Lynn Forney On Choosing Survival, Overcoming Trauma, and Writing About It

Mindy:   Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.

Mindy: We are here with Lynn Forney who is the author of Choosing Survival: How I Endured a Brutal Attack and a Lifetime of Trauma through the Power of Action, Choice, and Self-Expression. So I want to talk to you about quite a few different things here today. Of course, I want to talk about your experience and what happened to you... Trauma upon trauma after your initial experience and then the process of recovery and then also writing about that. So why don't you just start by telling us about Choosing Survival, what happened to you, and why you chose to write about it?

Lynn: First of all, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I was attacked when I was 21 years old. I woke up with a man next to me. He started stabbing me. I was stabbed 7 times, and I lost approximately 21 pints of blood. That experience alone was traumatic enough. I was on life support for quite a few days. And when I got off life support, I was being somewhat accused of possibly stabbing myself. And that was shocking and horrifying. I had experienced pretty severe depression a couple of years prior to this. So I understand they have to look at all the angles, but the facts would never have led anyone, I think, to believe that. But the police department, years later, came out that they were covering up crimes. Janet Reno did an investigation of the Boca Raton Police Department years later. Having this happen to me and then not being believed has led to years of trying to recover from that.

Mindy: Victim shaming, on top of that... Not only are you possibly lying, but did you do this to yourself?

Lynn: I had to take a lie detector test, and I kept looking at the guy like, "This is impossible." And he's like, "no, people have done this to themselves." I'm like, "I don't think so."

Mindy: When did this happen?

Lynn: May of 1998.

Mindy: Okay, so I was about the same age in the 90s. I would like to believe that something like that would not happen today. That if you were subjected to a violent attack, you would not then have to not only recover from your attack, but also take a lie detector test to prove that you had, in fact, been attacked.

Lynn: I still question what was worse, getting attacked or not being believed. 

Mindy: Well, and it becomes a question too... I'm sure, you'd already experienced some effects of mental health issues. Depression is obviously something that can really mess you up. I think to have that additional layer of other people questioning you in a pretty intense manner, I'm sure only exacerbated the situation.

Lynn: Question like, what's wrong with me? Why did this happen to me? And why are people treating me this way? What is wrong with me? Definitely.

Mindy: Absolutely. So what led you to want to write about this?

Lynn: When I would start to get into the story shortly after this happened... Seeing people's facial expressions and reactions, I would just kind of be like, I know this is so all so crazy. I should just write a book. I should just write a book one day. I wasn't convinced I would do it, but I've always wondered what can I do with this? There's got to be something I can do to help other people. I can sit there and be in the victim hood of like, “Why did this happen? Why did this happen?” Or I can choose to do something about it. I think with COVID, obviously, we all had to stay inside and lives changed quite a bit dramatically. And for me it meant that my performing arts life, that kind of slowed down quite a bit. And so I just kind of delved into different mindset classes and courses, and then I ended up taking vocal lessons. She also was a coach and had a small coaching container, and so I joined that. And kind of one thing led to another with that small container. I wrote a poem that did end up in the book, and I read that to the group. And getting their reactions was enough to be like, “You know what? Maybe this is the time for me to start writing this book.” So then I wrote the very first chapter. Maybe I have something. Maybe there's something here, and I can kind of continue and actually just finally put this into a book.

Mindy: So many people used COVID as a really good jumping in point to do some things that they had always wanted to but never really had the opportunity or the time. And COVID kind of opened that up. So I offer editorial services as part of what I do here at Writer Writer Pants on Fire, and my inbox really blew up during and then here tapering off after COVID. I've had so many people reaching out to me with projects that they finally found the time to work on or had the opportunity to work on. And then I've also heard, of course, plenty of other people having an opposite experience where they just kind of shut down or mentally COVID was too much for them. Maybe some of that groundwork that you had done before about choosing to take an action might have helped you be a little bit more proactive throughout COVID as well.

Lynn: Absolutely. I mean, I've never doubted that I have chosen constantly to try my best to thrive. Right? Certainly there's days and time periods maybe I didn't do as great of a job, but I think I chose that I would not let this event or this man just completely take over my life. And I've always kind of gone back to that. It's like, "No. I'm not going to let this event just completely shut me down." I'm going to continue doing what I want to do. I'm going to try to move forward and certainly kind of weaving in lots of healing and therapy and all that throughout. But that's always been a part of me, I think, too just to kind of like I'm going to take action. If something like, say, disappointing happens, I might take a few days to kind of shut down and sulk and cry and stay in bed, but then I'm going to be like, "Alright, what am I going to do now?"

