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(EDITOR’S NOTE- In an effort to remove some of the stagnating Wordpress pages on my domain, I am reposting some old content here. This novella originally was posted June 9, 2009. Her Side is not for kids. At all. Learn more here. )

They’d altered what rabbits do naturally because they thought they could do better.
~ Richard Adams, Watership Down

As weeks passed, It amused me that while the “no last name” rule was followed hard and fast, people still speculated, and even pried.

There was a small clique of senators’ daughters who looked down on those they assumed were US House kids. There were some kids who I understood to be sons and daughters of the rich elite, their families not in politics but certainly rich enough to influence our nation’s leaders.

Joseph never asked. He never speculated. And he never gave information about himself. C.V. told me over lunch one day that he was a long-term resident.

“People speculate why he’s here. It’s rumored he tried to kill someone. That he tried to kill himself. That he was a druggie. Someone even told me that he was sent here for a short visit, but then his parents died and so he’s here till he hits eighteen.” She shrugged her small shoulders and took a bite of mystery meat.

“He doesn’t talk much in group,” I said, chewing on my lip.

“Yeah, that sounds about right. You don’t have to talk in group if you don’t want to, even though they do ‘encourage.’” She made air quotes and rolled her eyes. “If you hold back in group, though, they really tear into you during one on one time.”

“Ugh,” I said. “Isn’t it bad enough already?” I checked my watch and sighed. I had a one-on-one session with Mrs. Laws coming up, and I dreaded it.

C.V. patted my shoulder. “You’ll make it through. You’re only a short term. And you’re talking in group, so you’re one they have hope for. Joseph? He’ll stay as silent as he can, get out of here when he’s 18, and probably end up in jail or something.”

I snuck a peek over to him, my thin, black haired Joseph. He sat alone reading a paperback book.

C.V. poked me. “Hey Clara. This isn’t summer camp. Don’t think about getting involved with him. There’s no love in The Hutch. It’ll all end in tears.”

I rubbed my ribs where she’d poked. “Thanks for looking out for me. I gotta go see Laws. Wish me luck.”

“Oh man, she’s a bear. Good luck.” C.V. turned back to her lunch and scowled at it as I got up from the table and headed to my appointment.

#

Mrs. Laws was a tall, plump character with silver hair piled on top of her head. She looked more like a governess than a psychologist. I slumped in the sofa opposite her desk and answered her questions about my life.

“So have you thought of a possible career?” she asked, looking at my folder. “You’re a bright girl, you could have your pick of most schools.”

I snuck a glance at the proud HARVARD diploma on the wall. I guessed Harvard didn’t fall under her umbrella of “most schools.”

I shrugged. “Not really. Just kinda think day to day lately.”

She took off her glasses and leaned forward. “Clara, your teen years are full of potential, confusion, and some consider them the most important time of your life to find yourself. You had some missteps in finding yourself, but I don’t think you’re too far off the path.”

I thought about the path that started with my mother’s suicide and took my father’s small time political life and launched it big. I thought about the feel of the knife on my skin, the relief of the blood coming out, like I was lancing a boil that was my life.

“I can’t think of another path,” I said. “Everything that has happened has seemed like the right thing.”

“Like your mother’s suicide?”

I clenched my jaw.

“Do you want to talk about that?”

I averted my eyes and focused on a plant in her office, a cactus with sharp needles.

She sat, and I sat, for a good five minutes. By then I’d thought of at least thirty-seven things I could do with the cactus as a whole, or the needles individually.

She finally broke the silence. “Clara, I want you to think about your mother’s suicide, and how’s it’s affected you. We don’t have to talk about it now, but we will talk about it.”

“Can I go?” I asked.

She gave me a long, calculating look, and then nodded.

I fled to the courtyard to watch the shadows creep down the brick. I had of course thought about my mother. She killed herself with a knife. It didn’t take Freud to tell me why I’d then taken the knife as my chosen toy.

“Do you like vodka?”

I looked up. Joseph was there, the sun shining over his shoulder, making him seem like a silhouette.

