Truer words have never been uttered.

I believe in Fate--that the universe has ways of saying: Stop. Reverse course. Equally, I hate being told what to do. The day didn’t start well: I overslept, poured sour milk over the last of my cereal, smashed my hand in the sliding door, and limped to a standstill on a flat tire I could not afford to fix. If not for my stubborn middle finger to Fate, I’d have taken a personal day before things got worse. Instead? Instead I found myself where I did not belong: standing just inside the threshold of a small hot bedroom saturated in blood. I’d transcribed police and witness statements describing crime scenes, everything from mummified remains to fresh brains transported separately in a box. But this was the first one I’d stood inside and I’d have thought the blood was fake if not for the smell. There was just too much of it, like an overdone haunted house on Halloween: walls, ceiling, pooled on the floor, soaked into the mattresses of the matching twin beds in which lay two women, both early- to mid-twenties, both dead between two and six hours. Detective Sergeant Brian Berger crouched beside the bed under the window. “We have IDs?” Sergeant Ron Croft flipped a page on his notepad. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. I’d watched him try to make sense of me getting out of Berger’s SUV at that hour of the morning, a look that said I should have had the sense to wait inside. He’d centered himself on the threshold, trapping me in the bedroom, so I’d regret that decision. “Blond is Chloe Adams,” he read. “Redhead is Saoirse Quinn—” Berger looked up. “Say that again.” “SHEER-sha. It’s Irish. She’s from County Cork. Adams is from New Zealand. According to the surviving housemate, this room is used every year by international interns who come to town to work the wine grape harvest.” Chloe Adams had hair as pale blond as my own, but longer and straight as falling water. She lay on her side, uncovered, her sheets and duvet folded neatly against the wall. Her pajama top—once white with a blue toile pattern, now mostly deep reddish-brown—and matching shorts were undisturbed. If not for the fact that her throat had been so deeply slashed she’d been nearly decapitated, she might have been asleep. Saoirse was another story. Sheets wound around her legs, satin camisole—an unstained section showed it had been pale green, and matched her panties--hanging in ribbons. Her blood-smeared face was mostly obscured by a matted mass of wavy auburn hair. I glanced at her hands. Both were deeply lacerated and bloodstained—defensive wounds--whereas Chloe’s fingers and palms showed only the purplish tint of grape juice, stains that spoke of hot days picking grape berries, crushing them in Ziplocs...I’d worked a few harvests. I knew firsthand the grit behind the romance. Berger used gloved fingers to lift a pair of Gucci sunglasses from the nightstand, look them over, and put them back down. “If they came to work the harvest they’ve only been in town what, five, six weeks? Not much time to make enemies.” “Doesn’t take time these days,” countered Croft. “Entitled rich kids breeze into town, look down their noses, treat the local guys like dirt, everyone’s drinking, sooner or later someone’s gonna go off. Not blaming the victims,” he held up a hand, palm out, to negate the lie, “I’m just saying people have lim...” “Saoirse wasn’t rich,” I said. “Chloe was, but not Saoirse.” “...its.” Dumbfounded that I’d dared speak, Croft fell silent. Berger caught my eye. “What makes you say that?” “What they’re wearing. Saoirse’s satin camisole and panties—fancy style, but polyester satin and inexpensive construction.” “They’re harvest interns. Crush is dirty, sweaty work,” Berger said. “Everyone wears crappy old clothes.” “To work in, yes. Rich girls don’t sleep in them. See the label on the waistband of Chloe’s shorts? OVH stands for Olivia von Halle, a high-end brand. Looks like a cotton/silk blend. I’d guess that shorty set cost around four hundred bucks. Soairse’s...” I shrugged. Croft snorted. I could see Berger wondering if I could really identify fabrics like that, so I said, “Silk and cotton fibers are absorbent. Polyester isn’t. Liquids soak into natural fibers but wick along synthetics. You can see the different patterns at the edges of the, ah...the stains.” Croft said, “You do a lot of bleeding into different fabrics?” “A fair amount.” I always spoke carefully to Croft, few words, no inflection. I’d worked for the police department for six years, and he’d hated me from day one. I’d never figured out what I’d done or said to make him despise me, but he had power within the hierarchy, and I did not, so he was always trying to needle me into a spat we both knew he’d win. An iPhone chimed on the dresser. Berger picked it up and checked the screen. “Alarm’s gone intermittent,” he said. “Originally set for five-thirty.” He silenced the chime, reached around me and handed the phone to Croft, forcing him at last from the doorway to bag it. But I couldn’t move. Much as I wanted out of that room, I stood frozen, alert as any prey animal to a sense of ongoing threat. It had been there from the moment I set foot in this house: a low growl in tall grass, impossible to pinpoint. “This feel like rage to you?” Berger had spoken so quietly, and the question was so unexpected, I didn’t reply. As precinct Administrative Assistant, I was only at the scene because I’d gotten that flat tire on my way to work. Valley Brake and Tire had been winching my truck onto their flatbed when Berger happened by and offered me a lift. It was safe to say he hadn’t noticed me standing beside the road. He’d recognized my lime green 1977 Ford F-150. There could hardly be two in town.

I couldn’t believe I’d finally taken the plunge. Me! The most careful, plan-oriented woman on the planet threw caution to the wind and moved across country for a relationship of all things. Maybe the pandemic, followed by years of true isolation, finally emboldened me enough to leave the only town in coastal Oregon I’d ever known. Or maybe it was the 6+ solid months of near-constant communication, travel, and love-bombing charms of Dean. Ever the pragmatic, I would have never done something so wild before, but even I understood our long-distance status had to change if we wished to go forward, and I was the most portable. To be truthful, I was never attached to my hometown, and while I dated a few guys before, I found nothing long-term. Even my few acquaintances were far from what I would call a friend. Then again, growing up as a foster kid in a broken system would make a lone wolf out of just about anyone. Then the world shut down en masse, putting a whole new spin on “self-sufficient,” and I found myself perusing a dating app for no other reason than to have someone to talk to about the little things. That’s how I met Dean. Dean slid into my DM’s saying all the most outrageous things. He was funny and loud and hailed from this gorgeous little town in upstate New York that looked carved out of a Hallmark movie. As jarring as some of our talks were, I was intrigued by his brash nature. We started in a whirlwind of texting followed by weeks of back-and-forth calls before he surprised me with a visit, white roses in hand, and a big grin on his face. I was instantly dazzled, if not overwhelmed, by his handsome, grunge-chic demeanor. Nearly a head taller than my small stature, his dark hair and grizzled beard had a small sprinkle of silver mixed in that added to his boyishly mischievous smile. A bit reckless and wilder than I, he was also intensely attentive, a welcomed change in my otherwise isolated life. That whole first weekend together was a fairytale of hand-holding, hugs, and lingering kisses. He never missed a chance at a grand romantic gesture, and I found myself breathless just to trying to keep up with him. I learned quickly that Dean was never afraid to speak his mind. We texted constantly and ended almost every night with a video chat as we ate dinner together and shared our daily lives. Mine was always a fairly short share, emphasized by the enormity of his life as a fireman. His stories were always filled with danger and adrenaline, and I often found myself awestruck. On the days we couldn’t video chat due to his work or distance challenges, we’d always have a quick phone call when he ended his day. Dean said our calls were his anchor, and he insisted that we share every detail of every day so that neither of us would feel alone. It was endearing, and I found myself looking forward to our calls each day, too. He was always so sweet, even if a little overzealous at times. Dean flew to see me twice. Twice more, he paid for me to fly to a third-party destination as a mini-vacation of sorts, where we spent most of our time in bed together. Sex with Dean was like everything else: brash and wild and sometimes a little more than I bargained for. And the adventures we’d go on during the days were the same. He pushed my limits, encouraging me out of my shell. Everything about Dean was intense, including the speed at which it progressed. Dean was an essential worker in his hometown as part of the fire department, whereas my social media marketing job was web-based. I could go anywhere I had wifi. My current contract was drawing to a close as our time shuffling long-distance began to wear thin. He shared so many stories about the ties holding him to his home and career that it felt impractical for him to move when it would be easier for me to relocate. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine a life of being essential, and I confess to a highly romanticized ideal of what it would be like to move to a town where my boyfriend was so well-known. So, nerves aside, I took the leap. Dean poured over job listings each day and sent me links we’d talk about every night. I sent off a few resumes and had a few good job interviews, but it was a New York-based tech start-up willing to pay relocation fees with a 2-year contract that piqued my interest. The job offer came the same day a beautiful bouquet of white roses arrived with a card reading, “I already knew you were a shoo-in”. Dean sent more roses every day for a week in celebration, as well as a bottle of celebratory champagne. He would have sent me roses had I not begged him to stop, claiming impracticality but withholding that the sickly sweet scent was making my head hurt. Dean wanted to help with the move, but he didn't have that kind of time off after so many vacations. Instead, he sent me boxes and reserved the moving truck. The drive was long and peaceful, a quiet time I enjoyed. I had surprisingly few connections in Oregon at all, and uprooting my life into a small moving truck with my car trailer to the back was jarringly easy. The future looked blindly bright and a little nerve-wracking as I crossed that first state line. Each border crossed after that was more and more exciting. No going back. Arriving in Upstate New York in late July was like falling into a movie. The temperature change was slight, but the scenery was nothing short of breathtaking. Oregon had trees and the ocean, but the Adirondack Mountains were stunning to behold, and their narrow, windy roads in and around the hilly terrain were idyllic. Especially with the way the afternoon sunlight dappled through the broad green leaves of trees I’d only ever seen in TV shows and movies. I found a small apartment in Lake Placid, and I couldn’t wait to see the tree-lined water come fall. My new place was tiny but fully furnished and affordable enough on a month-to-month basis that it wouldn’t eat into my savings too much before the new job started paying. The drive took me a solid 7 days to complete, and my phone died somewhere outside of Akron, Ohio, so it was no surprise that Dean wasn’t at my new place when I arrived. I didn’t want him to worry about me, so I plugged in my phone, set it on the empty kitchen counter, and started unpacking while it charged. I checked the display periodically, expecting a slew of missed calls and texts, but there was nothing. I thought it was odd, but I figured Dean was just called away for work. I mentally prepared myself for the life of a firefighter girlfriend and the period times of no-contact I would have to endure, so this wasn’t entirely unexpected. I dropped Dean a single line of text between trips back and forth with boxes that included a selfie of me. Sure, I was a sweaty mess, but nothing. A tight ponytail and a solid filter couldn’t fix, right? Me: Guess who’s officially a townie! *Heart emoji* *smiley emoji* After another hour, and after all my boxes were unloaded, I still had no response. I called and left a voicemail that I was going to need some help returning the U-Haul after I grabbed a shower and I hoped he might have time to meet me at the storage place. But again, my message went unanswered. I was slightly worried since it wasn’t like Dean not to at least drop me a line back, if not ten lines back. Even between fire calls, he’d always toss me a quick, “Hey doll face, busy day, back later”. The radio silence was unnerving, but I needed to return to the U-Haul before they closed or risk being charged an extra day. So I called an Uber to pick me up at the storage facility where I dropped the truck off. Turning in the keys, I checked my phone for the tenth time and still had no response from Dean. Entering the Uber, I gave the driver a last-minute change of address. God…I wished I hadn’t done that. Pulling up to Dean’s address, I got out and stood in front of a small cabin surrounded by a wrap-around porch and tall green trees all around. Dean’s Jeep parked in the gravel driveway gave me a little rush of excitement as I walked up the steps to the front door. He'd talked about that thing so many times I could just envision us taking scenic drives as he showed me around my new hometown. Knocking on the door, I could hear the faint thump of music. He was home and his favorite classic rock tunes were filling the air. I couldn’t help but smile despite my mild irritation as the flood of butterflies erupted in my belly. When Dean didn't answer, I knocked a second time and waited before pulling out my phone and firing off a text. Me: Surprise...I’m here! I waited a minute, maybe two, while I looked through the windows, but there was no response. Strolling around the corner of the porch, I hit redial, and when my phone rang for Dean, I heard the ringing from outside the house as well as through my phone. Following the sound, I walked off the porch, around the back of the house, where I picked up the thick crunch of a whacking sound. The closer I got to the ringing, the louder the crunching was. Dean’s voicemail picked up, and I said his name. “Dean?” The rhythmic thwacking stopped as I rounded the final corner to see Dean standing in front of a giant wooden tree stump sliced smooth, low, and close to the ground. There was another log on top, deftly split down the middle by a shirtless and sweaty Dean holding a giant axe. He dropped the axe to the side as he smiled down at the ground with a little shake of his head. “Moira, Moira. What a surprise.” His odd smile never left the ground as he grabbed the freshly split logs, one in each hand, and tossed them to a pile off to the side. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?” What brings me to his neck of the woods? All the hairs on my neck stood on end as his cool greeting washed over me. I expected surprise, sure, but also…I don’t know what. Elation maybe, or at the very least, happiness. I mean we talked about me being here for months. We reviewed the details and made plans. Dean even viewed my apartment for me before I paid the deposit. We talked about this ad nauseum and he was so excited for me to be here…wasn’t he? “I tried to call and text you earlier today. My cell died in Ohio, so I couldn’t do anything until I got to my new place and - “ “Yeah, I got those. I was pretty busy here, as you can see.” He loaded another log onto the platform and waved around with his ax as if his need to chop wood in the middle of summer made sense somehow. I started to walk forward for a hug, but hesitated. His aloof and distant manner was so far removed from the Dean I knew. Or...thought I knew? “Dean, I’m sorry if me show - “ “Why are you sorry?” He cut me off abruptly. “I never mind having company.” He swung his axe and split the log in two with a deafening crack that made me jump. “Would you like something to drink…a beer, maybe?” He tossed the two logs into the same pile as before and turned towards the house. Would I like a beer…what am I, a passing neighbor here for a friendly chat? I stood there, mouth open and eyes wide as he lumbered up the steps and slid open the back door of his house. My feet moved of their own volition, and I followed his path, playing over the previous weeks of communication with him and wondering if I had made some horrible mistake. I took one step into his house and stood back against the glass door as he turned down the music and turned towards the kitchen. Again, not looking at me but smiling that same smirk, he just shook his head and mumbled my name. “Ah, Moira, Moira.” Anger flashed up my spine as he opened his fridge and grabbed two beers, swiftly discarding their lids and crossing to finally meet me and, at last, look me in the eyes. “Beer?” “What?” I muttered. “Dean, I don’t understand.” “Where’s the confusion, you either want the beer or not?" He cocked up a sneer and shoved a cold bottle in my hand, and sent the cap flying to the floor with a twist. "God, you are so hard to read sometimes,” he mumbled as he turned his back to me again to sit on a barstool. “I thought you might be waiting for me at my new place.” I grimaced down at the nauseatingly skunky beer. “Why?” He smiled, taking a swig of his beer and letting his eyes roam the room. “You said yourself your phone died. I couldn’t have known you were gonna show up today, now could I?” What was happening? This cold and distant behavior was so far removed from the eager and attentive man who had once flown to Oregon just to have dinner with me. Surely, I was missing something crucial. “Sure. Okay. I guess.” I took a few steps towards him and cleared my throat. Maybe I’m just misreading things. I did show up out of the blue, and maybe he’s just tired from chopping wood. Maybe if I just relax, he will too, I thought. “Well, I got myself moved in and managed to return the moving truck in time. I had to take an Uber since I couldn’t get ahold of you, and that’s when I thought I would just - “ “Show up over here unannounced?” He smirked again and took a swig of his beer. “Yeah, I figured that part out all on my own, sweetheart.” “Okay. Look. I can tell something’s up here. I’m not sure what I’ve done, but - “ Dean stood abruptly, his stool screeching across the tile floor, and took two swift steps toward me. A move so fast that a barely audible yelp slipped out of me. “Look, Moira. Was there something you needed from me or…” He let his words trail off as he stared me dead in my eyes, trailing his intense gaze from my face down my body and back up again. He never flinched…never blinked. I stood, mouth hanging open again as my free hand twisted into a fist against my stomach. I felt the burning sting of tears welling in the corners of my eyes but desperately tried to stop them. I couldn’t cry, not here. Not now. I have to fix this. “Why are you acting like this?” My voice was weaker than I wanted it to be, but it was all I could muster while fighting eager tears from spilling over. “We talked about this. About me coming here.” Dean glared a beat longer, scanning his eyes down my body once more and smirking. “Moira, Moira. What am I gonna do with you?” His eyes burned through my clothes, through my boundaries, straight to the heart of me. I felt naked and exposed and suddenly very, very embarrassed. “Stop saying my name like that!” An angry flush rose on my cheeks. “Just tell me why you’re - “ “No need to get hysterical, sweetheart.” Dean gave my chin a little flick with his thumb as he brushed past my shoulder and headed back towards the door. Traitorous tears fell down my cheeks, now hot with anger and humiliation. My mind raced through every detail, sifting the sands of memory and time to figure out what happened. I had allowed Dean to push me beyond my boundaries time and again, convincing myself it was good for me to branch out and break free from my lift of isolation. But surely I didn't concoct this relationship in my head, did I? The faster my thoughts raced, the darker his intentions seemed until I came to the one conclusion that made the most sense. The only way any of this made a sort of sick and twisted sense. “You,” I swallowed past the lump in my throat, willing my words to be more than a whimpering plea. "You played me." “Aw come on now, Moira. I thought we had a lot of fun.” He slid the glass door open and stepped outside as he continued. “I’m sorry you don’t feel the same.” Don’t feel the same? Don’t feel the same!? I spun on my heels and stomped out the door behind him as I wiped the tears off my face. “No. NO! Dean.” He continued walking down the steps, and I was right behind him. “We made plans for months. You knew I was coming; you WANTED me to come.” “Did we talk about all that?” Dean asked, crossing to where his axe was lying. “I can’t recall. I mean God, you did text and call me a LOT. A guy can hardly be expected to remember everything.” “No! You called, you texted, you flew out to see me and - “ “We had some fun, sweetheart. You were a lot of fun. I needed a distraction when the world went a little nutty, and we had some good times. If you thought it was more than that, well…that seems like a you problem.” I watched in shock as he casually lifted a log to the platform. The bastard was literally going to continue chopping wood after this. After I uprooted my whole life…and moved? “A YOU PROBLEM!” I tried to step in front of him, but he brushed past me like I was nothing. “You made me move across the country. I changed jobs for you. I gave up my entire life because you said, ‘You couldn’t come to me’.” I waved angry air quotes, still hoping beyond hope he’d remember that he asked me to be here. He wanted me here; I was absolutely sure of that. And yet, how could he treat me this way? With every question left unanswered, my rage boiled over until debased humiliation rose to the surface. “I think what you are remembering is your old job was already ending, and I offered to help you find a new job,” He tossed his hands out to the side with a shrug. “cause I’m a nice guy like that. And you chose to move out here when I told you I wouldn’t come that direction.” He reached for his axe before finishing. “I was trying to be nice, but clearly, you got some mixed signals.” “Dean, NO. That’s not true, and you know it!” Why am I begging? Stop begging, you fool. He swung his axe so close to my face that I jerked back, my hand smarting at the briefest contact the axe whisked past me. The deafening crack made my heart skip a beat, and nausea began to rise as my reality came crashing down around me. “Might wanna steer clear, sweetheart.” He smirked as he reared back for a second swing. He moved so quickly I all but had to jump back, and I swear I heard a laugh rumble up out of him. “Look.” He huffed as he tossed the axe to the ground and grabbed the split pieces. “ I can see you’re going through something, and I don’t wanna make this about me. But you are kinda putting me on the spot.” “I’m putting YOU on the spot?” I could hardly believe the lies dripping so easily from Dean's lips. “I mean, we had some good times, no doubt. You were fun. But that was it. You made this wild decision to move out here all on your own." Stopping his work, he straightened his back and locked his gaze on me. "And now you show up at my door, unannounced, and act shocked that I wasn’t...what?” Dean's face held a now familiar dead-in-the-eye stare that sent chills running down my spine. Moving only a fraction, he put his face so close that I nearly tasted the sour musk of his sweat mingled with the beer on his breath. “What did you think was gonna happen here, Moira?” His voice was almost taunting and in it's wake my stomach rolled as I clenched a fist, trying futilely to hold back a fresh wave of tears. “You told me you wanted me here. You helped me find a job.” “Yes. Lord knows you seemed too helpless to take care of things yourself since your contract was ending and you had nothing lined up. I took pity on you.” His face was soft and, in any other scenario, might have seemed caring, but now, it was miserable, and the pity he bore was suffocating. “No. You paid for the moving truck, and…you said you cared about-” “Moira, Moira.” He grumbled, taking one rough hand and stroking the back of it down my cheek, wiping away a fresh tear. “I thought I was helping out an orphan with no family. It was charity…nothing more. But frankly, I got my own shit at work to deal with, and I can’t carry you anymore.” My heart sank. Hooking a finger into the collar of my shirt he tugged me towards him and leaned in close until his forehead was touching mine before whispering. “You know, It’s not fair of you to lay anymore of your problems on me when I was just trying to be a nice guy who helped clean up your mess.” A wave of humiliation as the intimacy of his touch and the truth of my reality crashed down around me. I had been well and truly played. This man, this bastard of a man, convinced me to give up my whole life and move across the country, and I was the idiot who let him. I was the idiot who thought I’d won some fairytale ending after a long-distance romance and an even longer terrible life of solitude. A fresh sob escaped, and I dropped the beer I forgot I was still holding. I looked down and watched as it spilled over the top of my foot, soaking it through before running out between Dean and me. “Hm.” He smirked. “Guess you’ll be expecting me to clean up that mess too, won’t you, Moira?” The way he said my name suddenly made me sick, evident in a fresh wave of anger and nausea rising within me. It was all I could do not to hurl all over his stupid, arrogant face, but before I could muster up even a single word, Dean shocked me again with a kiss on my cheek. “I’m due for a poker game in the City tonight. Let’s not make this an awkward thing.” He slid a piece of my hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ear. Turning back to his house, he yelled. “I gotta clean up. You can show yourself out, right?” He entered his house, sliding the glass door close behind him, and never once looked back.