Mindy: I'm a fixer, too. I have to go and do something and take action in order to feel like I am preventing something worse happening or improving upon where we are. I am a doer and a fixer. Sometimes things aren't fixable. Not all things, certainly. I can get caught in anxiety loops pretty easily. I'm going to fix this, and I am going to do everything I can about this. And it might not be within my power to fix or it may not actually be a problem. I may have decided there was a problem or created a problem, and then I'm trying to fix something that was never wrong in the first place, which is an impossible situation. Talk to me a little bit then about your recovery and the different methods that you used, because trauma is something that I think a lot of people don't want to own that word. Because they feel like it's reserved for someone that has been in war, or someone that has almost died, or someone that has witnessed a death, or lost a loved one in a tragic or violent way. So obviously, you had a very serious, violent attack. But I do see people, sometimes, resisting using the word trauma for things that have happened to them that they don't feel actually earn the label even though they might be suffering from the symptoms. So, if you could talk a little bit about how you kind of came to terms with what happened and then like your steps forward.

Lynn: I just had this conversation with my coach actually about trauma, and she lost her life partner and she still didn't consider herself having trauma. So I think that's really common, and so many things can create trauma in our brain. And again, like, you want to think that, "oh, I'm stronger than that. Or that's not a big deal." And even for me, I could find myself saying, "well, I was stabbed, but I didn't have that happen. Or didn't have this happen." Like still I wasn't worthy of having trauma. So I totally understand that. But I think we all have trauma to some degree. It is important to look at it and kind of figure it out because it affects our day to day lives whether we want to own it or not. One of my kind of go-tos is... I just avoid. I'm like, I don't need to feel that. I don't need to deal with that. I'm just going to go over here. And that's maybe the downside of the doing and the fixing, right? Because you don't look at the other stuff over here. So, I mean, I did go to therapy. I had a therapist when I went back to college. And then I kind of didn't for a little while, even though looking back, I probably should have. And then for a long time, I just kept trying to go do dance, and I'm going to go do this. I'm going to try to do that. And finally, about I would say about 16 years after this happened is when I found the trauma therapist. And that was really the turning point for me for really understanding and delving way deeper into the trauma. So I did EMDR with her, but even I have to say years after that, I had trauma come up... Responses that I didn't expect. Yeah, I've tried tapping, EMDR, multiple therapists because I just wasn't willing to give up on myself or my life.

Mindy: Trauma responses are really interesting. I only recently started to realize that I also have some some trauma responses that I wasn't expecting. Kind of resurfaced for a bunch of different reasons. Very suddenly. Knocked me all the way off my tracks, right? And I am self-aware enough to be like, "okay, something is wrong." Like I'm reacting very strongly to this, and I recognize that I am. And I know what I'm reacting to. So, it's like this was the trigger. I am looking at my reaction and saying, "okay. You're being ridiculous." But also, I still feel this way, right? Like, I can't...

Lynn: Yeah.

Mindy: I can't logic myself out of this. So, you know that this made you feel like this, but there's no reason for that. So why do you feel this way? And then picking, picking, picking, picking, picking until there's just a heap of unknitted sweaters in front of you. And it's just like, okay, now I have overthought everything, and I am exhausted, and I still feel the same way. I didn't realize that I had at least elements of, if not full blown, CPTSD. My therapist was like, "Dude! This is what's going on. And yes, like you do have this." Similar to you, I would be like, "Well, this happened to me, but… also the Holocaust. So I don't."

Lynn: Right.

Mindy: And it could be a symptom of being women, too. We do tend to trivialize our own suffering sometimes.

Lynn: Yeah. I totally agree with that because we're taught to not speak up or get angry or you're being crazy or you're being a woman, right? Or it's that time of the month or whatever. You understand how the brain works too. The way I was explained, this is very rudimentary, but if you have a circle or a loop that your brain is supposed to go through in any event and it kind of gets stopped, you'll sort of keep going back to that spot over and over again in your brain because you haven't finished that loop out. That helped me understand it. Okay, I keep getting stuck and any time anything is reminding me or my body of that experience, it keeps going to that spot. And then I get retraumatized. And logically I understand. I'm safe. I'm here. I'm sitting in this chair. Your body and your subconscious don't know the difference. It's like, "No. No. We're experiencing that same thing over and over again."

Mindy: I ended up learning a lot about my amygdala, and the reptile is driving the train. Fight, flight, or freeze. And I was kind of in that constant trauma response for a while. And that wears you out. Physically. Mentally. Constant. What do I need to do? Do I need to run? Do I need to hide? Do I need to punch someone? Not great for your social relationships, right? 