“I don’t drink.”

“Yet,” he said, and sat down next to me. “I heard you met with Laws today.”

I stared at my feet, too tired to ask him how he knew. “Yeah.”

“Let me guess. She talked about paths and made you think. She loves to ask people to think about the path they’ve taken. Does she want you to find yourself?”

I nodded.

“Never changes her tune.” He unstoppered a silver flask and drank from it. He held it out to me. I shook my head.

“So have you looked for yourself?” I asked.

He laughed, a startling sound. “Oh sure. I find that I’m usually at the end of a cigarette butt or at the bottom of a flask. You ever need me, I’ll be there.”

I smiled weakly. “And did you tell that to Laws?”

His face fell slightly, then he grinned again. “Course not. You think she knows I drink in here? No, I have a deal with a friend outside who sends me care packages. They don’t crack down too hard on smoking in here- it’s a pressure valve for most of us. But if they catch you drinking there will be hell to pay. But then again, we all could use a little more hell.”

He held out the flask again. I bit my lip and accepted it. The liquid was unexpectedly warm and harsh, burning as it went down. I coughed and wiped my mouth on my arm, embarrassed. I took another sip, forcing myself to be cooler this time.

“Atta girl,” he said.

He leaned in close to my ear then and I froze. His lips brushed my skin as he spoke, the words hot. “I can help you find yourself. And that path you want. Much easier than Laws’ homework.”

“Really? How?” I asked, willing my voice not to shake. He bit my earring and tugged on it, insistent, a little painful. I liked it.

“It starts with you finishing that flask.”

I tipped it up, draining it.

Find your path.

(EDITOR’S NOTE- In an effort to remove some of the stagnating Wordpress pages on my domain, I am reposting some old content here. This novella originally was posted June 9, 2009. Her Side is not for kids. At all. Learn more here. )

What’s happening back home, I wonder? Think, when we lived in our own burrows?
Dry, soft, warm bodies… Look, we can’t go on like this. It keeps getting worse and worse wherever we go.
Where ARE we going? ~Pipkin, Dandelion, and Silver, Watership Down

You’re only brave if you’re scared first. If you don’t actually overcome anything, then it’s not brave; you’re just a shell charging forward.

If a boy doesn’t like you, then why in the world would you want to be with him?

Mom had been full of these little gems. I’d thought they were bullshit. I’d roll my eyes and she’d just laugh at me, asking me to please be a little less like a stereotypical teen.

Of course, within the confines of The Hutch I had plenty of time to think about her and all her wisdom. She worked for a popular greeting card company and wrote page-a-day calendars as freelance. She studied the Bible, Aesop, and the Tao Te Ching for little nuggets of bullshit. I called them bullshit, saying they were nothing but sound bytes if no one ever did anything with them. So she would challenge me to do something. ‘Course I never did.

I thought about that as I traveled the mine fields of group therapy. We had some fucked up kids in my group. Take Myra, the girl who seemed to be testing her pro-life mother’s stance on abortion. She’d had three by age seventeen. Every morning she was defiant and angry about how it was her choice, goddammit. But she was in the room next to me, and I knew C.V. would sneak vodka in and they would talk and sometimes Myra would cry.

Then there was Pauline who had hypoglycemia and would chow down on sugar to trigger reactions whenever her parents did something she didn’t like. She was on a strict diet in The Hutch, and always had a chaperone with her at meals. ‘Course, I think she had sugary foods smuggled to her at night, but her triggered attacks were met with swift matter of fact attitude within The Hutch. She couldn’t play the pity card, and she hated that.

The other kids were any mixture of drugs, rebellion, and the result of parental discounting. Political careers were so important that the kids were window dressings to a lovely home. Monday’s group leader was Chad, a guy I’m pretty sure Chester Killian would have liked. He had a white button-down shirt and a blond ponytail. His green eyes were muddy and I didn’t trust them at all. A small divot in his ear indicated it had once been pierced, and I bet he was waiting to pull out his wild years stories to bond with us.