11-20-24 Howdy all, Here's the full proposal PDF: google docs link to the full book proposal (formatted and easier on the eyes than reading here) Go Bleep Your Self-Help has an Introduction which um, well, you know...introduces the book, but here ya go: Chapter 1: Good Morning Sunshine, In your dream, a book has caught your eye. On its cover: a life-sized middle finger unabashedly flipping off your life’s vainglorious efforts to improve, better, and help yourself. You are delighted and offended. You are hopeful and skeptical. You are intrigued and exhausted. A thought-and-feeling-infused hurricane of failure, unworthiness, meaninglessness, unlove, boredom, and confusion whips up those old, stalwart, inner nemeses of yours––stress, worry, doubt, angst, and unhappiness. You sigh heavily and take a deep breath. But before you’ve had even an iota of time to process all this––Poof!––the book magically transforms into a two-and-a-half-foot-long, chartreuse-green iguana. The iguana looks up at you, peering directly into your eyes. It lifts its reptilian middle claw, shoves it prominently in your face, and speaks clearly: “Go Fuck Your Self-Help.” Damn, man, you think. It didn’t even bleep out the cussword. Then, you wake up. Only––you haven’t woken up. You’re still here, holding the very same book in your hands and, in no small way, still dreaming the very same dream…that there is supposedly an actual self that can somehow, actually…be helped. Before I introduce myself––and yes, I know this is a little awkward––I just want to ensure that the last sentence's gravitas isn't overlooked. Read it again. It's not a frivolous, throw-away, secondary note or idea––it’s the entire damn symphony and the main thesis of this book. In reality, there is no– Shit. I'm getting ahead of myself. Again. Damnit. We just started. My bad. Okay. I'm putting the Jeep in reverse. Let's back up a bit, shall we? Take a deep breath. Sigh. Relax. Ahh. There. That’s better. Greetings. Allow me to introduce myself: I’m your mostly perfect part. I’ll be your guide and traveling companion throughout this adventure. Honestly, I have no clue how you or I got here. I can only surmise that some strange cocktail of serendipity, synchronicity, and coincidence (and yes, of course, that vainglorious middle finger on the front cover of this book also) conspired––to have us meet. I'll take it. I’m not picky about the how-or-whys of this kind of fortuitous and synchronous situation. I’m merely grateful and glad to finally meet you––once again. Who am I really? I’m you, or, if you'd like, YOU. Yes, we have indeed met before––you just don’t remember much about me. I’m the deepest, truest YOU before all the surface you. You’ve forgotten about me because, well, life happened, growing up happened, difficulty happened, challenge happened, drama happened, suffering happened. Anyway, that’s usually the case. No––I’m not God; Nuh-uh––I’m not your higher self; No friend––I’m not your furry, totem-spirit animal; No ma’am–– I’m not your wounded, lost inner child. And nope, not even, negatory––I’m not your heavenly angelic guide or besty metaphysical master. Sorry to say, I’m much more prosaic and practical than any of those guys or gals. I’m your inner self-awareness. All human beings have an inner self-aware part. Oddly enough however, this self-awareness has been mostly ignored, overlooked and undervalued. Let’s change this, shall we? Yes? Cool. Here's how: To begin with, you and I are going to spend a lot more time together, and you are going to start feeling a lot better about a lot of things. We’re going on a road trip, and we’re going to have a ton of profound, strange, wild, and wonderful adventures, all designed to help you re-discover your inner self-awareness. While on this trip, I will be your guide, best friend, and drill sergeant, all rolled into one. Okay. Gimme a sec–– I should probably pull over and park the Jeep for this next part–– There we go. Cool–– Just to make our trip more personable and less awkward, please simply call me J. and treat me like your equal because––I am absolutely your equal. And, of course, let’s bring you into the adventure, shall we? I don’t want this to be a boring, didactic, one-way lecture. I’d like some company here, and your presence will be a big part of the lesson. So, come on! Join me on stage–– Yes, you! You out there with the book in your hand! Come on. No hiding. Step right up… “Me?” Ahhh––Yes. There you are. Welcome. “I’m in the book now? Me? The reader?” Yep. Welcome. You're not just in the book; you're the star of the big picture show. “I’m the star?” Of course, you are! “And this helps me how?” It helps you understand the big picture, of course. “Big picture of what–exactly?” The big picture of self-awareness. It’s life-changing. It’s huge. It’s grand. It’s spectacu- “But everyone is self-aware. I don’t see the big deal.” You are correct. It's a strange one. Believe me though, it’s da bomb. It’s the real help you’ve been looking for. “Self-awareness? Come on!“ Absolutely. Deep, authentic self-awareness comes with a ton of side benefits. “Okay. Listening...” Self-awareness reduces stress, anxiety, depression, and unhappiness. It helps you live more in the moment. It gives you a greater sense of purpose and meaning. And for most, it addresses and heals the real reason you even picked up a book like this in the first place. “Alright. I’ll bite. What’s the real reason I picked up this book?” You're missing something. Its absence has created a giant gnawing, nagging hole in your being––which, oddly enough, you may or may not be aware of. “So, you're saying that self-awareness can cure this?” I'm not just saying it; I'm providing proof right now as we speak. You’re being self-aware as you read this. “Uh-How so?” Sure: My little trick of inviting you into this book, switching the writing style to a dialogue-driven format, and drawing your attention to your thoughts has directly engaged your self-awareness. In other words, you are now watching and witnessing your own thoughts with another part of your conscious mind that is most definitely not thought. "Okay. I think–I follow." It’s called the Socratic Method, a dialogue-driven technique that, if done correctly, reveals internal self-awareness. “Like Socrates?” Yep––like Socrates. This shit is as old as the Greek hills. “Okay–well. You–might–be–um…right? I–am-now? Watching–and witnessing? My–own–thoughts?” See. Told ya. “How the hell are you doing this?” I’m not doing it. Your brain is. Now… Take a deep breath. Go ahead! Take a deep breath. Inhale–– ––Hold up. Hold up. Hold up! I’m sorry–– This isn’t working. You’re drifting. “Um, Me?” No––the reader part of you. Yes, you with the book in your hands! You're drifting, lagging, and starting to zone out. This won’t do. Time to get the drill sergeant out: How the hell are you going to get anything out of this book if you don’t pay attention!? Okay, soldier. Adjust your seat. Uncross your legs. Sit up straight. There. Better. Now––take a deep breath. Yes! You, soldier! Take…a deep…breath. Inhale––allow your chest to expand. Now exhale––allow your chest to completely deflate. There you go. Perfect. Thank you. Excellent. Let this be a warning, corporal!: If you keep zoning out, this book will disintegrate right before your clueless eyes into a big, fat, useless, piece-of-shit, self-help––blather. Do you want that? No? I didn’t think so. So, soldier––in service of you gaining something from this book––Ten Hut! Pay Attention! If I catch you drifting off into La-La land again, you’ll see something like this: Excellent. Now, take your time. Slow down. Follow along and enjoy. There's no rush. Shall we resume? “So, back to me now?” Yes. “Okay. I’m game.” Great. Where were we? Right… It all boils down to the observer: Observe the thoughts in your head and then ask yourself, who or what is this observer? “Alright–Yes. I–suppose... I–am–observing my–own inner–thoughts? I'm–observing them–noticing them–watching them. Is this–correct?" Yes, very likely. Can’t exactly say for sure, but I do know that for most people, this kind of self-awareness takes a little time and practice––but not much. Keep at it. You'll see. It comes with a whole host of positive mental and physical health benefits. This isn’t my opinion, this is neuroscience. You following? “You had me at neuroscience.” Excellent. Now we can pivot to your invitation: “Eh, cool. To what? “ To tag along with me in my Jeep on a road-trip adventure to uncover your truest-deepest self-awareness. You in? “Me?” Well, yes, of course you!! Who else would I be speaking to? “Um, yes. I suppose. How long will this take?” About as long as it takes you to read a 343-page, 5"x 8" paperback book…and drive cross-country, a few thousand miles. “Yikes, that’s gonna take a while.” Oh, come on. You can work remotely, right? “Well, yes and no- I don’t really have a- Well, I guess I could make some arrangements.” Awesome. It's settled, then. “Um, okay–sure.” You won't regret this. I promise. You and I are going to have a glorious adventure, sunshine! “That’s a thing for you, isn’t it?” What? “Calling everyone sunshine?” Oh yes. Definitely. You might not see your bright inner sunshine, but I do. “I accept that.” Me too. Well––whaddya waitin’ for? Go pack your bags and make whatever arrangements you need to make. The great wide-open road is calling our names, and there's no time to waste. Oh, and one more thing–– I totally applaud your boldness, but you really don’t need that anymore. “Boldness?” Exactly. “Oh, you mean the font-type setting?” Yes, that. “Can I keep the cursive?” Sure. No problem. Now, text me your address. I'll pick you up in my Jeep tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. sharp. “You got it.” You place the book down and swallow nervously. What the hell is this thing? Am I dreaming this? No longer capable of differentiating between dream and reality, you continue ruminating. What have I gotten myself into? Your head spins. Oh God. All of the old familiar, ruinous feelings of anxiety, fear, and anger start bubbling up again. Your limbs grow weak, and your stomach knots up. No. No. NO! you proclaim to yourself. I will not go back. I will NOT go back! Fuck that place! You take a few deep breaths, attempting to settle yourself. I will NOT GO BACK! A small, still voice in the back of your mind has different plans for you, however… Oh, you will go back, it proclaims. You will go ALL–the bleeping–way back. You can’t tell if this voice in your head is a good thing or a bad thing. And that scares the hell out of you, most of all. If you’re grappling with or can’t quite believe that self-awareness is alchemical gold that can help you––Good. This is just respectable honesty. Self-awareness is like a hidden, locked-away goldmine you never knew you had access to, much less owned. Fist bump, my friend. You just found the mine and the keys to it. Of course, there’s a catch... Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I, too, grappled with the overlooked and undervalued mystery of self-awareness. I suffered from depression for the first two decades of my adult life. Damn, if self-awareness didn’t eventually end that depression and save my unhappy soul––but (the catch)–– I had to confront a ton of scary, internal shit for that to happen. My response to your justifiable skepticism and apropos discernment is this: Stick with me here and see if any of the adventures, lessons, or exercises presented in this book help you in any way. The worst that could happen is that you go back to driving yourself batshit crazy with conventional self-help. The best that could happen is that you start to recognize your inner self-awareness and finally recognize that YOU my friend, are… Welcome to Go Bleep Your Self Help. Let’s hit the road.

