Sometimes it’s worth remembering…
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster . . . For when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you…”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
Who among us hasn’t come face to face with evil? Some of us fight back, some of us run like hell…and some of us acquiesce. Many of us…whatever strategy we use in the moment…are compelled to write down the experience eventually. It doesn’t help but at least the nightmare turns into something tangible…a book.
Sometimes, stories filled with angst or pain or horror…are written because all other means of dealing with the monster that followed you home have failed. Sometimes, taking the blow, recoiling and standing back up is all that’s left. Weird that my best books were carved out of real tragedies. Someone else‘s, someone close to me…but not me. Not exactly.
This is a book of fiction. I wrote it because something real… the murder of a college friend in 1975…scared me. It scared me because it was the second murder I‘d had to deal with. It scared me because danger already hid behind every tree, open door, dark basement and empty closet. It scared me because Geri Cornwell Martin’s case went unsolved for decades. The fact that her case was finally solved…with DNA…in the early 2000s…shortly after USERNAME was published...didn’t really help her…maybe other girls, but not Geri.