Lynn: I had a really wild experience after all this therapy that I literally had shut down. Like I witnessed these two men punching each other in the street, which is not great as it was, but I was driving, and I kind of was like, "Do I call the police? Do I try to help? I don't know what to do." So also my fight or flight was like, "Escape! Get out! Get out! Get out!" They broke up, and then I was going to dance rehearsal. And I got in there, and I started telling people like, "These guys were fighting, and I don't know if I should do something about it." And I just felt like all of a sudden everything inside of me just starts shaking. And I started crying. I don't know what's going on. And I had to just go to the bathroom, and I literally just sat in the corner and like shook and cried and had to call my husband. And I was like.. And I knew. I'm here at rehearsal. I am safe. I'm in this bathroom. Nothing is going to harm me. But for an hour, a full hour, I could not stop shaking and crying. And it was really confusing and also kind of embarrassing, if I'm going to be honest. I felt like all these people were judging me because nobody knew really what happened to me. Confusing is really the best word I can describe. Because I'm like, "It's been all these years. I've done all this work. What is going on?" But that kind of led to me creating a solo about it. Like I did a dance solo about it, and that's how I kind of transformed that experience into something that hopefully, again, could help someone that was in the audience and me process it.

Mindy: Specifically, I wanted to talk to you about EMDR because I know that this is something that I myself have used before and am currently using. I have found it helpful. I have talked to a lot of people that use it and have had differing experiences, and I know that you are a proponent of it. So, if you could talk a little bit about, first of all, what EMDR is, and then talk to me about how it has been useful to you.

Lynn: EMDR is a type of therapy that essentially gets your subconscious brain to come forward, come into more of the conscious brain. You generally use like a rapid eye movement. That for me made me really nauseous. So I had to close my eyes, and my therapist tapped on my knees. I will say, first of all, you have to get a really trusting connection to your therapist before you even try this. So I just want to say, if anyone's thinking about it, to know that going into it. She had me try to visualize going through like a boat, calm my brain down, my body down, and kind of visualize going into this safe, really safe place I could always return to. And then she kind of had me go into a cave and like, turn on a TV and try to get things kind of deep that I had repressed on this TV screen. 

And that didn't work for me initially, so I just had to kind of keep going deeper. But it's... It's really wild and odd, but really powerful. And I'm sure everyone's experience is a little bit different. So it's hard for me. That was mine. But I would feel all these weird sensations in my body. I would suddenly feel like my legs were like lead, but my upper half was like floating all around the ceiling. I definitely dug some stuff up that I think I've always known was there from very young childhood, but.. And I couldn't get it fully in my memory, like a movie, but I definitely had more information than I had before. And that was kind of terrifying at first. And then every week would go a little bit deeper and try to bring it up again to my conscious memory. But it was a way to understand and process and say like, yes, this did happen to me and this has been with me my whole life. And I just... I couldn't remember it. I never understood why I had these these certain reactions or why I got so depressed or anything like that. So it kind of helped me understand. Okay, like these things happened to me at a very young age. And then I've had all these compound traumas on top of it. So I had a better understanding of my brain and my reactions and my responses and maybe why I was certain ways that I was.

Mindy: My understanding of how EMDR works. You were talking earlier about those cycles and those neural pathways that travel and you travel and you travel and you'll get stuck. Or there'll be something that basically hasn't moved into your long term memory. It's still hanging out on those short term circuits, and that's your trauma. And the whole idea, my understanding, behind EMDR is that your therapist.. And you're right, you do have to be comfortable with your therapist and have a trusting relationship because they ask you to revisit things that are upsetting. Try to really, in some ways put yourself back there to some extent. And while you're there or while you're re-experiencing these things... We use clappers that you hold on to and they vibrate. The idea is that it forces your brain to do left, right, rapid switching.

Lynn: Yes.

Mindy: As if your eyes were in REM sleep, and your brain does the work of moving memories into long term storage while you're in REM. And that's why one of the reasons why REM is so important. And so the idea is that if you can access these memories or these moments or these traumas while your therapist is helping you simulate brain activity of REM, that it will begin to move these things into your long term where they can just kind of dissipate and be weakened essentially.

Lynn: But yeah, you're finishing that loop, basically. You're completing the loop that should have happened. You're literally, to your body and your subconscious, you're experiencing the exact same trauma as if it was happening right then and there.

Mindy: Yeah.

Lynn: So it basically helps you finish out that loop through your neural pathways of your brain so that you're not continually kind of getting triggered and responding in the same way.

Mindy: I've had some interesting physical sensations. You were talking about legs being heavy and your top half feeling light. I have had, certainly not a tingling or anything like that, but I have just suddenly been aware of the back of my brain. I haven't necessarily felt it in any sense that there's a sensation, but I'm just like, "Oh, it's there." I'm just like more conscious of it during EMDR and then for a little bit afterwards. I asked my therapist. I was like, "Is this something that other people have reported?" And she said she has one other client who says she feels like a tickling almost at the base of her brain when she's doing EMDR.