“Clara, you’ve been quiet. What’s on your mind?” he asked me on my second Monday at The Hutch. He’d just been giving Myra the advice that maybe she should think about the damage she’s doing herself rather than the effect she’s having on others’ lives. He’d sounded so much like Mom that I’d rolled my eyes.

I sat back in my chair and stared at my hands fiddling with my lace fingerless gloves that so conveniently hid the scars on my arms. “What you don’t get is that we do think about ourselves. We think of what will help.”

He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. Joseph, who sat opposite me in the circle as always, lifted his eyes from my hands to my face. I tried not to blush.

“Help what?” Chad said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Help feel better. Help feel something. When there’s something missing, we do… things to help things feel like they’re not missing. It’s about right now. Not next week.”

Chad nodded slowly. “Very good. You’re saying Myra purposefully gets pregnant and then gets abortions in order to have control over her life.”

I shrugged at Chad. “If you say so.”

Myra glared at me. “And why are YOU here?”

I gritted my teeth and looked down.

Chad looked around the circle. “While Myra was a bit blunt with her comment, she has a point, and you’ve been here a week. This is group therapy, Clara. This is a safe place. Can you talk to us?”

I thought about the cafeteria cliques, the secret vodka parties, the way Joseph had encouraged and praised me when he discovered I’d cut myself using only my fingernail. This place was anything but safe. But adults didn’t want to hear that. They didn’t want the illusion shattered that they could create a safe place for teens. To make kids truly safe, they’d have to lobotomize us and put us in solitary padded rooms.

I sighed. “Sure. I cut myself. Been doing it for years. My father never knew but his political adviser caught me. Freaked. Put me on suicide watch. Brought me here.”

“And do you want to kill yourself, Clara?”

I shut my mouth. The kitchen had been covered in blood. She’d been lying on the kitchen table, the blood pooling under her neck where it had been cut. It had run in a thin line to the edge of the table where it had dripped in slow, coagulating drops.

The fingerprints on the knife, the angle of the cut, the spray of the bright arterial blood, all indicated that it was suicide. Senator Daddy told tearful stories about schizophrenia and medication to the press, and he was the proper widower. His approval rating went up. He won his senate seat the following year. The same year I had developed my interest in knives.

Mom had had one more saying she enjoyed: steel weapons were stronger once they’d been through a fire, she’d say. And in humans, that fire is puberty.

I looked Chad in his muddy eyes and told him truthfully, “No. It’s not about suicide or even hurting myself. It helps to let the blood out.”

Steel is stronger when it goes through fire.

(EDITOR’S NOTE- In an effort to remove some of the stagnating Wordpress pages on my domain, I am reposting some old content here. This novella originally was posted June 9, 2009. Her Side is not for kids. At all. Learn more here. )

Now, among the animals was El-Ahrairah, the Prince of Rabbits. He had many friends and they all ate grass together. But after a time, the rabbits wandered everywhere, multiplying and eating as they went. Then Frith said to El-Ahrairah, “Prince Rabbit, if you cannot control your people, I shall find ways to control them.”
~Narrator, Watership Down

Mom always used to tell me to look on the bright side. So let’s do that.

Room. Check. Bed. Check. Desk. Check.

I had a window overlooking the brick courtyard, and in the afternoon it was kinda pretty. Like a desert can be pretty, but devoid of life.

Oh, wait, that’s negative again.

Positive thoughts. Right. So my things were searched when I got there, but they didn’t take anything away from me. I’m not one of the ones who has her notebook searched, which is a good thing. But they wouldn’t have known the stuff I had in there was dangerous.

I had a schedule handed to me by the guardian of our hall, a young woman who was from England and said things like “SHED-yule” and “or-gan-I-za-shun.” Wake-up was 7am, followed by group yoga and breakfast. Then group therapy. Library time. Lunch. Solo therapy followed, then free time, then dinner. After dinner was another group therapy session. Bedtime curfew was nine o’clock. Apparently I was in a “short term treatment” plan. Some kids went to classes and therapy, I just was to focus on getting “better.”