Please see attached the first three chapters of my book. The first chapter is the OPENING SCENE, which introduces the main character and his mission to a reader. The scene is structured such that whoever tries to guess what his mission actually is will be completely surprised by the second chapter. The first chapter does introduce the ANTAGONIST, without the reader even realizing it. Second and third chapters create a PINCH POINT where the reader is up for an unexpected twist--no one could have guessed the identity of the main character or the nature of his mission. These are mostly dedicated to WORLD-BUILDING, through THE combination of DIALOGUE and the main hero's THOUGHTS. First_3_Chapters.pdf

11-20-24 Update Hello, Here's a safe google doc link to the book proposal and first fifty pages of Go Bleep Your Self-Help. I’ve been making improvements to it daily, based on the homework and reading assignments here. Thanks! – J. Title: Go Bleep Your Self-Help – A Little Book to Remind You That You’re Already (Mostly) Perfect Genre: Narrative Non-Fiction / Irreverent Self-Help / Body, Mind, Spirit #1 THE STORY STATEMENT and BOOK PITCH Multiple unaddressed childhood traumas have led the reader to a life of anxiety, depression, addiction, and unhappiness. The reader has tried and failed, over and over again, to address these issues with conventional therapy, pharmaceuticals, and popular self-help. Now, at rock bottom and willing to risk everything, the shadowy doppelganger of the reader, the You character in the book, reluctantly joins the charming and devious doppelganger of author J. Stewart Dixon on a high-stakes, calamitous, cross-country adventure, where four distinct, wise, healing, avant-garde teachers are encountered: an artsy neuroscientist, a rebellious college student, a burned-out army nurse, and a sage but dangerous tour boat captain. Each teacher challenges you with a unique set of inner and outer adventures, experiences, and exercises, all of which help you overcome your core traumatic wounds and rediscover your most authentic, happiest self again. A prequel to author J. Stewart’s Dixon’s multi-award winning, 2000 reviewed, Amazon best-selling book series Spirituality for Badasses, Go Bleep Your Self-Help delivers light-hearted, counterintuitive, soul-soothing, anti-advice that’s easy to read and hard to forget. There’s a reason why author J. Stewart Dixon has thousands of reviews, fans, and a pile of book awards. You’re about to find out for yourself… #2 THE ANTAGONIST FORCE The primary antagonistic force throughout Go Bleep Your Self-Help is fear itself, represented by a formless, ambiguous entity known by the You character (in dreams, anxiety attacks, and visions) as the “ice shadow.” The ice shadow prevents, avoids, denies, and distracts you from meeting your deepest childhood traumas. The ice shadow prevents, avoids, denies, and distracts you from releasing your story and identity as a depressed, addicted, wounded, unloved, and unworthy person. The ice shadow prevents, avoids, denies, and distracts you from realizing your deepest, aware self. In the end, you meet the ice shadow, and its true nature is revealed. The ice shadow is only defeated when you come to one very paradoxical, sobering, mindful, and self-aware realization: The ice shadow is both the very thing preventing you and the very thing inviting you– to grow, heal, and change. Traditional, dualistic, Cartesian models of dealing with the ice shadow – like talk therapy, pharmaceuticals, or self-help –never stood a chance. The ice shadow is a manifestation of our deepest, darkest fears masked over and hidden by…ego. #3 BREAKOUT TITLE Go Bleep Your Self-Help – A Little Book to Remind You That You’re Already (Mostly) Perfect #4 GENRE AND COMPARABLES Revised / Updated 11-12-24 Genre: Narrative Non-Fiction / Irreverent Self-Help / Body, Mind, Spirit Comparable Non-Fiction Books Last 5 Years: Spirituality for Badasses: How to Find Inner Peace and Happiness Without Losing Your Cool, Book 1, 2 & The Workbook 2021, 2022, 2023 / J. Stewart Dixon / PIE Publishing · Nearly 50,000 copies sold · Winner of 7 Indie Book Awards · 1760 Amazon & 290 Goodreads reviews · My self-published book series, Spirituality for Badasses, was written using the same style and format that will be used in Go Bleep Your Self-Help. How to do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal From Your Past and Create Your Self 2021 / Nicole LePera / Harper · 1 Million + copies sold · 15,446 Amazon reviews · #1 NYT Bestseller · Go Bleep Your Self-Help addresses similar topics but utilizes a combination of irreverent, humorous, narrative fiction story-telling and narrative nonfiction guidance instead. The Mountain is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery 2020 / Brianna Wiest / Thought Catalog Books · 3 Million + copies sold · 20,036 Amazon reviews · #1 NYT Bestseller · Go Bleep Your Self-Help addresses similar topics but utilizes a combination of irreverent, humorous, narrative fiction story-telling and narrative nonfiction guidance instead. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones 2018 / James Clear / Avery-Penguin Random House · 20 Million + copies sold · 134,301 Amazon reviews · #1 NYT Bestseller · Go Bleep Your Self-Help is the humorous, self-aware, anti-venom to books similar to this one, which promote positivity, discipline, habit creation, motivation, laws, self-control and effort. Such books are helpful to a few, but forgettable to most. Toxic Positivity: Keeping It Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy 2024 / Whitney Goodman / Penguin Random House · 346 Amazon and 4,181 Goodreads reviews · Go Bleep Your Self-Help addresses similar topics but utilizes a combination of irreverent, humorous, narrative fiction story-telling and narrative nonfiction guidance instead. Comparable Irreverent Self-Help Books Last 10 Years: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life 2016 / Mark Manson / HarperOne · 10 Million + copies sold · 148,361 Amazon reviews · #1 NYT Bestseller · Go Bleep Your Self-Help addresses similar topics but utilizes a combination of irreverent, humorous, narrative fiction story-telling and narrative nonfiction guidance instead. The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don't Have with People You Don't Like Doing Things You Don't Want to Do 2015 / Sarah Knight / Hatchette Book Group · 3 Million + copies sold · 7,771 Amazon and 38,997 Goodreads reviews · Go Bleep Your Self-Help addresses similar topics but utilizes a combination of irreverent, humorous, narrative fiction story-telling and narrative nonfiction guidance instead. You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life 2013 / Jen Sincero / Hatchette Book Group · 5 Million + copies sold · 46,720 Amazon and 264,401 Goodreads reviews · #1 NYT Bestseller · Go Bleep Your Self-Help addresses similar topics but utilizes a combination of irreverent, humorous, narrative fiction story-telling and narrative nonfiction guidance instead. Unf*ck Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life 2017 / Gary John Bishop / HarperOne · 2 Million + copies sold · 26,508 Amazon and 75,143 Goodreads reviews · #1 NYT Bestseller · Go Bleep Your Self-Help addresses similar topics but utilizes a combination of irreverent, humorous, narrative fiction story-telling and narrative nonfiction guidance instead. Let That Sh*t Go: Find Peace of Mind and Happiness in Your Everyday 2018 / Nina Purewal, Kate Petriw / Harper Collins · 810 Amazon and 2224 Goodreads reviews · Go Bleep Your Self-Help addresses similar topics but utilizes a combination of irreverent, humorous, narrative fiction story-telling and narrative nonfiction guidance instead. #5 THE HOOK- CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT Multiple unaddressed childhood traumas have led the reader to a life of anxiety, depression, addiction, and unhappiness. The reader has tried and failed, over and over again, to address these issues with conventional therapy, pharmaceuticals, and popular self-help. Now, the shadowy doppelganger of the reader, the You character in the book, must embark upon a dubious, risky adventure to find true healing and happiness. #6 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY CONFLICTS Primary Internal Conflict of Main You Character: The main You character has experienced four traumatic events that have dictated his/her life, mental health, and destiny: 1. Age 21: Incarceration and rehabilitation for two years in a penitentiary for heroin use, possession, and intent to distribute. 2. Age 19: Joined the US Army and then quickly kicked out for mental health issues, followed by a year of heroin abuse. 3. Age 15: Experienced and survived a school mass shooting where only brother was killed. 4. Age 7: Witnessed a violent fight between parents, which ended with hospitalization from hypothermia. Story-Plot-Narrative Scenario: Each of the above traumatic incidents serves as a triggering mechanism for the main You character throughout the narrative plot. Each of the four secondary characters (Neuroscientist, College Student, Army Nurse, Boat Captain) provides challenges, tension, lessons and resolutions as the You character does the difficult work of revealing, meeting and healing these core wounds. One example: The You character meets Dr. David Vanderhoff, a neuroscientist/artist from Panama City, Florida, who volunteers his time helping incarcerated drug addicts at a nearby jail. He invites the You character and J. Stewart to attend a class. You attend, and the painful years of your own incarceration and addiction are triggered. You reluctantly begin to view these past experiences in a new light. Secondary Internal Conflict of Main You Character: 1. Inner turmoil, doubt, and trust issues with the author-guide character J. Stewart Dixon. 2. Conflict with his language, methodology, values, approach, and style. 3. Conflict with sketchy and dangerous situations he places you in. 4. Conflict with his mission: to get you to meet your deepest fears. Story-Plot-Narrative Scenario: J. Stewart Dixon, the iconoclastic, irreverent, wise, author-guide character in Go Bleep Your Self Help, is a hard pill for the main You character to swallow. J. Stewart serves as a mentor, best friend, Zen master, and drill sergeant- all rolled into one. He is an unrepentant master of the art of tough love. The You character resists, confronts, challenges, and bemoans J. Stewart every step of the way…until the end of course, when you have the epiphany that everything this wild, Zen-clown just put you through was for your ultimate healing and benefit. One example: J. Stewart introduces you to Seo-Yeon Lee, a Korean-American ex-army nurse who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She provides arduous, two-day, emotional-psychological reset treks for burned-out medical professionals to the top of nearby Ha Ling Mountain. You reluctantly join J. on one such expedition, which turns out to be more dangerous than anticipated. The experience pisses you off and triggers a deflating and humiliating experience you had while in the army. You live through it, are challenged to reflect deeply, and ultimately, are grateful. #7 LOCATION SETTINGS Go Bleep Your Self Help has four major parts with four primary location settings. They are as follows: Part One: The Neuroscientist and the Edge of the Known Universe Panama City, Florida: · Beach home of Dr. David Vanderhoff, a neuroscientist/artist/documentary film-maker Tallassee, Florida: Dr. Vanderhoff’s work locations: · The Tallahassee Federal Detention Center · Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare Hospital, Department of Neuroscience · The Challenger Learning Center (NASA) and IMAX Theater The two central Florida locations symbolize the two-sided paradox at the heart of Go Bleep Your Self Help. On the one hand, the work locations of Dr. Vanderhoff in Tallahassee, Florida, serve as hard neuroscientific evidence for the book’s main thesis – that an immense, positive reservoir of mental health healing is available through mindfulness, meditation, self-awareness, and knowing thyself. On the other hand, Dr. Vanderhoff’s beautiful, artsy beachfront home in Panama City symbolizes the inherent beauty and mystery contained within mindfulness, meditation, self-awareness, and knowing thyself. These locations set the tone for the rest of the adventure. Part Two: The Iconoclast and The Flight of the New Shephard The University of Texas- Austin: • Home of Marseille (Mars) David a highly intelligent, lonely, slightly depressed, and strangely lucky student who refuses to pay or register for class. The Guadalupe Mountains, West Texas: • Home of Blue Origin Space Flights, Launch Site One and the Astronaut Village The two Texas locations support the same inherent paradox found in mindfulness, meditation, self-awareness, and knowing thyself. The University of Austin represents conventional learning, dry academic training, and heartless healing (talk therapy, pharmaceuticals, and traditional self-help). The Blue Origin Space Flight Center in the Guadalupe Mountains (on which Marseille has won a free flight for two) represents the synchronistic good fortune of thinking outside the box and embracing life authentically in the moment. Part Three: The Nurse and the Expedition to the Top of Ha Ling Mountain Calgary, Alberta, Canada: · Home of Seo-Yeon Lee, a Korean-American ex-army nurse. · Location of The Canadian Mindfulness Research Center Ha Ling Mountain Peak- One hour outside of Calgary · Hiking expedition destination where a snowstorm engulfs all involved and creates a setting ripe for tension, challenge, and learning. The Calgary, Canada locations serve as a caldron for the main character's internal conflicts. The Canadian Mindfulness Research Center is a softball arena where the main character is prepped for the challenge to come. The Ha Ling Mountain Peak is the heart of the challenge. Things go very wrong, and hard lessons are learned. Part Four: The Captain and the Calamity at Orcas Island Seattle, Washington: · Home of Sail Boat, Tour Captain, Issac Hjelmsgaard · Bell Harbor Marina on the Puget Sound, his workplace location Orca Island, Straight of Georgia- Four hours from Seattle · Sailboat destination where a storm capsizes the boat and all struggle to survive The Seattle, Washington, locations serve as the final heated caldron for the deepest, darkest internal conflict of the main You character. The captain’s rough and grimy workplace serves as an unconventional location where the main You character is confronted with the most brutal truths about mindful, self-aware, and know thyself healing. The Orcas Island location is a "Jonah and the Whale" final test for the You character, where the deepest core wound is met and healed.

