sinker - wanting to see her name published somewhere, despite the reputation the follows the publishing company.

Now, perhaps this sounds pretentious, and maybe it is - but any publisher that wants YOU to pay THEM to publish your book isn’t a real publisher. They may operate under the guise of a publisher, but they are not. Publishing houses, REAL PUBLISHING HOUSES, pay YOU. Tate operates in the whole “meeting of the mind” concept, stating that after you invest your initial $4000, if you sell x amount of books, they will give your $4000 back to you. Worse yet, this company operates as a “christian publisher!” I do not know how the people running this organization sleep at night, but apparently they do.

A side note, the man in charge of Tate Publishing claims that they reject 95% of all manuscripts sent to them. Why do they send spam e-mails telling people they want to work with them? Why are they offereing publishing contracts TO CHILDREN! This is factually and intellectually dishonest, but, unfortunately, people simply don’t do their homework.

Another publisher that operates under much of the same guise as Tate Publishing is Publish America. You send them your manuscript, they pay you a royalty of $1.00, and ask for a list of people to try to pawn your books off on. Again, those in charge deny this, however a group of writers from different areas in the country decided to try. Publish America claims that they will not publish science fiction. These individuals each wrote different chapters, submitted it, and what do you know? THEIR MANUSCRIPT WAS ACCEPTED. And honestly, it was the most backwards writing I have ever read.

I have been with my publisher for a couple of years. I am currently trying to get out of my contract, based on breach on their part. They paid me an advance for both my books, an advance that funded my move from Wisconsin down South. That is how a real publisher works!!! As a first time novelist your advance may not be much, but it is still an advance, and they certainly will not ask you to pay money. Additionally, books published by Tate Publishing and Publish America are so highly over-priced that you will have a hard time REALLY selling them. The marketing they promise - listings on every book website - can be done if one choses to self publish and they purchase and ISBN # for $100.00!!!!

My friend would have been much better off going to one of the web sites that provide printing services and buying copies to place in book stores and self-publish. It certainly would not have cost her $4000.00 and she would not have the stigma attached to writers that publish with these companies. Sadly, by publishing with one of these publishers, other writers will have a hard time taking you seriously, no matter how great the book that you have written is.

Writers, beware of companies like this! Don’t allow yourself to fall for the hardline sales routine they give you and DO YOUR RESEARCH!

I’ve come to the conclusion that in the end, it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter how much I want a normal family or a normal life or a normal relationship. It doesn’t matter if I wince when I hear the pop of a can open or repeat please-don’t-get-a-beer mantra when I feel him get out of bet at night or how much I have to lose when things get out of control or the embarrassment and shame it has caused me, or the emotional toll it has taken on me. It really doesn’t matter.

In those moments, when the craving is strong and the need is deep, the only thing that really matters is him finding his peace. It doesn’t matter how understanding or encouraging I am or how hurt and angry I become. It has become his wife, always honoring it’s every request, and I am his mistress, there for the moments he can sneak away from her bloody grasp.

It’s the Dr Jekyll and the Mr Hyde that hurts the most. The minute he reaches that point, hits that limit, and crossed over from drinking to being a drunk, all bets are off. His behavior is unpredictable, his words are often dripping with poison and his actions almost unforgivable. Except is not him, it’s the doppelganger that resides inside of him, his other personality, its the drunk. I know that underneath the stench of nicotine-laced booze and sweat, it is not him. That is what hurts the most.

“Please stop,” I beg.

“Slow down, ” I plead.

“Talk about it, don’t drink it, ” I say.

“This hurts me, ” I cry.

He doesn’t answer because he doesn’t hear. All he hears is her whisper his name, seducing him to hear again, asking him to put her in his mouth and enjoy how she tastes. It isn’t until after he has enjoyed every part of her does he notice me - his face darting, his eyes glazed, his speech cloudy, his cheeks sucked in causing his lips to pucker and pout at the same time.

“I’m fine,” he says, maybe trying to convince himself, maybe trying to convince me, or maybe because he actually believes it to be true.

I know he’s not. I know there is a problem. I know he needs to stop. I think he knows this too, but his body now demands it, punishing him when he doesn’t get it, adding to the long list of why he seeks salvation at the bottom of a bottle or can.

He lights a cigarette, bringing it to his mouth, unsteady. He takes a long drag, his head darts in my direction again.

“I fucking hate them, ” he confesses.

He brings the smoke to his mouth again, his fingers penetrating his nostrils as he holds the lit cigarette in his mouth. He inhales again. Ah drops to the floor. We sit next to one another in silence, him lost in his own hops and barley induced thoughts, me sad, hurt, and angry as I prepare to offer a night full of reassurances, a sounding board for the hate and anger he feels, and the one who watched over him when he is unable to watch out for himself.

The world has wronged him. These are not imagined scenes created in his inebriated mind. He has gone through very difficult times. He has mate it through them, though, and has gone on to do impressive things. No matter how hard I love him or the high regard I have of him or how many times I have held him tight and told him it would be alright, I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t give him the same comfort or peace she could. I hated that fact. And because I couldn’t help him or fix it and because my and friendship and care wasn’t enough, I was starting to feel bad about me. I was letting him down.

He would go to her four or five more times, drinking her in, setting her down, immediately drinking her in again. With each sip, each drink, each guzzle, a little part of each of us died. He lost who he was, feeding his need for her, then each day need her more and more. I lost that care-free, funny, confident girl full of life and ambition, making the best out of whatever came my way. It was affecting my relationship with my children, having to babysit him and protect them at the same time. The mom that had activity-themed movie nights and read with her kids and played Barbies and soccer and went for walks was gone. she was replaced with mom that would put movies on in their bedroom, check on them occasionally, and try her best to just hold it together for that night while she sheltered them from tings that they didn’t need to see. She was replaced by the mom that was thankful for joint physical placement.

