A while back ago I received an email from a concerned buyer who purchased my adult fiction novel, HUSH and asked why and what possessed me to write such a graphically disturbing story about a young suburban high school girl forced into child prostitution? And for a while I ignored these very important questions, and not because I didn’t want to answer them it’s just I couldn’t find the right words to answer the questions with until now.
So WHY did I write such a graphically disturbing story about a young suburban high school girl forced into child prostitution?
Well first off, HUSH underwent four title changes: “Growing up trafficked”, “Jane/Diamond”, “The Girl”, and “Ask The Girl” before I eventually settled on “HUSH”.
Second, I was in shock when I began hearing and reading about American children being forced into prostitution by their families and their peers, and so I wanted to write something that would reflect the growing issue of this crises since it is an issue no one really cares to talk about because no one wants to know that child prostitution is actually happening here in America since we as Americans consider these issues to be “third world” issues and not ours. . .but that is no longer the case.
As I began writing HUSH my main focus was to tell a tale about a privileged young girl named Anna Jane Parker who falls victim to child prostitution by those she trusts, and that was it! End of story. My intent wasn’t to pen graphic details or graphic visualizations of gang rape, incest rape, sexual torture, and physical abuse as I wanted the story to remain clean, unnerving, and void of any disturbances that may disturb the reader. But as I began writing the first few pages I began to realize that you cannot write a novel of this nature without accompanying its dirty laundry because no one would buy it, let alone, read it. And so from that moment on I made a crucial decision that I would make HUSH a no-holds-barred, punch-you-in-the-gut novel that would not only shock an audience but would leave an audience with some form of realism.
So the question now is: Have I succeeded? I don’t know? Why? Well the book has sold but I’ve yet to sustain any reviews or ratings which is good because I’m not sure I would want to read a bad review or see a “1 Star” rating. . .But I will be the first to say that HUSH is a “first of its kind” because it ventures the reader beyond the norm of closed bedroom doors and motel rooms so that he/she can experience Jane’s situation first hand as I feel that a lot of novels tend to leave the reader cold once that door shuts in their tracks eventually leaving the reader to abandon the book or give it a bad review.
I understand that HUSH isn’t your typical run-of-the-mill-sex-trafficking novel or novels because it focuses on a girl who wasn’t kidnapped, drugged or sold into prostitution as she was merely betrayed into it thus setting it apart from the rest; and my purpose (adjacent to my previous focus) was to make HUSH more intimate; a novel that hits close to home, allowing the reader to grasp that this sort-of-situation can happen to any girl, be it a daughter, a sister, a cousin, a relative, and that you don’t have to be in a third world country for it to happen. . .Sex-trafficking, it’s happening here in our own front yards.
***
For the entire month of November, 2013, HUSH will be available on Kindle for $0.99.