Lynn: Yeah, I definitely remember all kinds of weird sensations like that. Like my head was a balloon and floating around. It was really strange. But she also explained to me too, that I dissociated like all the time. I was living in a constant state of dissociation, which I didn't fully know. And I wasn't like to the point where I'm different people. She kind of explained there's five stages until you get to the point where you have multiple personalities. In other words, you can get up to stage four, but you're constantly in a stage 1 or 2. And kind of after that process, she could even tell... she's like, "Your eyes are brighter. You're more forward in your body." And it's hard to explain if you haven't experienced that, but it's like I could feel more present. I'm more present than I ever have been. And it wasn't like I wasn't aware or didn't know.

Again, it's a hard thing to describe to people who've never experienced it, but I would often feel like if I was starting to talk about something with a prior therapist that was difficult my head would kind of start feeling balloony. Or like I would be laying in the bed and I would suddenly feel like I was about three feet above my body, even though I was still in my body. Things like that. I would have those weird sensations. So when she explained that to me, I was like, "Oh, that makes sense." And so it just... If you're not fully present, you're not experiencing life the way you should be, right?

Mindy: Yeah. And some of these side effects and symptoms are things that are almost impossible to explain. I very recently, this past summer, I went off a SNRI that I had been on for about 15 years and...

Lynn: Oh wow.

Mindy: Oh, it was terrible. The withdrawal process was horrible and the disassociation was strong. Really scary. I knew what was going on, and everyone in my family and my close friends, like they knew that I was weaning off of a antidepressant. And that things were going to get funky. And so people were... People were helpful and everybody was watching out for me, and that was very useful. And it was good.

Lynn: Yeah.

Mindy: But when you are living in a constant space of not being able to trust yourself and even your own perceptions of yourself, it is extremely difficult to move through the day.

Lynn: Like I would have moments of completely blacking out and this would be like two seconds. But I remember being in a dance class, something I really enjoy, and then all of a sudden I'm like, "Oh, I'm back. I don't know where I went, but I left." And so just weird experiences like that, and then you're like, "Well, is this going to happen all the time? Is this a normal thing?" And so, yeah, you're constantly in this, a little bit of a state of worry. Again, that fight or flight is getting just amped up. Well, now, I don't know if I'm going to just suddenly leave. It was always like little snippets, but I was aware that it happened. And again, I'm doing something I enjoy. So what's going on?

Mindy: One of the things you talk about in your book is learning how to shift your energy out of low energy or negativity or shifting your focus, and especially mood swings and like difficulty managing where your energy is. Focusing on negativity and things like that. I think, particularly for writers, that would be a very useful skill set. Because we do tend to be emotional people, and a lot of us tend to be... Lean a little more towards the melancholy. Talk a little bit about some tips and tricks for shifting your energy and helping to relocate where that is being directed.

Lynn: There's a few things that I have learned. Things that can shift your energy the most are movement, breath, and sound. So, something that's simple you can try is literally just to like turn on a silly song and dance around to it. Even if you're like not in the mood. Singing along to it is even better. So that can be just a really quick, effective way. A few minutes of that. Breath is always helpful to shift. There's many, many breathing patterns you could do, but just trying to get the deepest breath you can. Inhaling for four counts, holding for four counts, and exhaling for six counts. If you do that ten times in a row, that can really shift some things. Just getting up and stretching. Moving. Doing some twists. Doing some squats. It sounds like it's too easy, but those little things can really shift.

And then for negativity and thought patterns, the most powerful thing I did was I met kind of a shadow part of myself. And she's a very domineering, unforgiving woman named Betty. I did it through an NLP session, which is kind of another way to get to your subconscious. Meeting her and kind of giving her persona. Giving her an outfit. Able to be like, "All right, Betty. I hear you, and I know you're here to protect me." Because that's what they do, right? They're here to protect you. Like, okay, remember that time in third grade you got made fun of? Well, we don't want that to happen again, so we're going to make sure that you don't put yourself out there that same way. So if you write this book, and you put it out there, and everyone's going to laugh at you... That kind of thing. So I could be like, "All right, Betty. I see you. I hear you. Thank you for being here. I know you're trying to protect me, but I've got this." There are days where I'm just really sad. I've done all those things. EFT tapping. That's a really great one too to move energy, by the way. I'm just going to let this sadness be here instead of constantly trying to avoid it or escape it. Because that's what would keep it there longer for me. I'm just going to accept this. I'm going to invite this in. I'm just going to accept that I'm sad. I'm going to accept that I don't know why, and that's okay. Because that for a long time to drove me crazy. Like it's a sad day. I'm just going to be sad with myself, and I'm going to curl up with a teddy bear. Love myself that way and know that tomorrow is a new day. And again, that sounds so trite in some ways, but it really is. And usually that will do the trick. The next day, I'll have a different outlook. I'll have a little bit different mood. I'll wake up a little bit different. So instead of just constantly trying to fight it like, "no, I don't feel the sadness" and shoving it down and shoving it down. It's going to come up. It's going to come out. It's going to come up.