I have always heard Tough Guys Don’t Dance (both the 1984 novel by Norman Mailer and the 1987 film adaptation of the same name, screenwritten and directed by Mailer) described as a “noir,” which leads me to call into question NOT the designation of either of those works as noir, but what it means for something to be a “noir” in the first place. Of all the genre designations that exist, “noir,” might be the one that feels the least definite or circumscribed in terms of content; existing instead as a cohesive aesthetic, or really a as collection of vibes. The great film historian James Narremore suggested that the definition of noir lies at the nexus of two theorizations: Jean-Paul Sartre’s theory of “literary authenticity” as cultivated through the exploration of “extreme situations” and Graham Greene’s theory that mainstream audiences craved stories about violence and sex, what he nicknamed “blood melodrama.” “They blur,” says Narremore “the distinction between formulaic entertainment and art films,” just as much as they blur all other criteria—“except for a degree of thematic or tonal darkness, nothing, not even crime, is shared by everything that has been called film noir.” Both iterations of Tough Guys Don’t Dance feature many elements on what we might call the film noir bingo card: we have a melancholy outsider-detective, corrupt police officers, conspiratorial forces, hard alcohol, easy women, flashbacks, voiceovers, performative masculinity, and several different iterations on the spectrum of the “femme fatale.” Both tell the story of an alcoholic ex-convict-turned writer, Tim Madden, who is reeling via a series of alcohol-fueled blackouts after the sudden departure of his wife, when he discovers a series of horrific clues, including the severed head of a blonde woman in his marijuana stash, that all point to his involvement in a ghastly crime he can’t remember. Tim becomes, then, a reluctant and queasy amateur detective, embarking on a search through the town and townsfolk around him, but also into his memories: significant experiences of his throughout his whole life and the blacked-out short term details of the recent past. But I argue that Tough Guys, both of them, push back against the designations of noir in such a way that interrogates the fabric of that genre, not in an aesthetic sense, but in a historical one. With associated writers like Dashiell Hammet, James M. Cain, Mickey Spillane, Eric Ambler, David Goodis, and even the British-born but LA-transplanted Raymond Chandler, “noir” is often considered to be an American genre. But it has its roots in Europe. Film noir originated as an outgrowth of both the post-World War I German expressionist movement and work of the American cohort of writers creating the hard-boiled crime genre. But only French critics could see the new movement as an art form of itself, however nebulous its boundaries were. Film Noir, after all, is a French name; and it was named such in a collaboration between the French existentialists and the French surrealists. Film Noir is about darkness, or the potential for darkness, in everyday life being taken to almost absurd degrees—lows heretofore believed unfathomable by those involved in the events at hand. But the other thing that German expressionism produced was the modern horror movie. This is a film tradition which is responsible for masterpieces like Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and F.W. Murnua’s Nosferatu, a film which Siegfried Kracauer claimed could “obliterat[e] the boundaries between the real and the unreal.” Kracuaer’s reading of German Expressionism argues that the anguish wrought by the first world war left Germany broken and waiting for a master, one which would come in the figure of Hitler, and that this dynamic is uniquely revealed in the films of this period. German expressionist films are nightmares, lavishly-decorated and elaborate disasters, about the weaknesses and dangers of both the human mind, and the human body as it serves the mind. While German expressionism did lead to proto-detective films like Fritz Lang’s M, which further inspired American film noir, it also led, more directly, to the development of the “horror” genre, plain and simple. Many horror films take the shape of detective films—especially when there is the encroachment of a supernatural force that needs circumscription and identification. The Exorcist and The Omen combine these aspects, for example. But generally speaking, detective films (even film noir detective films) and horror films are regarded as different things. But despite that the book and the film versions of Tough Guys Don’t Dance are quite different from another, they both share a secret investment in restoring the bond between the detective and horror genres, redefining “noir” and its expectations. And it does this by bringing a very European sense of noir back to a fundamentally American context. Tough Guys is set in Provincetown, Mass. Provincetown was Mailer’s beloved second home, but for the purposes of this discussion I want to underscore that Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, is also the locus for the tip of the American colonization of America. Both book and film are explorations of that particular place—not only laterally, spatially, but historically. In the book, Mailer not only provides long histories of the people of Provincetown, and the earlier Hell-town (the ghosts of which place make up the semi-transparent background of this novel, a kind of theatrical scrim), but a geologic history of the place as well. Provincetown represents in both of these versions, the accretion, the long and slow build-up of horrors. All of these layers and ghosts and former iterations are superimposed onto one another, creating a gluey mass, a sort of ephemeral and yet perpetual and overwhelming half-life shared by everyone. The real mystery at the heart of Tough Guys is a metaphysical one. American noirs are typically preoccupied with American bureaucratic architecture and encroachment. But in its doubling-down on “Americanness” of its setting, Mailer ends up producing a noir which is more reminiscent of its European ancestors, rather like the Pilgrims who arrived to Provincetown to sign the Mayflower Contract. Tim’s Provincetown is the nightmare world of Caligari or Nosferatu, or even some of the later practitioners of an expressionistic or macabre-surrealist tradition, like Lynch or Herzog or even Dario Argento. He finds a human head in his marijuana stash—that isn’t the setup for a traditional murder mystery, that’s the setup for a horror story. And this is the reading that Tough Guys Don’t Dance performs on its adopted genre! Noir is a genre that asks about the existential impact of horror encroaching on everyday life. The “murder mystery” is what happens when someone attempts to circumscribe, rationalize, “solve” events that might otherwise be horror; but noir is what results from this process when the circumstances involved are so dark, so alienating, and so terrifying that even solving the mystery will not provide sufficient catharsis. The matter at the center of Tough Guys Don’t Dance more than simply a mystery of, or investigation into, what someone did. It’s a “lost night” or “lost time” story. It is This is one man’s mystery of, and his own investigation into, what HE might have been capable of doing. It is a story about the wilds of the unconscious mind. As in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, where the villain Cesare is a tortured sleepwalker who attacks women at night, Tough Guys Don’t Dance is a about the second, sleeper self—the other side o the mind that takes over the body after the familiar side goes to sleep. It is about, say, the night half of the self, versus the light half. Thus, the terrain Tim examines in his investigation is not only the literal one around him, but also that of his tortured mind. In Mailer’s novel, he describes the setting in terms of its macro and micropaleontology: acknowledging the invisible mineral deposits and fossils buried in the strata of the coast, describing the sculpting of the face of the land by glaciers of earlier epochs. In Tough Guys Don’t Dance, an identity is not ever totally knowable in its wholeness; it is only trackable in small doses by layers, imprints, ghosts, clues, evidence of a past which has ostensibly constructed a wholeness. Tough Guys is about finding traces of answers, only being able to trace a sense of the self. Place and person, Provincetown and Tim are one, in Tough Guys Don’t Dance. And Tim is the embodiment of the mind-body problem, the ultimate paradox of life. His search for a murderer, and the fear that he is only looking for himself, dovetails with the novel’s presentation of the ultimate nightmare of living—which is being forced to exist among forces and within a place that can offer no concrete answers, and inside a mind that cannot offer any answers or accountability for itself. In this way, Tough Guys Don’t Dance traces a relationship between noir as it is traditionally understood, horror, and mystery, as genres that portray, in gradations, the ultimate unknowability of the anything, and just how viscerally terrifying that is. View the full article

When I arrived in the city of Perm in the Ural region in 1994, I went to live in a students’ hostel. It was certainly not for the first time in my life. I had lived in undergraduate rooms at the University of Bologna, where the main activities were staying up all night, smoking and organizing the next meeting of the student collective, and in Oxbridge colleges, where political discussions took place in colleges across high table seats reserved for graduate students. In the dormitory in Perm, no one talked about politics and no one seemed to spend any time sweating over books. It was a typical Soviet-style building, not far from the station: a flat-fronted white block with ten floors and a canteen near the entrance. I was one of the very few guests on my floor, even though there were a great many comings and goings of all kinds of people, some in suits, some in sports outfits, some in jeans and leather jackets. When I peeked behind the doors of the other rooms, I saw piles of goods. The student residence seemed to be a microcosm of what the country had become: a large warehouse in the post-Soviet bazaar. Everything was for sale, everyone was doing something other than their official role, everything was biznes. Those who were supposed to live on the same floor as me simply sublet their rooms to what appeared to be a well-organized gang. After a few days I got to speak to the boss, who went by the English name of George. He was curious to meet me. He must have been in his twenties and had bristly hair, a face marked by untreated acne, and an outward bullish demeanour. Once I got to know him, he turned out to be an intelligent lad and a hard worker of humble origins. He invited me to his ‘office’ at the other end of the corridor. The scene left me stunned. On a wooden table was a calculator and several notebooks with beautifully handwritten numbers and names, while the rest of the space was occupied by dozens of boxes, the kind used for reams of paper. But there was no photo-copier: those boxes were full of money, mostly in foreign denominations. The gang was doing pretty well, I thought, even though I did not see much security. I soon realized I wasn’t looking at the profits of a Russian mini drug cartel or prostitution racket. George and his friends traded in money, ran a rudimentary commodity exchange, and engaged in the occasional money-lending operation. At that time inflation was around 15 per cent per month. This was 1994, the year of Black Tuesday, when the value of the US dollar went from 3,081 to 3,926 roubles on 11 October: in a matter of hours some became very rich, while many were left very poor. In a few years Russians came face to face with the concepts of ‘purchasing power’ and ‘hyperinflation’. Both became a very real part of everyday life. In 1992 the young economists hired by Yeltsin to dismantle the Soviet economic system decided to liberalize prices, and the savings of Russian families immediately vaporized, generating a demand for stable currency. George coordinated a complex network of people who had currency (especially dollars and German marks) and were looking for clients. The money often came from the banking system: corrupt officials passed on to George dollars at bargain prices, for a small fee under the table. At one time a company that sold timber on the international market urgently needed to convert $45,000 into roubles, to pay suppliers. George spent several nights on the phone to raise the funds. On other occasions the currency was provided by foreigners who were passing through