It had been hard enough to try to make friends in the new DC school, and I found that the girls at The Hutch were all pretty self-contained. The boys cut up more, and I noticed they had more guardians than we did. Girls had one guardian for every ten girls, boys had one for every seven.

A small girl with a blonde bob hiding her left cheek eyed me at breakfast. “You’re new.”

“Yeah.”

“Political refugee?” she asked, spooning tasteless eggs into her mouth.

“Sorry?” I asked.

“Mom or dad in politics? Didn’t want you messing things up for them? Sent you here?”

“Oh!” I said. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

She held out her hand, the nails bitten short. I shook it. “I’ve been here for a year, I get it. I’m C.V. No last name. If you say your last name it’s assumed you are pulling rank. Stories are a president’s son got sent here and tried to use his connections to get what he wanted. That ended… real fast.”

I wondered if she was being deliberately vague or just trying to scare me. “OK. I’m Clara. No last name.”

“Are you a preemptive strike or a carpet bomb?”

I blinked at her. She sighed and blew her bangs out of her eyes. “I mean, did they send you here because they were afraid you were going to fuck up, or did they send you here because you already fucked up?”

I laughed, a short, fake sound. “That’s less personal than my last name?”

She regarded me with wide brown eyes. “Sure it is. In twenty years I can say, ‘You know Jane Smith, Senator John Smith’s daughter – the one running for Senate? – I met her in The Hutch when we were teens.’ OR I could say, ‘When I was a teenager I was in The Hutch with a fucked up girl who cut herself.”

I tried to school my face, but she narrowed her eyes. “Oh. You’re a cutter. I was just throwing out a hypothetical. Lucky guess.”

I didn’t look at her. The eggs had lost their limited appeal for me. “So what do people do around here for free time?”

C.V. resumed eating her eggs. “Nice subject change, but you’ll have to get better than that if you’re trying to do it in therapy. We watch television. Read. There used to be an XBox in the basement, but Peter got mad that we didn’t have Left For Dead and broke the thing. Assholes in DC say violent games make kids violent; it’s more like kids get violent when they play too much Bejeweled.”

She sighed. “Although we have no sports teams, there’s a field out back where there’s sometimes a game of soccer or football.”

Sports. Great. “So we don’t have any rules?”

“Oh there are always rules,” she said, slugging back her orange juice, dribbling some down her chin and wiping it off with her sweatshirt sleeve. “But free time is free time. I’d recommend going for a walk and learning the ropes.”

The bell rang, and we were herded to our morning therapy sessions.

Morning group therapy was surprisingly uneventful. I was introduced but not focused on. A group of eight kids and two counselors talked about self esteem and how others view us and how we view ourselves. I was mostly silent. The other kid who didn’t talk was a tall, dark haired boy. He sat across the circle from me, his brown eyes fixated on me. They’d flick to my arms, then back up at me.

At lunch I avoided C.V. I tried her habit of biting her nails, and discovered I could get my right thumb pretty ragged. I excused myself to the bathroom for some private time before my personal therapy session.

That went well. I relaxed. Talked. The woman looked like Mom.

During free time, I walked outside and decided to explore. The courtyard near my window was empty, but for the black haired boy. He leaned against a wall and sucked on a clove cigarette.

“How did you get cloves in here?”

“How did you get a knife in here?” he asked.

I flushed. “I didn’t.”

“If you’re going to cut, do it where they can see it,” he said. “You won’t make them feel like they’re helping you if you don’t.”

“How do you – I mean, what-” I looked down and sighed. “How did you know?”

He looked at me at last. “I watched you at lunch. And there’s blood on your shirt.”

He reached out with his hand, the cigarette coming close to my stomach, as he grabbed my shirt and lifted it a couple of inches to reveal the jagged cut. I held my breath, excitement clogging my throat as the heat from the cigarette got closer.

“Innovative. I’m Joseph,” he said.

“Clara,” I said.

“Want a smoke?”

