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That’s a marketing director speaking in my brain. Or, it’s an agent, sitting at a table in a hotel conference room, playing speed-date with scores of writers pitching ideas–trying not to look jaded. I’ve written several blogs on the subject of my novel, Crystal From The Hills, and have yet to really make my pitch for why you, the reader, should give it a shot. Here goes:

Are you interested in psychology; I mean, really interested, as in you read on the subject, are familiar with its language? If I spoke of things like chronic trauma, addiction, the ambiguously-termed mental illness, might you be intrigued? Probably not. Not enough, I hear you saying. Topical though, isn’t it? With episodes of mass shootings, ‘disturbed’ individuals entering school yards or driving their vehicles into capitol buildings, you might think it timely for someone to create a drama around a protagonist whose perspective is, shall we say, not quite reliable. But there’s that word: drama. You need action, don’t you? After all, there are lots of stories about ‘crazy’ people. You want something to happen, or else you need a reason to care about my protagonist. Is he a good guy, you’re wondering? A hero? Or, if not those things, is he funny at least?

What? He’s a loser? WTF? That’s the internal voice of that fidgety agent, that business-like marketing director, saying, “destined for indie!” Well, maybe I haven’t lost you yet, indulgent reader. My “loser”, protagonist Chris Leavitt, is…ya know, special. So are his friends, Sweet and Weed. Even his girlfriend, Jill, has something of interest to offer: something dark, yet compelling.

It’s something to identify with, or better yet, empathize with. See, that’s a psychology word for you: empathy. Can you empathize with feelings not expressed, but rather those that might be inferred from actions. Can you interpret? in other words. Difficult, psychologists say, because we are a telelogical society (judging that which we can observe–behavior), a scientific society (looking for that which is ‘evidence-based’). Judging the traumatized, the mentally ill is a challenge, because they do not express, or even experience their feelings, ordinarily. Rather, they act, and that ‘acting’ makes them enigmatic and sometimes dangerous.

And so, here is the challenge of following Chris Leavitt, a guy who has experienced an ‘accident’ about which he is alternately coy, misleading, or just unresponsive. He’s lost his truck and a friend–Weed–in an accident, and gives a short, unconvincing story to friends, who wonder, is Weed dead? Chris wanders aimlessly in the streets before being discovered by his girlfriend, who then returns him to her home. Though he is ostensibly clean from a previous methamphetamine habit, his life, in terms of his work and his relationship with Jill, is falling apart. And that accident? It is a mystery, but also a culmination of problems that have dogged him throughout his life.

Ok, so he’s not funny, not a hero, and not even a nice guy, necessarily. So what gives? Why should you care about him and his drama? Does he have a conscience, even? Or, is that trauma thing getting in the way of that too?

Sort of. Get ready for the paranormal element, incorporating aspects of Jungian psychology, spiritualism, near death experiences. Chris has shadows: ghosts in human form who appear fleetingly next to either victims or perpetrators of unidentified crimes, existing either as harbingers of future catastrophe, or representations of guilt. Chris sees shadows. He’s one of the gifted. But now they are dogging him, whispering cryptic warnings in his ear, steering him towards a mission that he must first understand, and then, act upon.

Do you care yet? Or, have I lost you. He’s looking at you, by the way, on the side of this blog. He’s an everyman, I guess, and his drama is an aphorism for something important. He’s someone to love at times, despise at others; perhaps, like most of us, he’s someone that elicits only passing interest, even attention–like Crystal’s shadows.

Whenever a counselor or therapist hears that they’ve asked a good question, it’s likely a prelude to an awkward silence or a fumbling speculation. For recovering addicts, in particular, there is a paradigmatic mystery: why do they keep doing the same things over and over again expecting a different result. Definition of insanity. Cognitive dissonance.

In the residential settings depicted in Working Through Rehab: An Inside Look at Adolescent Drug Treatment, counselors like me got to observe not only the complicated relationship drug users had with substances, but their relationships in general. Basically, we got to see how they related, period. Psychoanalysts and trauma experts, allied in their focus upon past experiences, might refer to the internalized object relationships, the ways in which users sleepily attach to the past, and to the absent, through the lens of the present.

And so went treatment. What is it they want? I ask throughout my book. Do they know? Do the kids we work with, the kids in us, want containment; someone to say ‘no’, to parent? We suspect, or rather we hope, that they do; at least unconsciously. Please, we might desperately ask. Do they want insight, an answer to those multitude of ‘why’ questions that they seemingly admire. Possibly. After all, that may be what drugs, or the mileu that surrounded drugs, offer: an experience of being free, seen, and understood. Here’s a passage from Working Through Rehab:

Staff members at Thunder Road, the 12-step or TC Concepts veterans especially, ardently told their stories, but knew they were fighting an uphill battle. They offered the paternalistic perspective of “I wish I’d gotten this at your age” with melancholic airs. They drew attention to physical deterioration as a principal consequence of unabated substance use; others may have cited constant legal difficulties, a series of relationships destroyed by bad decisions, or the tragedy of estrangement from their own kids. Many clients had experienced these events from the other side, as witnesses: they had parents with disease; parents that were separated or divorced. Some knew what it was like to be removed from a home by a social worker, or to have known or even witnessed a caretaker’s death. The platitudinous cautionary tales of staff resonated with some kids, but often missed the mark with others, sometimes because kids were not ready to cope with painful histories, but also because staff caveats aimed too narrowly at the projected results of an unresolved problem rather than the intrinsic problem of a disturbed inner life. “I’ve got problems because I’m messed up,” said the recovering addicts, reflecting on past damage but a chronic condition. “I wanna learn so I can avoid this stuff in the future,” the most motivated kids would answer, missing an important point. The slogan One Day At A Time seemed designed for them, for their myopic ambitions and short attention spans.