Mindy: I take naps, and I have only in the past, maybe 5 or 6 years, been able to do the, hey, you feel this way right now? You're not going to feel this way in a little bit. Right now, it's bad.

Lynn: Yeah.

Mindy: In a little bit, it'll be better. And you don't want to wait for that in a little bit to get here and be conscious? You just go take a nap.

Lynn: There you go.

Mindy: I'm extremely lucky in that I'm a full time writer. I work from home. I'm my own boss. I absolutely realize that, you know, I have the wealth of time to be able to say I'm going to take a nap, and nobody can stop me. And I'm in charge of myself, right? 

Lynn: Right, right.

Mindy: So I absolutely recognize the privilege and being like, you know what? Time out. Taking a nap. I was always someone that pooh poohed meditation. That's dumb, and it doesn't work. I really landed pretty strongly on that for a really long time. And then just recently, within the past like maybe six months, I downloaded the Headspace app because I went off of my depression medication.

Lynn: Yes.

Mindy: And so I was like, "All right. What am I going to do to add another support here? Because I need it."

Lynn: Yeah, yeah.

Mindy: And I ended up using the Headspace app, and it did help tremendously. So I have become a convert to breathing and meditation and exercise. Now, I've always been an athlete. I've always been aware of how much that benefits me just physically and mentally and emotionally. And I go to the gym like every evening. The distinct difference between how I feel after a workout. I'm awake. I'm present. And I know that exercise is like the hardest thing to do when you're not there. If you would just work out, you would feel better. And it's like... That's the last thing that I can do right now. Like that is actually impossible for me. And I totally understand that. Taking a walk, even taking your doggo is something. Just moving a little bit can be so beneficial.

Lynn: And that's why I say like, just do two minutes of just jumping and dancing around. Because I would get stuck in like, if I'm going to work out, it has to be an hour, and it has to be hard core, and it has to be this, and it has to be that, right? Especially if you're a perfectionist and you're hard on yourself. But I think when you're in those really deep, dark places, and I've been there where I couldn't get out of bed for six weeks... So just getting into the shower can make a huge difference. Something about water is very healing. Add like an essential oil of eucalyptus or something. You know, put a few drops in the shower and just get in the shower. That can change your whole day. If you've never experienced this, you're like, "What? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." I can understand where some people would think that. But if you've ever been in the depths of it, like just getting into the shower, or crying in the shower, is very healing too. Even in those moments where you're just in the depths of it, that that can feel really hard too.

Mindy: I've had those stretches of "I'm going to lay in bed now." You smell bad, and your sheets smell bad. And I drooled in my sleep and my pillowcase stinks, right? I am a piece of shit, right?

Lynn: Yeah, right.

Mindy: And you get up, and you take a shower. Just smelling better. We're going to wash all the sheets. Even if I go back to bed after I do those things, I feel better because my environment is changed, and the environment is a little more healthy. And I have taken some proactive steps. And I don't smell bad, and my bed doesn't smell bad. A little bit of healing in that.

Lynn: Yeah, absolutely.

Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find the book Choosing Survival.

Lynn: Yeah, I have a website. Lynn Forney dot com and you can email me at Choosing Survival at gmail dot com. And my book currently is on Amazon, and it's available on Kindle, paperback, and hardback currently.

Mindy:   Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

David Crow On Keeping Memoir Honest, Even When It’s Ugly

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with David Crow author of The Pale-Faced Lie: A True Story. It is a memoir about your childhood - a survival biography in a lot of different ways. So, if you would just like to tell us a little bit about the basis for this book.

David: I didn't tell anyone my story until I was in my early 50s 'cause I was so ashamed and felt like I couldn't tell anybody. If childhood is a city you can never leave, if it was hard enough for you, it'll break you. And I found that the people that are supposed to love me, I couldn't trust... Betrayed that love to be very hurtful to me and my siblings. Found out that at a certain point when your childhood's bad enough, you don't like yourself, but you don't know it. You don't trust anybody because you can't trust the adults that are supposed to love you and take care of you. And that when you grow from this very broken model, learning to love, learning to trust, learning to be a good person can be very, very difficult. There are many cycles that people don't break and the worst ones come from horrific childhoods. In my early 50s, I realized that I was extremely troubled by my childhood. I never thought like a victim, still don't. I never wanted to keep score, get even, some people write books for that reason, or glorify myself as I certainly made a kagillion mistakes. But what I wanted to do when I finally realized that I could overcome this, that I could see myself in a different way, that I could forgive those who hurt me so much, I began to forgive myself. I began to have a much gentler view of myself... Became more trusting, more open, and my life changed. My children, my wife, my colleagues, my friends. I basically wrote the book for a single reason. To tell people you can overcome things that you think you cannot possibly overcome. Even if they bothered you for decades, which this did. When you are able to overcome it, when you are able to forgive it and move past it, there's a whole new world that will open up for you. 