There are several points where I look back and think, “There was a turning point.” But the biggest turning point was the moment that Joseph held his cigarette close to my bleeding stomach. The heat, the lingering stinging, his beautiful brown eyes studying me like I was a bug on a microscope slide.
That began my slide.

And I went in feet first, eyes closed, ready for anything.

Feet first. Eyes closed.

(EDITOR’S NOTE- In an effort to remove some of the stagnating Wordpress pages on my domain, I am reposting some old content here. This novella originally was posted June 9, 2009. Her Side is not for kids. At all. Learn more here. )

Where are you going?
Away, to the hills.
By yourself, alone? You’ll die!
You’re closer to death than I am.
~Hazel and Fiver, Watership Down

As I stood outside tall iron gate of The Hutchins School for Exceptional Teens, the iron curlicues winked dully at me. They didn’t have a comforting edge; these were dull tips meant for bludgeoning.

I played Dungeons and Dragons when I was younger, before Chester Killian advised Senator Daddy that his religious following wouldn’t approve of even a hint at a demonic action in his daughter. So I quit. I had played a special bard called a Blade- she was perfect with her weapons, so beautiful and graceful. I’d always thought the rules for clerics to not be able to carry edged weapons was bullshit; they could beat people to a pulp with their clubs, but if they broke the skin, their god would be mad. I always thought a crushed skull was much more horrific than a clean stabbing, but no one ever accused me of understanding morals in D&D.

We had many arguments about “good” – I maintained you could have good assassin, if she disposed of evil people. My dungeon master disagreed. I thought idly about those days while we drove up the hill toward The Hutch. The dice, the character sheets, and how I’d felt more real as Lilith Crescendo the Blade than I ever had as Clara the politician’s daughter.

Lilith’s character sheet was in my bag. I had been allowed to grab my personal notebook to take with me to The Hutch. I was allowed very little in the way of personal belongings – if anything had an edge, they wouldn’t let me take it with me. But they let me take my dice, Lilith’s character sheet, and the other secret things in my notebook. I still wonder if Chester went through it when he was packing up my
room. He clearly found all my edges and confiscated them, the prick. I couldn’t even find the tiny Swiss Army knife that hung off my
backpack. But the notebook had personal notes, private thoughts, photos, all sorts of things in it. I kept the first love note I’d ever
gotten, when I was 14, from a boy named John. Full of misspellings and wishes to go behind the bleachers and kiss me. I had other character sheets from D&D, a top 100 list of, to quote Douglas Adams, people would would be first against the wall when the revolution comes, and two pictures of my mother.

Senator Daddy would not have approved of any of these.

Which made me realize that Chester had not peeked. I hugged the bag tighter to me, keeping my secrets, my last bit of comfort, away from
Chester. He was talking, but then,  he was always talking. I realized that now that he was talking about my future, I should probably pay
attention.

“You’ll be there for eight weeks for therapy,” Chester said, his eyes flicking from the road to the rearview mirror, and then back to the
road. “Both personal and group therapy, then treatment, and evaluation. If you have shown progress at the end of the eight weeks
then I will be there to visit and have a meeting with the Headmaster and you, and we’ll determine together whether you’re ready to come
home.”

I’d seen how they’d packed up my room. Even the stuff I wasn’t taking with me was in boxes. I wasn’t coming home and they knew it. The only question was what they were going to do with me if I ever did get out of the Hutch.

I was scared. I’ll say that here, but I never would tell Chester.

“Hey. Clara. This is your life we’re talking about, here. Think you could show a little interest?” he asked, meeting my eyes in the rearview. His were muddy green, a creepy stare that always made me uncomfortable.

“Does it matter? The decisions are already made for me,” I said, looking back out the window.

His voice got the calm, soothing aspect to it that sounded like he was talking to an excitable dog. That’s one thing I hated about him; you couldn’t make Chester angry.

Well. Except for the time he found me. He was pretty angry then. But it was probably because of the mess.

“You are the master of your own life, Clara,” he said in his soothing voice. “You make your own decisions, decide your own path.”