It was affecting my friendships. I no longer was going out, dancing, and making memories. The charms about me were wasted inside my home on someone not even present enough to appreciate them. The honesty I prided myself in with my friendships was gone, having to hide always our dirty little secret. I had no one I could talk to, o one I could go to, I was dealing with all of this by myself. I was forced to fake the strength I once had for him, for my kids, for myself.

At work, I was distracted, always watching him, wondering what would happen that day to lead to another one of those nights. He came to me throughout the day, and I welcomed it. It was the only time of the day that I got a glimpse of what he used to be. I would watch for it to start - the headaches, the irritability, the anxiety, and the shakes. While I was busy doing that, the work that I was supposed to be doing was being left undone or done without the attention i was known to give it. Soon it would just be another item on the things-that-overwhelm-me list keeping me up at night.

He began to play “Seasons in the Abyss by Slayer, a song that I was growing to hate. When I heard the opening bars, I knew he was lost in a world of anger, hurt, depression, sadness, and hate growing inside of him and soon he would be concentrating on those and it would be my place to pick up the pieces that they had spent a lifetime chiseling away. Soon their insanity would become his and he would succumb to the mind control of never being good enough, of being too much, of letting them down, and of their unreasonable expectations going unmet.

He would go from “Season in the Abyss” to Carcass and I would ask him to please turn it off. The change in music indicated the change in his mindset, going from internalizing everything and being beaten to wanting to rage on them, violently punishing them for everything done to him. He would speak of throwing elbows and bringing to them all kinds of pain. He would ask me if I felt he was capable, then tell me he was a much darker person than I would ever know. I would listen, but there was nothing more that I could do as long as he kept leaving me for her, choosing her voodoo over my love.

Once the violence and rage exhausted him and he rendezvoused with her again, he would crash. He would question life, why he was even here, and why he couldn’t be happy. He would discuss always feeling that he didn’t want to be here and would talk about the time he tried not to be. he would talk about wanting to walk into the river and just cease to be. No matter how many times I heard this, my heart would break and tears would stream down my face and I would feel helpless, hopeless, loveless. I feared that even if I felt that I needed to go, if I did, that would be the last I saw of him.

He would sit back, his eye lids getting heavy, and would grow silent.

“You’re not a good person,” he would say, looking at me with hate.

“Now her, she was a good person!”

“You’re a fat wench.”

“They were all so hot. You don’t even compare.”

“I’ll never love you like I loved her.”

“You’re ugly with your stupid feet and big ears.”

“They were all pretty packages. I did things different with you on purpose.”

He would black and and tell me how I didn’t love him enough, how I wasn’t smart enough, how they were all that mattered, and how he was settling for me. This happened often, nearly every night, and I would fall asleep with tears on my pillow, feeling badly about myself while he would pass out on the couch. He wouldn’t remember any of this tomorrow. He doesn’t mean these things. I would repeat this to myself over and over until finally I fell asleep.

I would wake up at the sound of my alarm, welcoming the start of a new day, knowing that if only for a little while, I would have him back before it would all begin again. The arms I felt around me would be his. The kiss we would share was genuine. The apology was sincere. The confession of love for me was real. This was why I loved him. This is why I stayed- this was him. That other guy, despite all the time I spent with him, was someone I didn’t know.

One of the benefits of being a writer, in my humble opinion, is that you are a constant student. Whether it is learning new technical aspects to add to what you create, research for the story behind the story, or studying marketing and business plans - there is so much more to writing than simply sitting in front of the computer and allowing your muse to take control. I am not sure that I have ever met a writer that doesn’t think that they can improve on something, whether it is developing a stronger voice, learning to be more descriptive, better character development, or the infamous showing vs telling. I like the challenge that I give to myself to improve and even more, I love looking back at things that I have written five or ten years ago, and seeing exactly how much my writing has improved. Just with anything, the more you do it, the better you get, which is why I am a big believer if blogging, as long as you treat it as a writing exercise and not a substitute to get real writing done.

Right now, I am in another student phase, which really holds a dual purpose for me. As a writer, I am studying different writing styles and really paying attention to how different authors have layered their stories - from Hemingway and Updike to Dante and Homer - studying story development, rather in short or novel form or in the form of the epic poem, and paying attention to that author’s particular rhyme or reason. Additionally, I am entering the Honors English program this fall at the Universityof New Orleans, so it is nice to have a bit of an advantage going into the program, having already read and studied the required reading list. Like a boy scout, I like to always be prepared.

I am also studying The Norton Reader, which is a collection of essays written in various styles and about various topics. I picked up The Norton Reader at the library sale for $1.00 and it has proven to be an invaluable resource, particularly since I tend to write in first person, whether it be creative non-fiction, music interviews, or my longer works. I highly suggest that all short story writers and creative non-fiction types try to pick up a copy of this book and read it from front to back and answer the questions that appear after every story. It studies the essay as a narrative, descriptive, exposition, and persuasive argument. Additionally, it goes deeper into comparison and contrast, analytics, definition, and classification. As a writer, I have learned so much from this book. As a reader, I have gained a whole new appreciation in reading some really, really wonderful essays.

Many of my fellow bloggers at a community called Xanga are creativing “100 lists” which contain 100 facts about the person that you are and the adventures you have had in life. In connection with everything that I am learning in studying The Norton Reader, I believe I am going to do this too, however I am going to write a narrative essay for each of my 100 things, telling the story behind the little facts about me. It is a good exercise in writing and developing a plethora of skills, from description and dialogue to point-of-view, and a nice way to record your history. 

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. ~Vita Sackville-West