and by people returning from abroad. Still others shuttled between Perm and Moscow, where they bought dollars and sold them back to George. George had to make sure that he was paid in a timely fashion, so he wouldn’t hold on to the roubles for too long. All transactions took place in cash and were based on trust; no official contract was signed. When the news spread that an ‘English’ student had arrived, for a moment I became the centre of attention. The quid pro quo was simple: they would tell me how the nascent Russian capitalism worked, and I would give them my British pounds. In any case, George offered much better rates than the bank around the corner, which went bankrupt two months after my arrival. ‘My word is gold’, mused George, a line I imagined he’d heard on some television series or read in a Capitalism for Dummies book. I could at last observe with my own eyes the mythical (to me) ‘informal economy’. It was difficult to tell whether these trades were illegal. Legislation was constantly changing, and the boundary between what was lawful and what was not seemed to have disappeared. At the same time, those who had nothing could become very rich, the old constraints had disappeared, and the relationship between efforts and results had evaporated. George’s commerce was profitable largely because it took place in the shadow of a parasitic state, which allowed the young people’s gang in my student hall to exist. Yet something was missing. How could George be certain that he was being paid on time? Was the word of his clients enough? And who made sure that George wasn’t robbed? As the weeks went by, I noticed some changes. At first, the rooms’ doors were refitted with reinforced iron locks. Then armed guards began stationing in the corridors. One night there was a fight outside my room. In the meantime I had started to date a young Russian woman who was spending many nights with me. I had the feeling that it would have been better, for the safety of both, to move out and find another place; so we went to live in an apartment owned by friends. As time went by, I heard that two ‘mafias’ had taken an interest in George’s biznes. One was made up of former KGB officials and veterans of the war in Afghanistan, the other by former prisoners freshly released, who followed the traditional rules of the criminal world. I was not witnessing the spontaneous emergence of a peaceful extra-legal order free from the traps of the Soviet Union, a self-regulating free market where the best business ideas would inevitably succeed. Success was a function of access to violence, which was everywhere. Western newspapers ran headlines such as ‘The Wild East’, and Moscow was compared to 1920s’ Chicago. Trust is a great thing, but unfortunately it was in short supply. George was about to get into serious trouble. I would learn about his fate only at the end of my research trip. The question I ask in this book is simple: has Russia ever emerged from the political and economic quandaries of the 1990s? Has there ever been a fair guarantor of people’s rights since I met George in a student hostel in provincial Russia in 1994? This is a big question. By finding an answer, we can say something important about the relationship between the rule of law and democracy, with Russia as a fitting case study. The rule of law is predicated on two principles: predictability and equality. Laws should be codified and applied equally to all people in the same situation (or at least a political system based on the rule of law must do its best to approximate this ideal). Democracy is ultimately a system of rules that strives to represent and protect all people, equally. If a class of citizens are routinely not protected, or if a person who is protected today can become the victim of the system tomorrow, then we have lawlessness and we live in a world governed by unpredictable diktats. As noted by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, ‘there is a conceptual relation – and not simply an historically accidental relation – between law and democracy’. Surely Russia has changed dramatically since the 1990s, and crime has declined; but has it ever been able to provide equality and predictability, hence has it ever embarked on the road to democracy? There are several ways of venturing an answer. I decided to tackle the question by following the lives and tribulations of four characters who exemplify different moments along this trajectory. Vyacheslav Ivan’kov (chapter 1) began his criminal career in the latter part of the Khrushchev Thaw (1960s), when most of his peers spent their lives behind bars. In prison they developed a secret jargon and an initiation ritual, and their bodies were covered in tattoos. The sect to which they belonged was known as ‘thieves in law’, an expression that refers to professional criminals who follow a code of honour (‘the law’). Ivan’kov would become the most feared and the best known representative of this fraternity. His move to New York in 1992 ensured that his fame became global (he featured on the cover of Time magazine). Ivan’kov’s main activities were settling disputes among entrepreneurs who could not turn to the state, retrieving stolen goods, and dispensing a very peculiar form of justice. Gorbachev’s reforms in the 1980s had failed to equip the market economy with provisions that allow for fair exchanges to take place. A figure like Ivan’kov is what was missing from George’s business model back in Perm: a protector who ensured that nobody got robbed. During the 1990s, many observers believed that Yeltsin was going to inject a degree of certainty and fairness into society, the state acting as an honest broker with the interest of the people at heart. Then democracy and the market would finally arrive in Russia, the argument went. Yeltsin made things worse. Privatization was for him a means of taking away resources from the ‘red’ managers and giving them to a trusted group of entrepreneurs and political supporters. He had no interest in creating an independent judiciary. Political opponents were persecuted; this process culminated in the bombing of the freely elected parliament in 1993, the adoption of an authoritarian constitution in 1994, and the Second Chechen War in 1999. A crucial ally of Yeltsin in those years was an unscrupulous entrepreneur, the most emblematic one of his generation: Boris Berezovsky (chapter 2), who began his career with a joint venture with an Italian company. Berezovsky, before he committed suicide in 2013 in a villa in the English countryside not far from where I live today, made his fortune through scams and lies. He was no different from George’s customers back in Perm, who promised to pay and instead ran away with the money, using raw violence in the process. The supreme organ of the state, the president, instead of punishing Berezovsky, rewarded him with privileged access to the privatization of assets. The lesson was clear for all to see: every form of illegality is allowed, as long as you pay back those in power. I met him briefly in the extravagantly furnished club he had created in Moscow, the Logovaz House, where scantily clad women mingled with elderly statesmen and businesspeople. Parties started late in the evening, so it was best to get invited for a meeting after 8 p.m. Berezovsky was instrumental in ensuring Putin’s election to the presidency in 2000, on the back of a criminal war against Chechnya (an integral part of the Russian Federation) that had been fuelled by a series of horrific terrorist attacks against ordinary Russians in 1999. Many suspect that those bombings were engineered by the very authorities supposed to protect the people. In any case, Putin won the elections and continued his predecessor’s project of crashing the democracy and ensuring that his allies controlled the economy. After he liquidated most Yeltsin-era entrepreneurs and opposition politicians, Putin began to turn on the criminal underworld. Starting in 2014, dissidents and lawbreakers who did not comply with the diktats of the prison administration were raped and tortured with impunity. We know these facts thanks to Sergei Savel’ev (chapter 3): arrested for drug dealing, Sergei was a computer expert assigned to the Saratov Prison Infirmary, where he managed the workstations of a dozen facilities. He was then given the task of downloading the torture videos and distributing them to a few trusted officials. Faced with the horror of the images he saw, he decided to copy them and, once released, he smuggled the footage into the West. The videos were published on the website of a Franco-Russian NGO in November 2021. Sergei was able to prove that the state had condoned and indeed encouraged the mass rape of convicts. I spoke to him extensively in 2021, and again in March 2022. In the meantime Russia has become a cybercrime paradise, alongside countries such as Brazil, Nigeria, and Vietnam. The story of Nikita Kuzmin (chapter 4) shows how the Putin regime has clay feet: it must come to terms with a criminality that it does not control. Nikita Kuzmin, the inventor of the world’s most powerful computer virus, Gozi, is an emblematic personality in this secretive world. He is the adopted son of a well-known singer and was briefly jailed in the US for his crimes and retained the same lawyer as Donald Trump’s son. Russian hackers such as Nikita operate in relative autonomy, but must follow rules: they cannot attack targets within the Russian Federation and, when asked, must assist the state in its cyberwar against the West. This is why they are allowed to operate with impunity. In the Conclusions I link the micro stories with the macro picture of the post-Soviet period. The four stories told in this book teach us that the golden age of post-Soviet democracy and rule of law was very short, if it ever really existed. Indeed, a saying I often heard in the late 1980s in the Soviet Union was ‘strike the iron while Gorbachev is here’ – a variant of ‘strike the iron while it is hot’: in other words, take advantage of freedom of speech and economic liberty before Gorbachev is removed. The end of Russia’s freedom happened much sooner than most people think. The state was never a fair enforcer of contracts. If anything, this job was done by the likes of Ivan’kov in the informal economy. The choice for the many Georges that sprung up in the 1990s was to seek either mafia protection or political protection. The criminal war in Ukraine is a direct consequence of the fear of democracy among the political elite. The West was not an innocent bystander: it trusted Yeltsin and his circle of unscrupulous men and women, allowing them to hide their money in western banks without realizing that Yeltsin was the prelude to Putin. Now we all suffer the consequences. Towards the end of my stay in Perm I was told that, within a year, George lost everything and fell victim to a loan shark, who tortured him and chained him to a radiator for a month. He never recovered from the experience and is now cared for by his elderly parents. That nice and daring boy, whom I met in a student hostel when we were both young, is gone. He is just another victim of a god that failed. ___________________________________ Excerpted from Russia in Four Criminals, by Federico Varese. Copyright, 2024. Published by Polity Press. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. View the full article