I ground my teeth instead of asking why the hell I was being taken to a boarding school against my will. It was pointless.

“After we make sure you’re… better… we’ll see what choices you have in front of you. I can help you make those choices.”

“Yeah, cause you’ve helped out with so many choices up to now,” I said. I clutched my bag tighter. I thought about Lilith Crescendo. Like a ninja, Lilith had been able to turn anything into a weapon. Once she’d been captured and deprived of everything but a book to read. She’d killed her captor with a piece of paper. (I’d rolled a natural 20 on the attack, else it wouldn’t have worked.) I knew that was impossible in the real world.

But I did know from experience that paper could cut. And I hugged my bag with my notebook to my chest. My anchor to keep me from floating away. My life preserver to keep me from drowning. And my confidant to keep me from going mad.

Funny that I was going to a madhouse.

As I stood outside tall iron gate of The Hutchins School for Exceptional Teens, the iron curlicues winked dully at me. They didn’t have a comforting edge; these were dull tips meant for bludgeoning. But it was OK. I had edges with me.

I was prepared.

Prepared.

(EDITOR’S NOTE- In an effort to remove some of the stagnating Wordpress pages on my domain, I am reposting some old content here. This novella originally was posted June 9, 2009. Her Side is not for kids. At all. Learn more here. )

Hazel, look… the field… it’s covered with blood!
~Fiver, Watership Down

I didn’t know what the big deal was, but Senator Daddy said he’d had enough.

Yeah, that’s what I call him. He hates it. He says he’s Senator Jeffrey Donald Atkins III on Capitol Hill, but at home I should call him just Daddy. Whatever.

Senator Daddy never really was one to carry out threats. Sure, I had to redye my hair brown, wear bullshit designer suits, and delete my Facebook account when he was on the campaign trail, but I can talk him out of almost any punishment. He’s never held back my allowance, never taken away my Wii, and I can usually whittle groundings down to half a weekend, tops. I’m Senator Daddy’s little girl, after all.

But then he got that prick, that Chester Killian, on his staff, who saw “classic signs of violent tendencies” in me. I called bullshit, but Senator Daddy trusted Chester. Before he got into politics, Chester had been a psychologist who had specialized in school violence. He had apparently been discovered by the media during the Columbine thing ten years ago. That situation was bad for all those dead kids but totally great for Chester’s career. The whole country was in tears and he was talking about all the signs people should have seen. He wrote some books about the “dark side” of teenagers, then got into politics as an adviser to tell people like my dad how to deal with people who hate you.

Too bad Senator Daddy never figured out how to deal with me.

Chester would watch me, his beady little eyes roving all over me. It wasn’t a nasty old man look (I am pretty sure he’s a fag,) but it was like he had a checklist. Pink hair, check. Nose ring, check. Tight black clothes, check. His nostrils would flare and I could tell he checked off “secret smoker” from his list. Senator Daddy had never noticed.

I only dated before Senator Daddy did his big senate push – they didn’t let me afterward. They said it was because they didn’t want me getting into a relationship before we had to move to DC, but I knew they didn’t want reporters getting pics of me dating, well, the kind of guys I go for.

And since we’ve gotten to DC, I haven’t really met any kids like me in the private school they tossed me into. Which of course makes me a “loner” and therefore also a red flag on Chester’s checklist. Loner kids who don’t date, wear black, and smoke are poster children for shooting up the high school. Or shooting up in the high school.

Fuck him anyway. Fuck him and his holier than thou, “Watch out, Clara’s going to blow up a school cause she pierced her nose,” attitude.

I never hurt anyone. I want to make that clear. No animals or people were hurt in the filming of Clara’s life. I just do what I need to do to get by. And if that’s eat an extra doughnut or read a little later at night or smoke a smokey-smoke outside away from the security lamps, then so be it.

What I do in private, I do for me. I allow myself to be me, to feel like I truly am. I give myself control, and lose control at the same time. It’s private. They wouldn’t have sent me to The Hutchins School for Exceptional Teens if they’d caught me, I dunno, touching myself or something. What I do is as private as masturbation. As personal. As none-of-their-goddamn-business.