I didn't find any of the self-help books I read helpful. Not that they weren't somewhat helpful. I went to therapy, I found that was only somewhat helpful. What I had to do was go back and confront the worst memories of my life and understand who I was then. That I could do very little about it. That I had decided to feel ashamed, guilty, and I think for a lot of us, that you don't deserve any better. And that you can't get any better out of life than was given you. And of course, all of those thoughts are fatal. Letters that upset me are from people that are older who never learned to love, never learned to trust, and their self-image was created in their childhood, as mine was. They never broke free of it. And what they have suffered is a life sentence. I'm here to tell everybody, you don't have to have a life sentence because the first part of your life didn't go right. You can be the captain of your own ship, but you have to see yourself as someone different than the person that these very broken people told you that you were.

Mindy: I want to touch on something that you talked about there, because even though I had a wonderful childhood, we all have things that we've suffered through and...

David: Oh, absolutely. I didn't go through the worst and plenty of people who've gone through a lot more than me, but no one gets through life scot free, I don't think.

Mindy: No, I don't think so either. I myself have tried self-help books before. My therapist told me one of the reasons why I don't find them useful is because, quite frankly, most of them are not well written. And it's very difficult for me as a writer to look to something for guidance or help or any type of support, if I can't get past the writing. I think it's a weird little wrinkle in my life where self-help books have never actually been that helpful to me because I'm looking at the quality of the writing and I can't... There could be some great stuff in there, perhaps, but I can't get past it.

David: I feel that too. A lot of the self-help books will say things like, write your childhood-self a letter saying, I love you and you're wonderful. For me, that wouldn't work. What I had to do, and I kind of compare it to a ball of yarn that's got a million knots... You can't just cut them. You have to unwind them. And the unwinding is understanding why you feel so bad about yourself. Why you have a hard time forgiving people who did things to you that they never apologized for, probably don't even think they did. My dad never thought he did anything wrong. Even when he killed people, they had it coming, right? You have to go through something that's almost alchemic. You have to see yourself then. You have to see yourself as you wanna be, and then you have to kind of forge your path on how you get from where you were to where you wanna be. But you have to think it through, and you have to see what those memories, those messages, did to you. So for me to just sit down, I love you, David, you are a wonderful little boy. There was no loving the little boy, David, when all this happened to me. It just didn't connect. They tell you you can be anything you wanna be. Well, I doubt I could be a center on a National Basketball Association team. I'm a foot short, not quick, but I can be all that I can be. So I think there's a lot of things going on. And Mindy, I see your communication skills, I think, taking the self-help part to a new level. Make people feel what you're trying to say, but then make them take ownership of the pieces that they need to do to get where they need to go.

Mindy: I myself hit a brick wall pretty hard. I can find them trite. I also agree with the "you can do anything you want." I have always said, "No, I can't be a ballerina." My physical body is not made for that. No, I can't do anything that I want. So, I always find it to be useful to be practical. Function over form is always pretty major in my life, and I need things to serve a purpose.

David: Lori Gottlieb wrote a letter, You Should Talk to Someone, which is the best book that I've ever read. But there's room for this for you, Mindy, and others of us to fill in some of these spaces. People go from, "I'll never be a National Basketball Association Center" to "I can't do anything." No you can do a ton. Everybody has a capacity to be far more than they are, but they're gonna have to work real hard. You're gonna hit brick walls, as you said. Tell me you haven't hit a brick wall and I'll tell you you haven't had much growth.

Mindy: If it's not hard, it's not worth doing. But I grew up in the Midwest on a farm, and I wanna talk a little bit about your childhood. You grew up on a Navajo Indian reservation. When it comes to your book and your childhood, can you talk a little bit about the Native American angle on this and how that is such a huge part of your story?

David: So my dad, who said he was Indian, Dad took us to an Indian reservation for two reasons. I'm born after he got out of San Quentin. My mother was pregnant with my sister when he went in. He did something, could have gotten him the death penalty - certainly could have gotten him 20, 30 years in prison, but he needed to go to a place to accomplish two goals. One, he had to be able to go to a place where he could lie about being a violent felon, because every employer will ask you, "Have you been a violent felon?" That's a real negative. I think no one wants to hire a violent felon. And the second thing is, he wasn't afraid of his accomplice, one-on-one, but he was afraid his accomplice would ambush him. By going to the Navajo Indian reservation in the 50s - think pre-internet, pre-everything - I mean, I was five before we saw our first television. You could basically hide from the world, and he did.