When I tell folks I have two degrees in sport management and an adult thriller coming out soon, I know the question I’m going to get before it’s even posed: How do those go together? During the summer of 2021, my two lifelong loves met up in Casper, Wyoming. I was 21 and had never lived anywhere outside of Washington (the state, not DC). I set off in my Honda Fit and drove 1,100 miles east to the heart of Big Sky Country, all in pursuit of (what I thought) was my dream job: a baseball play-by-play broadcaster. Why Wyoming? Well, it was the only place that offered me a job. One of the teams I interviewed with said they liked my demo tape, but I was too much of a risk to hire because I might fraternize with their male players (*stares in lesbian*). The front office in Casper, led by women, decided the “risk” was worth it. It’s rare to hear a woman sports broadcaster, and even rarer to see women in positions of real leadership in sports. I chose Wyoming, but in so many ways, Wyoming chose me. Those who have worked in the sports industry know that the “and other duties as assigned” part of your job description means you will be doing anything and everything that needs doing. Even though I spent most of my time in Casper in the press box, I also spent time in the concessions stand, selling Gatorade and ice cream sandwiches during the youth baseball games. In between my saleswoman duties and running up and down the concrete walkway, using a bug zapper to kill every fly in sight (see: other duties as assigned), I was writing the earliest drafts of the book that would change my life. I’ve always been fascinated by small towns, especially those that exist in the middle of nowhere—very much like Wonderland, Wyoming, the setting of my debut novel, Long Time Gone. How many first-grade classes did they have? How many grocery store trips did they make in a week? How long did it take the volunteer firefighters to arrive? Compared to most of the towns in Wyoming, Casper is a metropolis––they have a population of over 50,000! And they have a Target! Wyoming is the only state in the country without a city with a population of over 100,000. It only has one university. Wyoming was the first state to allow women the right to vote, because the then-territory needed more people to live there to become a state. I’ve never seen a bluer sky than on the outskirts of Casper; it was in the same spot that I experienced the blackest, darkest night. And there is so much space. Big Sky Country is named because of the seemingly endless view of the sky, thanks to much of the area’s flat terrain. You might be flying down the highway at the 80-MPH speed limit, but it often feels like you’re standing still. It didn’t take my author brain soon to wonder: what goes on out here? Though you could never pay me to live in Wyoming again, I have the culture shock largely to thank for the setting of Long Time Gone. Many of the reactions that Quinn, my main character, has in the story are based very much on my own. When done properly, the setting of a story can become its own character. While there is much to be said about Wyoming, no one would say it’s a place lacking in character. Long Time Gone is my ninth novel, but the first to be published. My first novel was what I later realized to be fanfiction of Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls series––I noticed the similarities at the time and said, “What if they were witches and spies?” and this became the basis of my second novel, a YA paranormal romance. I wrote a few YA contemporaries, and a couple of YA mysteries; but I never stopped writing. It’s been the one constant throughout my life, even as friends have left, hobbies have lost my interest, dorm rooms have been moved in and out (and then back, again) into. That said, it was not easy constantly getting rejected over the years: first by agents, then by publishers and editors. Every book that didn’t sell felt like a failure. About a month before Long Time Gone sold, I was convinced that the project was dead. No one was interested in my lesbian, crime-solving cowgirls out in Wyoming, and I needed to move on, or maybe just give up entirely. And then, on a Wednesday afternoon while I was waiting for a University Parking Appeals meeting to start, a notification popped up—my agent had emailed, and the subject line read: we have an offer! Even more frequently than I’m asked How do sports and writing go together? I’m asked Oh, you’re not working in sports? You’re not broadcasting? It’s true, I’m not doing either of those things right now. I work part time at my local public library in youth services. I substitute teach—not to brag, but the kids call me Miss Slay. I’m the PA announcer for women’s soccer and volleyball at the University of Idaho. I grade essays and quizzes for a class I used to teach. I love my routine and my jobs and the impact I make, but a lot of people look at all that and the place I live and think: failure. Other peoples’ perception of failure has always weighed heavily on me. I didn’t make it to the big leagues of broadcasting: failure. I didn’t want to be a full-time broadcaster: failure. I don’t want to work in sports anymore (that’s a whole other essay): failure. But without that summer in Wyoming, Long Time Gone wouldn’t exist. Without broadcasting, I wouldn’t have been in Wyoming in the first place. I guess you could say that Long Time Gone is an amalgamation of all my failures—honestly, I can’t wait to see what I fail at next. *** View the full article

Unlike English native-speakers, I didn’t really encounter gothic novels in the first twenty-or-so years of my life. I grew up in the French-speaking part Switzerland, and my modern and medieval literature studies focused on French authors and their preoccupations. Therefore hearing the concept of ‘gothic’ as a formative genre for the English psyche didn’t really mean much to me… or so I thought. I moved to the UK in 2008 and started voraciously absorbing books and TV programmes and visiting stately homes during weekends, until I realised I had somehow internalised gothic tropes; dark castles, ominous clouds, supernatural and madness seemed suddenly part of my artistic subconscious. When it came to writing my second novel, I found myself setting the action in D’Arvor, a made-up mysterious and awe-inspiring medieval castle, and delving deep into a world of artefacts, deception and manipulation. I didn’t set the story in the UK, however, but in Brittany, the North-Western tip of France of famously jagged and awe-inspiring landscapes. Once I had the setting, I started weaving in a gothic undertone, almost subconsciously, and Arthurian legends quickly emerged as a strong theme in the novel. I soon realised that those stories of knights and forests, castles and madness I had studied at University carried proto-gothic themes all along, and the overlap became more and more obvious as I worked. Arthurian legends are rife in Brittany, home of the Brocéliande forest, where tourists can visit places such as Merlin’s tomb and the Val-Sans-Retour, a breath-taking valley where Morgane trapped unfaithful lovers (you can still see their (alleged) bodies of stone). During a research trip in summer 2023 I visited all those places and considered how much the Arthurian legends stemmed from the atmosphere of the landscapes, and how much these stories were, in return, feeding the gothic atmosphere of my novel. Having intended, originally, to set the story by the sea, it became obvious that Brocéliande was its natural place, and its rich motifs would help build an atmosphere of superstition and madness. But what are some these motifs and how do they relate to what is now commonly accepted as gothic tropes? 1. Castles Set in medieval society, Arthurian stories quite naturally feature many castles. Tintagel in Cornwall, and its stunning ruins looking over a jagged coastline and Merlin’s cave, claims to be the place Arthur was conceived; the castle of Comper, in Brocéliande, allegedly hides Vivian’s crystal palace at the bottom of its lake. The fact that those places are now atmospheric ruins, adds to the feeling of awe that takes grip when exploring a place haunted by history and legend. Some castles in Arthurian matter are also imbued with supernatural and danger, such as she Castle of Worst Adventure, in which Yvain fights two demons to free three-hundred maidens, or the Chateau des Reines, where Gawain meets his dead mother and manages to survive a night being attacked by arrows in an enchanted bed. Castles in gothic novels are also rife with supernatural and can act as liminal places between the living and the dead; Dracula’s castle is one example, as is Manderley, famously haunted by the former presence of Rebecca. The weight of legend and history, the secret passages and shadowy corners make castles the perfect backdrop to play with some of the themes; D’Arvor, the castle at the centre of The Estate, has its own lake, and its own haunting secrets too. 2. Madness Medieval writers did not shy away from describing madness: Lancelot suffers a bout of insanity when Guinevere finds out that Elaine tricked him into sleeping with her; Yvain becomes a madman rambling in the woods when failing to get back to his wife after the agreed period of a year. Madness reveals a character to be, sometimes momentarily, acting out of societal norms. These ‘mad’ Arthurian knights have all failed in meeting their lady’s expectations as courtly knights. Lewis’sThe Monk takes this a step further and madness turns into lust and obsession, with shocking consequences. Another aspect of madness in the gothic stems from a blurred boundary between the natural and the supernatural: what of what I’m seeing is real, and what is only in my head? The protagonist of my novel The Estate feels like she is tipping slowly into madness, as she starts questioning her own judgement of who she can trust, and what to believe. Following her own integrity against the flow will threaten to have her presented as ‘unstable’, just like some gothic heroines were. 3. Romance Earlier French novels were called ‘romances’, and as they depicted the adventures of knights and their courtly love, the term started being associated with love stories. Arthurian tales are rife with passion and intrigue, often linked with deception and manipulation. Merlin magically alters Uther’s appearance to enable him to sleep with Ygraine and father Arthur, for example, and Lancelot cheats on Guinevere because of a similar deception. In this world, remaining pure of heart and deed is indeed challenging. Such are the dilemmas of Ann Radcliffe’s heroines, engaged in their own battle between good and evil, and fighting to be with their loved ones. Another motif emerges: that of the rich, mysterious, brooding and possibly hero, whom Jane Eyre or the anonymous heroine of Rebecca will find themselves falling for. The heroine of The Estate, Camille Leray, will find herself similarly drawn into lust and obsession for the owner of D’Arvor. It seems obvious that Arthurian legends and gothic novels share an interest for similar themes: the porous division between natural and supernatural, liminal places, madness and romance. All of these themes reveal some overlap between the preoccupations of the medieval and Victorian psyches. I wonder what the revival of gothic fiction in our era says about our own sense of unease and thirst for fantasy and danger. I guess you’ll have to read The Estate if you’re interested in my take on the subject. *** View the full article

I was 15 in 1975 when the man then only known as the Yorkshire Ripper committed his first murder, and 21 when he was caught – in Sheffield, about a mile from where I was living – by a probationer PC checking a fake car number plate. I remember the fear taking a while to build, but the year I left university the Ripper killed his thirteenth female victim, Jacqueline Hill, a 20-year-old student. By then every Yorkshirewoman I knew thought twice before leaving home after dark. I was a feminist, I wasn’t going to let someone I’d never met put me under curfew, so I carried on walking home alone late at night, hypervigilant, suspicious of every man I passed. Police were prosecuting women carrying knives to defend themselves, so I used to take a frozen chicken in a carrier bag, hoping a well-aimed blow would buy me a few seconds to run away. Each time I came home I popped that chicken back in the freezer so it would be nice and hard the next time I went out. (No, I never ate it.) Remembering how violently I used to practise swinging it in its plastic carrier, what’s clear to me now is the level of anger that coexisted with my fear. Thirty-seven years on, I’ve written a novel revisiting the mix of terror and fury I felt as a young woman. Why? Because I could so easily have been one of Peter Sutcliffe’s victims, and because Sutcliffe was only part of what made the late-70s so oppressive. There was a telephone tip-off line for women—and men—to pass on the names of individuals they suspected of being the killer. One of the problems faced by the investigation was there were so many possible Rippers. As the crime writer and journalist Joan Smith wrote in her book Misogynies, “the police thought they were looking for a needle in a haystack, when in fact they were looking for a wisp of hay.” A whole folk culture sprang up in response to those 13 murders. Graffiti (“Ripper 11: police nil”), urban legends, off-colour jokes. The Yorkshiremen who chanted “There’s only one Yorkshire Ripper” on football terraces were almost proud of the killer in an atavistic, tribal way. Doubtless they were horrified as well, individually, but I’d learned by then that men had two sides. One side you could be friends or lovers with, but put those same men with others in football grounds or bars or on the street and you’d see a more threatening herd masculinity. Feminism is so embedded in western culture now, and we’re so familiar with the phrase toxic masculinity, it’s strange to remember that within my lifetime criticising men’s behaviour was something women did warily—many of us, only in the company of other women. Speaking your mind in front of men was liable to elicit smirking shared glances, murmurs of ‘women’s libber’, ‘bra burner’, ‘lezzie’, and other synonyms for freak. I entered the working world in 1980 and soon found how unwise it was to challenge the patriarchal status quo, even by such innocuous acts of defiance as wearing trousers to the office. So many men felt no need to disguise their view of women as inferior. So many men regarded female colleagues as a sexual perk. Not that our difficulties were confined to the workplace. I remember crossing the road to avoid packs of young men or, when that wasn’t possible, walking past them with my eyes fixed on the pavement. A few years later, trapped in a bad relationship, I had to be just as careful in my own home. I wanted to capture that distinctive decade in a novel, but I didn’t want my characters to be passive, intimidated women living in fear. I’m tired of seeing myself reflected in that mirror—and also tired of reading novels set in the past with gorgeous, unmistakeably 21st century kick-ass heroines. The feisty women around in the 1970s were different. Although What Doesn’t Kill Us is not a roman à clef, when I was writing the Cleopatra Street feminists I borrowed from a group of real women active in the late 70s and early 80s, the Leeds Revolutionary Feminists. They believed the class struggle that really mattered was between men and women: not all men were violent towards women, but all men benefitted from those who were violent, because that kept women down. The most controversial idea they espoused—in a book called Love Your Enemy?