Formerly called Untitled-0113. Release date TBA.
Erin Misrahe is a sophomore in high school. She is new to the school district, and both nervous and excited about her first day... a first in many ways. She is daunted by the crowds of strangers in the school cafeteria, but quickly adopted (and drafted) by the captain of the fencing team. For the first time in as long as she can remember, things are going right.
Her bedroom walls are a deep pine green, decorated with art by Dali, Picasso and O'Keefe, and she gets deep satisfaction in the fact that her window opens, and the panes are made of glass. She has a mirror, and her furniture isn't bolted to the floor. It isn't so much to ask, is it?
She keeps in her room a photo album with the only picture she has of her mother, who died in childbirth. The picture, once torn to shreds by her alter, is held together by laminating plastic. It's the price she pays.
So what that she begins and ends her days with a handful of pills like rainbow Skittles, mood stabilizers and anti-depressants and anti-psychotics and beta blockers that may be eating her liver as they etch their way into her brain? It's the price she pays for all she has ever wanted. To be normal, to be healthy, to know what is real and what is fantasy.
I began writing 0113 my own sophomore year in high school, at the end of the fencing season. I can't remember the exact inspiration for the storyline, but many of the characters... actually, almost all of them... were named after my teammates, including Shevaun, Erin, and Marissa a.k.a. "God" (a real nickname she tried on). I then set the book aside and forgot about it until earlier in 2005, when a disturbing night in the hospital with a friend inspired me to start again.
Erin Misrahe is innocent. She is purely human, raised by humans, ignorant of Nyeusigrube- and that is all she wants. She wants to be normal, to know who and what she is, to be able to trust her senses and her own mind. She wants things that many of us take for granted. But of course, she does live in Nyeusigrube despite her ignorance, and what she believes is "normal" is just the thin fantasy human beings wear to shield themselves from the darker creatures with whom we share the night.
When you've always known you were crazy, how can you tell if you're losing your mind? How do you protect yourself, when you're struggling to know if the danger is real, or just in your head?