The Back Story Behind SINS OF THE CHILD

                It’s that time of year again.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07W6S1GC8, my newest offering, Sins of the Child, is available for pre-order in the Kindle store.  The E-book will be launched to all markets for $2.99 on August 29^th.  It will also be available in paperback for $7.99.  I’ve been a bit remiss in the past about releasing paperback editions, but I am committed to improving this because I know a lot of you still prefer a physical copy.  Stay tuned for the chance to win a $25 gift card for those who follow my Facebook page and the opportunity to win a free copy of the paperback.

                I wanted to take some time to discuss the back story behind Sins of the Child. I started working on an earlier incantation of this novel all the way back in 2011.  Back then, it was tentatively titled Cabin in the Woods, a title I eventually scrapped because there were multiple other books and movies with the same name.  

                At the time, I always had it in my head that I wanted to be an author one day, but I lacked stick-with-it-ness.  I was forever starting new projects, going hard for a couple of days, then abandoning them when a new idea caught my attention.  Part of the problem was I was treating writing as a hobby, something I did when I felt like it, rather than as a job, something I had to do no matter how I felt.

                Yet something started to click in 2011.  I wrote an entire first draft of a young adult novel.  And I began Cabin in the Woods.  Set both in the present day and in the late nineteen eighties, it was about a teenage girl who murders her best friend.  Fast forward many years later, and she’s paid her debt to society and is now living under a different name.  But someone out there knows her secret, and is determined to expose her to the world.

                I’ve never flinched from brutal scenes, and there were a couple in Cabin in the Woods.  But I was proud of it.  Then I asked my boyfriend at the time to read it.

                Readers of mine have encountered his literary counterpart, Donald in The Playground, and my college buddy Rob (who maintain his own blog, https://robsbigmouth.wordpress.com/) was once pretty good friends with him when we all attended our alma mater, SUNY College at Potsdam.   Donald and I dated my freshman year of college, then we reconnected many years later after he separated from his wife and began dating again.  At the time, our reconnection seemed like fate.  Unfortunately, fate has a sense of humor when it comes to me.

                Donald was a dick, although I was blind to this fact at the time.  After our honeymoon phase when he loved everything about me, the nonstop criticism started.  He never missed a chance to put me down and make me feel like shit.  He would tell me I was fat, call me stupid, and make constant jokes at my expense to his cousin and his friends, the people we hung out with all the time.  He was so used to degrading me that he forgot himself when we were in the company of my best friend and her husband, and started running me down to them.  They were aghast, and her husband attempted to intervene, telling me Donald was a loser and I needed to dump him NOW.

                My friend said, “If he’s talking like this to your friends, I can’t imagine what he’s saying to his friends.”

                There were other incidents, like the night he had me in tears running me down because of my sizable student loan debt.  “Every penny you make should go to paying that off,” he said. “You shouldn’t be eating out, or buying books and clothes, or even driving that nice car you have.  You shouldn’t have any fun.”  Meanwhile, come to find out he not only defaulted on all his student loans, he didn’t even pay his fucking child support most of the time.  Yet he was judging me.   Unbelievable the nerve.

                But when I asked Donald to read Cabin in the Woods and tell me what he thought, all of this was in the future and we were still in the blush of first romance.  I was excited to share my work with him.  He knew that becoming an author was my dream.  He had vague ideas of being a writer himself, even ventured the notion of hosting a joint blog together.  (I do believe I started it and had a few drafts of blogs, all of which he shot down while producing zero himself, of course). Bottom line: he knew this was important to me.

                I waited a few weeks before bringing up the manuscript in a phone conversation.  I said, “So, did you read my book?”

                There was a silence.  Then he said, “Yes.  It was very disturbing.  So disturbing, in fact, I’m kind of freaked out about you and thinking of breaking up with you.”

                Oh no!  Until this moment, I thought Donald was the one.  We talked of sharing a future together, and having children, and at the time I desperately wanted those things and was already in my late thirties.  I felt that Donald was my last chance.  (Probably true; oh well). 

                “You should stop writing,” he said.

                When I hung up the phone, I was in a panic.  I felt like I was being made to choose between being an author and doing what I love, and a husband and family.  At the time, I was in love with Donald.  (I just gagged a little bit typing those words).  I would do anything to be with him.  Even give up writing.

                Just in case I didn’t get the message, his cousin’s girlfriend started scolding me about my book when we hung out with them on Friday night.  “I would never read anything you write,” she said emphatically, exchanging a look with Donald.  That felt like a slap.  Not only was he running down my work to me, he’d taken the extra step and started running it down to all the people we hung out with together.

                So, I did it.  I stopped writing.

                Of course, not completely.  My creativity came out in other ways-during that time I was a prolific Facebook poster.  I would post several times a day.  That became my outlet.  Of course, Donald ran that down too, saying I was self-centered and an attention seeker, and that he hated people who posted on Facebook like I did.  Nice, huh?

                We broke up in 2015, and I didn’t start writing again until 2016.  Since then, words have been pouring out of me at a feverish pace.  Like a finger removed from a dike.

                Publishing this book is a triumph.  It has helped me realize that I am writing and sharing my work with the world for the simple joy of it, because I love it.  I’m not doing it for anyone’s approval.  I’m not doing it for money (although money would be nice) I’m doing it because I love it.  It makes me sad that I let some jerk stop me from doing something I love, even temporarily.

                There may be people out there in the same boat I was back then, wanting to do something with their life, wanting to fly, and having their wings clipped.  The people stopping them come in many guises, from the benevolent “you’re just not good enough and I’m telling this for your own good,” to “you’re selfish because this will take time away from…” DON’T LISTEN.  People that discourage you and tell you no do so for their own selfish reasons.  That person does not mean well.  That person means to hold you back from flying.  And who cares why, most likely because they don’t have the courage to fly themselves.

                I am going to release this book.  As always, some will like it, some won’t.  But this book will remain a triumph, me spitting in the eye of the people who said I couldn’t.  Something I should have done many years ago.