And Dad was able to work in a good job. First at El Paso Natural Gas Company, and then later at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It allowed him, basically, to lie about his past and be able to function. And my first memory, where the book really begins, where he takes me out into the frozen tundra on the reservation and says, "We have to get rid of your mother because if you grow up with her, you'll be crazy just like her." And the book starts there, and it just goes through an incredible series of events that almost read like a novel. Why did things just keep happening? Worse and worse, and somehow dad survives all of it. Somehow we all four kids and my mother survived it, but they didn't survive it very well. My siblings have paid a tremendous price. I think in some ways they had it a lot worse than I did. Partly 'cause I understood Dad, so to a certain extent, I could head off things that he was gonna do, but if he got really, really angry, which he did all the time, there was nothing to stop him.

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Mindy: I think too, when you're talking about a memoir like this that is so deeply emotional, and you're writing about your family and, of course, your parents but also your siblings. What made you say, "I think I need to write about this," or "this should be a book." Was it a therapeutic move on your part? Or was it something that could go out into the world and help other people?

David: All of the above. I honestly thought I would never be able to overcome what I had gone through. Meaning that I would just never feel better about myself. I would always have guilt and shame and feelings of not deserving good things happening to me. I was able to have a good professional career, reasonably good relationship with my children and siblings, but they were never what they needed to be, right? 'Cause I didn't trust. I wasn't open. I basically hadn't overcome my childhood. Outwardly, yes. I could do all the things you're supposed to do, for the most part. I could compartmentalize, but inside, I was a real mess. By the time I hit my early 50s, I thought, "Well, this is never gonna change," right? I'm gonna die not particularly happy with who I am... What I've done. I really, really concentrated... Went through a divorce and had a second marriage, which has been very successful, but during that time, I went through a deep reflection. I got to change the equation. So I had been constantly going back to my childhood haunts on the reservation and in Gallup, New Mexico, but I always went back to this one house where the worst of the worst happened. 

My mom went homeless there. My dad tried to kill her there. My mom was sitting in an empty house. My dad just took us all out of school. We just struck off. Cut off electricity. Took the food, no water, nothing. And left this mentally ill woman who had less than a ninth grade education and just dumped her like a hurt dog. About a week after my dad did this, he had cut her brake lining, so he thought she should be dead. But she didn't die and she was still in that house. And he made me go back to find out if she was physically there. And when I did, she was sitting in a fetal position on a cold floor, a dirty mattress, and I stared at her and I saw the look of complete hopelessness. The eyes are vacant. And I didn't know what complete hopelessness was till that minute. She saw me, jumped up and said, "You're my only boy. You're my oldest boy. You've gotta take care of me. You and I have to go out in the world 'cause I can't survive without you." My father came up behind us. Hit her real hard. Knocked her to the ground. Grabbed me. Took me to the car, and then he hit me with his elbow in the head. I was sitting in the passenger's seat and I didn't feel it. My head hit the window, but between the window and his elbow, I felt nothing. And I realized at that point, that was where in my life that I broke. That my spirit broke. That I would never like myself again. Would never trust myself again. Would never love myself again, and I would never let anybody get close to me because the pain was too great. When I went back to that house, I re-lived that moment and plenty of others. There was a very nice man that lived there, and when I walked into his living room and I looked in the living room, all of these memories came back like in three dimension. I started crying and he talked to me till two in the morning. And I walked to the door and thanked him, and he said, "Look, you can't change your childhood, but you can get past this," and for some reason, it was the exact right message at exactly the right time. 

Went back to the hotel, and the next morning after I woke up... I kept journals all my life and saved them, but I started writing again, furiously. And I picked up the phone and called my dad, which I never do. The least helpful person, you'd ever call. And I said, "Did you ever feel bad about what you did to us?" And he started cursing me out using every filthy word you can. Calling me a coward, not much of a man, a guy who would never amount to anything. And he said, and by the way, you haven't... Don't revise history to make yourself feel better. I didn't do anything wrong. I was done with him. I could forgive him. I could let it go. He could never change. There's things you can change, things you can't. Couldn't change him. You're not gonna get that. You're gonna have to give yourself something that the people who did it to you won't. So I call my mom. Again, something I rarely did then. And I said, "Did it ever occur to you the incredible pressure you put on me to leave with you and be the head of the household at 10?" And she said, "Well, you deserve it. You left me. You abandon me. You're my oldest boy. You never help me. You're not here, right where I am now. You have a lot to account for. I'm sorry, you feel bad, you should." And when I put the phone down I realized, "My God. I'm trying to be as mean as my dad, and beyond belief, savior for my mom, and then defining myself for my failure to do both things. And I gradually, from that moment on, I started seeing myself differently. I started being more forgiving to myself. Realized over about a period of a year, I need to write this down. Something had happened inside of me that changed my life. And it was something I'd wanted all my life, and already accomplished the catharsis. This was an after the fact. And I felt very committed to writing it, to let other people know, "Hey, you can do things. You can get past things that you're absolutely convinced are impossible. It's not gonna be easy. You're gonna have to work incredibly hard." If you read my book, I made so many mistakes. I did so many dumb things. Did so much wrong, but I just never quit. And when this moment happened in that house with this man, I had put in a ton of work. Maybe it hadn't accomplished its goal but it was working in my sub-conscience. Once I was able to be honest and say, "This happened. I did this. And I'm sorry about it, but I don't have to be defined by it," and from that time on life has gotten quite a bit better for me.