And “Exceptional Teens.” What the fuck does that mean? I had heard about it as the place that the rich and powerful send their wayward children so the kids don’t fuck up their political careers, but I figured it was just a story to scare the new political spawn, as we were called in the public school I transferred to. I never thought it was real. The damn place doesn’t even have a website, after all.

Senator Daddy had never discovered my little hobbies, the things I do in my room with the door locked. I guess I tripped up when I messed up one project and had to run to the bathroom for some tissues to clean up. I like to keep a clean room, but alcohol and tissues were not going to be enough to clean up the mess I was making.

You know what burns me the most? It wasn’t even Senator Daddy who walked in on me. In our house if the bathroom door is shut – even if it’s cracked open but mostly shut – you don’t walk in on people. It’s like a house rule. And I didn’t know the little toady was visiting Senator Daddy to talk about the upcoming campaign till he walked in on me.

I had little more I could do except to nonchalantly say, “What’s the big deal?” But he wouldn’t stop shouting for Senator Daddy.

Then Senator Daddy wouldn’t stop shouting.

Then I was on my way to the hospital, placed under a three-day suicide watch (suicide has nothing to do with it, but they wouldn’t listen), and when I got home, my room was packed and Chester Killian and Opal, my nanny, were waiting for me. Senator Daddy was nowhere to be found. Chester and Opal explained that they were there to escort me to The Hutchins School.

I now know it as “The Hutch.” We’re taken there to be tamed, to be made docile and stupid, like rabbits.

But I learned there are a number of wild ones that simply won’t be tamed.

That’s where I met Joseph.

What's the big deal?

Her Side is a multimedia fiction project conceived by author Mur Lafferty and photographer J.R. Blackwell.

Mur Lafferty’s narrative leads the reader through a story of violence, love and self discovery as J.R. Blackwell’s photography illuminates the unspoken elements of the story. Together, they combine two different storytelling methods to tell one story.

And finally we have:

Her Side… in print.

Curators:

The photographs in the “Her Side” series are available for gallery shows. If you are a curator interested in showing the photographs of “Her Side”, please contact J.R. Blackwell at jrblackwell@gmail.com

The models in this project are Dan and Avalon.

Through photography and fiction you will experience a story that will move, trouble, and perhaps frighten you. You haven’t seen fiction like this before.

Over ten weeks, Mur Lafferty and J.R. Blackwell released a new puzzle piece of the story every Tuesday – a written story and a photograph that illuminate the twisted coming of age story of a young woman, caught between love and self reliance.

This project was conceived from a snowballing brainstorming session by Mur Lafferty and J.R. Blackwell. J.R. had mentioned her desire to give away photographs as a way to help their friend and fellow author, J.C. Hutchins, promote his excellent book Personal Effects: Dark Art. The idea to add written words to J.R.’s photos, to collaborate and create a whole stand-alone project, while still using the content to support Hutchins’ book, came out of that comment.

Mur and J.R. are not affiliated with St. Martin’s press and their story does not intersect at all with, or take place in the fictional world of, Personal Effects: Dark Art. However, J.C. has long been a friend and supporter of Mur and J.R. and they wanted to give a little back. Thus they have collaborated to bring you an original story.

About the Photographer

JR Blackwell

J.R. Blackwell is a writer and photographer who lives in Philadelphia.

Her stories have been published by Aoife’s Kiss, Kaleidotrope, Bewildering Stories, Static Movement Magazine, EMG Magazine, HeavyGlow Magazine and Escape Pod. She is one of the founding members of 365tomorrows.com.

J.R. has produced the covers to the Anthology “Voices: New Media Fiction” the novels “Playing for Keeps”, “The Case of the Singing Sword” and” Pitchers Pendant”. Her photography has been featured in SubLit Magazine and Flames Rising.

J.R. holds a Masters of Liberal Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.

Her Side is a multimedia fiction project conceived by author Mur Lafferty and photographer J.R. Blackwell.