—was political lesbianism. Some who put their names to it have since claimed it was written as a provocation, but at the time the book was widely read as saying that having sex with men, or indeed having anything else to do with them, was an unsisterly act. The Feminist Archive North in Leeds holds a collection of oral history interviews with women who lived through the 70s and 80s. Listening to those tapes triggered memories of my own youthful anger, but also revealed a subset of women quite new to me who’d refused to accept the role of the weaker sex, getting stuck into bar-room brawls with aggressive men. I discovered that feminists older and bolder than me had purged their shelves of books written by men, thrown away records by male bands, got rid of their tom cats, even left their husbands and sons, to move into separatist households. These days we celebrate the courage of the suffragettes but tend to be less enthusiastic about second wave feminists. Writing What Doesn’t Kill Us let me put the clichs about dungaree-wearing, hairy-armpitted, joyless harridans back into context. Yes, they boycotted all sorts of feminine markers, skirts, high heels, long hair, make up, perfume, bras. That’s how far they had to go to escape society’s distorting mirror, to get the head space to be who they really were. That doesn’t mean they didn’t have fun. There was a lot of laughter in women’s liberation, savage laughter sometimes, but understandable when you think how long women had spent as the butt of the joke. Protesting with our own bodies is a tradition that goes back to the hunger-striking suffragettes, but plenty of feminists wanted to turn their anger outwards to its proper target. The Reclaim the Night marches, started in the UK in 1977 by the Leeds Revolutionary Feminists, used flaming torches, drumming, singing, wild dancing and ululating to give men a taste of the intimidation women felt on the streets the other 364 nights of the year. A small number of women went further, committing crimes that could have seen them jailed for life had they been caught. For a few years after Peter Sutcliffe’s conviction I’d see the graffiti tag Angry Women on northern English streets, but it wasn’t until I was researching What Doesn’t Kill Us that I learned the history behind the tag. Angry Women were an anonymous group who claimed responsibility for 19 arson attacks on sex shops across Yorkshire in the early 80s. Anecdotally it’s said they also handed-out vigilante beatings to violent men who went unpunished by the courts. It’s this underworld of women Liz Seeley comes across while sporting a black eye, courtesy of her violent boyfriend. Liz is a White police constable, as dominated by men at work as she is at home, a junior member of a squad hunting a serial killer of women. A group of feminist activists offer her a safe haven in their shared house on the wrong side of Leeds. There she meets Charmaine, an art student of biracial heritage whose apparently liberal tutor wants her to make art about being Black, although she is more interested in exploring issues around the murders. As the body count rises, spreading panic across Leeds, detectives draw a distinction between the women who were sex workers and those they call “innocent victims”. Unable to catch the Butcher, they urge women to stay at home after dark unless accompanied by a man. Liz keeps her job secret from her new housemates but, like them, can see parallels between the killer’s targeting of women and the everyday misogny in the city. This puts her in a tricky position when they move on from marching to reclaim the night and spraying graffiti to more violent forms of protest. As a writer, I found it exhilarating to return to those uncompromising years when there was too much at stake to sit on the fence, women had to take a side, and anyone not with us was against us. Some of my favourite noir novels are set in a manichean world where the powerless must choose between breaking the rules and being beaten down by a corrupt system. Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi (first published in 1977 and translated into 21 languages since) is not a conventional crime novel: the “criminal” is the central character, Firdaus, an Egyptian sex worker sentenced to hang for murdering her pimp. Her life is a harrowing sequence of child sex abuse; genital mutilation; a much older, abusive and coercively controlling husband; beatings by another man; a period as a sex slave; and other traumatic encounters as a sex-worker. Retracing this story on the eve of her execution leaves us in no doubt about where the real guilt lies. There is no happy ending for Firdaus, and yet it’s thrilling to witness her defiance. She knows she has to hang because male-dominated society is afraid of her. “My life means their death. My death means their life.” The other novel lurking at the back of my mind when I wrote What Doesn’t Kill Us was Helen Zahavi’s Dirty Weekend, a word-of-mouth hit read by just about every woman I knew when it came out in 1991. The gruesome, acidly funny story of Bella, a sex worker, who decides she has had enough of abusive men and goes on a killing spree drew mixed reviews in the British press. Some of the more vituperative called it “obscene”, “repellent”, “disturbed”, and “more offensive than pornography” but the anger propelling the plot struck a chord with its readers and the book is still in print. The second wave feminists of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s—with Zahavi just scraping into the category in 1991—were pioneers whose willingness to vent their fury helped make possible the easier, more mutually respectful relationships I now enjoy with men. For me, the war is over. But friends’ daughters tell me that, for them, the struggle continues. Female rage books is a category in Goodreads with 2,141 entries. *** View the full article

My partner told me that she’d never seen the film Gaslight. I told her that she definitely had. –Zoe Coombs Marr Eighty years ago, George Cukor’s Gaslight was released. A noir masterpiece, it swept the Oscars and coined a term that’s used far and wide today. You need only check in with the armchair psychologists on TikTok to see the rampant use of the word to describe any kind of dysfunctional relationship, whether husband-wife, parent-child, doctor-patient, candidate-voter. The relationship at the center of Cukor’s Gaslight is between Paula and Gregory, played by Ingrid Berman and Charles Boyer. Paula is a vulnerable young woman who was traumatized as a child by her aunt’s still unsolved murder. While living abroad, she’s swept off her feet by Gregory, who immediately trundles her back to London and into her aunt’s long-vacant townhouse. The honeymoon is barely over before Gregory starts gently reminding her of matters she’s supposedly forgotten or items she’s supposedly misplaced. At first he behaves like a worried but loving husband, but increasingly he hounds and harasses her about her mental state until she no longer trusts her own perception of reality. During the evenings, when Gregory goes out to “work,” Paula notices the gaslight in her room flicker and dim, something that normally happens only when another light in the house is turned on. Because no one else is there to do it, she starts to fear that she’s seeing things. The truth is that Gregory didn’t go out; he’s in the attic, and he turns on the light there to search for the dead aunt’s jewels. A common misapprehension among people who haven’t watched the film recently is that Gregory is deliberately dimming the lights to drive her mad, but, no, it’s simply an unintended but lucky consequence of his time in the attic––lucky because the flickering gaslight is what finally pushes Paula into madness. Spoiler: It was Gregory who murdered the aunt all those years ago. He married Paula in a long game to get his paws on her jewels, but thanks to master detective Joseph Cotton, his scam is exposed and Paula is restored to sanity. It’s testament to the power and reach of the film that the term “gaslight” quickly became part of our lexicon. Defined as emotional abuse aimed at making someone doubt their own grip on reality, the expression is widely used today in psychological analyses, political debates, and of course, crime novels. Gaslighting is at the forefront in my new novel, Shell Games. In a nutshell (see what I did there?), a wealthy woman of a certain age calls the police in hysterics to report that her new husband just confessed to a notorious unsolved crime from decades before––a confession he denies having made, and a crime the FBI quickly says he couldn’t possibly have committed. Did he actually confess to it, and if so, why? If not, why does she think he did? Does she have dementia? Or is he gaslighting her to get control of her fortune? Or is he gaslighting her daughter to get her to believe her mother has dementia? Or is someone else gaslighting the daughter? Who? And about what? And finally, is her mother gaslighting all of them? Shell Games is all about mind games and emotional manipulation. It’s gaslighting on steroids. Consider these other examples of gaslighting in crime fiction, but be forewarned: spoilers abound. The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins. Rachel’s ex-husband Tom was gaslighting her all through their marriage and continuing after their divorce. He encouraged her alcohol abuse, then convinced her that she did things while so drunk she can’t remember doing them. Before I go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson. Christine is an amnesiac as a result of an injury that her husband Ben tells her was caused by an accident. The amnesia makes her entirely dependent on Ben, who tells her everything about who she is and their life together, and because he isolates her from the rest of the world, she’s convinced it’s all true. Turns out he’s the one who caused her injury. The Therapist, by B.A. Paris. Alice and Leo move into a house where a murder once occurred. Strange incidents begin to happen around the house. Items are displaced, and at night Alice feels that someone is watching her. She imagines she’s being haunted, or stalked, and she convinces herself that she can’t trust Leo or any of her new neighbors. Someone is gaslighting Alice, and the mystery is who among the large cast of characters it is. And finally, Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, a novel that may well be as genre-defining as Cukor’s film. Gaslighting is a two-way street inside the toxic marriage of Amy and Nick. Among the many instances: (1) As part of her plan to disappear and frame Nick for her murder, Amy constructs a fictitious diary as a way of controlling everyone’s perceptions of her, so that they see her as a loving wife and innocent victim of an abusive husband. (2) But Nick then gaslights Amy with his public avowals of how much he loves her and longs to get her back, causing Amy to doubt her own perception of their marriage and leading her to absolve Nick of her murder and return home to him. Fair to say that eighty years after Cukor’s film masterpiece, gaslighting as a plot device in crime fiction not only survives––it thrives. *** View the full article