Mur Lafferty’s narrative leads the reader through a story of violence, love and self discovery as J.R. Blackwell’s photography illuminates the unspoken elements of the story. Together, they combine two different storytelling methods to tell one story. This is not a comforting story.

Released June 23, 2010:

Her Side… in print.

Purchase in print or PDF from Lulu

Her Side, my collaboration with brilliant photographer, JR Blackwell, was an odd little baby. Never mind that it was darker, bloodier, and, in some ways, sexier than anything I’ve ever written, and never mind that it had a protagonist who was not nice at all. It was odd because it was a novella with necessary full-color photographs. Kind of hard to sell to a publisher.

So we went the Lulu route. JR contacted a designer she knew, Daniel Solis, and he did our fantastic cover and interior design. The cover gives me chills, and if I were gothier, I’d get a tattoo of the razor blade.

His design was amazing, and the finished product is gorgeous. We got writer and editor Alasdair Stuart to write the introduction, and YA novelist Courtney Summers was kind enough to blurb the back. We did a little special launch at Balticon, making the books available, and we were quite pleased with the response.

So now we bring Her Side to you. Launching June 23, you’ll be able to buy Her Side from Lulu.com. Tell your friends.

Ten weeks ago I started a photography/story collaboration with the frighteningly talented JR Blackwell. This had been in the works for some time – JR thought of the general concept, characters and setting (as that’s what she was going to be photographing) and I came up with the plot, and we tweaked from there. She and her amazing models, Dan and Avalon, spent one day shooting pics in Philly, and then got all the shots to me for writing guidance/inspiration.

The writing has been challenging to say the least. I made myself stretch beyond the humorous and weird/speculative/fantastic realm and just told a dark, bloody, sexy story with nothing more magical than mental illness and teen angst. I hope I pulled it off.

The final installment went live this morning. I tweaked the site to read less like a blog and more streamlined for narrative flow, so if you haven’t checked it out yet, I’d love it if you would take a look. Because of the visual element, we have decided not to release via audio podcast, but we’re definitely not against a print release.

I’ve never collaborated like this, but JR is such a brilliant and enthusiastic partner it was nigh-effortless working with her. I’d love to work with her again.

Note that I said this project includes dark. bloody, and sexy images. Where there aren’t ropey intestines or bared boobies and genitals, many of the images are not kid-safe, and depending on your job, there are at least two that may not be work safe.

Her Side, by Mur Lafferty and JR Blackwell

I'm prepared.

Hey everyone! I have posted the latest part of my collaboration with JR Blackwell: Her Side Part 3. I do the words, she does the photos, and we hopefully  tell a compelling and twisted little story.

And remember, if you like these amazing photographs and (hopefully pretty good) writing, you can enter a drawing to win the original, never-to-be-released as prints, photographs and a signed copy of the story. All you need to do is support our buddy JC Hutchins and pick up a copy of his awesome book, Personal Effects: Dark Art. It’s a multimedia experience, a rich novel that you can experience on a shallow layer or a deep layer – your choice on what you do with the hints that come with the book. It’s creepy, it’s fun, and you can fall in love with the characters. AND if you email me the copy of your receipt, you can enter a drawing to win the content for the week! More info here.

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Lastly, I wanted to announce that as of yesterday, I am being represented by Brandi Bowles, an agent with Howard Morhaim Literary Agency!

I have been in cahoots with the amazingly talented JR Blackwell for a while to launch a new project. It’s called “Her Side”, a multimedia storytelling experiment. Over ten weeks, we will release a new puzzle piece of the story every Tuesday – a written story and a photograph that illuminate the twisted coming of age story of a young woman, caught between love and self reliance. The words and images of this story play against each other, each highlighting and illuminating different aspects of the story. The pictures speak the words the narrator cannot, and the written narrative connects the divergent photos into a united whole.

I hope you check it out.

(You can also enter to win the original photos and signed copies of the stories- all you need to do is show us the receipt for your copy of Personal Effects: Dark Art by our friend J.C. Hutchins!)