Mindy: So the book then was something that came out of the experience of already having changed.

David: Well, yes. What had happened in that house in the conversation with both parents was the final catalyst, and then no one really knew. When I wrote the book, the first thing that surprised me is all my college friends and clients that have known me for a very long time said, "we always knew something was wrong. Why couldn't you tell anybody? Why didn't you say something?" And the answer is, and anybody who's been through anything remotely like I have, you can't tell people. I mean, you're a young person. You're in college in your early 20s, and people say, "Oh, how's your family?" "Oh, my dad kills people. He beat my mother to what he thought was her death. How was your life?" I didn't want people feeling sorry for me. I certainly didn't want people judging me. I just thought I'm different than everybody else in the world. They're good people. I'm bad people. You're not bad people because you went through bad things, and you're not bad people because you did some dumb and bad things while you went through that. The end goal is to get better, stronger, play it forward, go back and fix as much as you can, but before you want the world to change, change yourself. And once I really understood that and made those changes, life got much better. It didn't get perfect. It's not perfect now, and it won't be. But my God, it's very, very good. I still wake up with the occasional nightmare and stuff like that, but by and large, I don't feel like the guy that went through the book anymore. That guy's gone.

Mindy: The real reward isn't being able to feel that way, but the book itself has done so well. You've won many, many awards - the Next Generation Indie Award for best memoir... An International Book Award for best true crime. You've done very well, and looking at your reviews on Amazon, you have over 11,000 reviews. And your overall rating is four and a half stars. So there has to be just an incredible feeling, not only of course, the personal reward of having turned your entire self-concept around but also just to be able then to find this outlet and have the outlet itself be so incredibly successful.

David: Well, I've been very fortunate. It crossed over 200,000 in sales printed in Russian and Lithuanian. I wanna thank my publisher who helped me figure this out, my publicist, who's very smart. But the other piece is getting out of the way of the story and letting the story tell itself. I wanted people to see what happened and imagine themselves in that spot, asking themselves, what would I have done? But more and less, what I wanted them to understand was the journey and how I had gotten through the journey and how it had got me to a place that I never dreamt possible in the beginning. So, I think the reason the story did well is the story, not me. Just... I knew there was a lot that I went through. I thought there was something to say, and I thought I knew how to say it. And I got incredibly fortunate and people felt like it was a message they could relate to. My final say on that is, I think one thing that really helped it was the honesty. You know, I had advice - to leave some of the really dark part out - what he did, and you went through. I said, we can write a novel deciding I'm superman. We can write an honest memoir showing you that I'm anything but Superman. And that the reader who reads this will see themselves as not being Superman either, and imagining how they might work through some of these things. And realizing that an ordinary person can work through extraordinary things if they never give up.

Mindy: And that's a great message for writers too, because there's a lot of rejection and a lot of pain and a lot of your own self-worth wrapped up in your work when you're a writer.

David: And you're gonna get rejected. I got rejected a lot. You're also gonna get bad reviews. You're a horrible person. You belong in prison. You're gonna get all that. So here's what I tell people. Welcome to the world. The world's just full of people who are just ready to jump on you, tell you you're no good, laugh at you when you trip all that. That's fine. You just have to let that be a part of life. But what you have to do to overcome it is you can't throw a rock at every barking dog and get where you wanna go. Every rejection, whether you're writing a book, or you're applying for a job, or you're trying to get past what I got past, is a chance to do it differently and try again. The real essence of my message is you can try 100 times, 1,000 times and think, "I'm giving up," but there could be one little tweak, one little epiphany, a different effort, a different person, a different situation, and all at once, you've crawled through the bottleneck you never thought you'd get through. The people who don't make it - quit. And I will say, doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.

Mindy: That's certainly the truth.

David: And be clear, you can find a thousand doubters on the block you live in. There are very positive people in this world who want the best for you, but you'll find a surprising number of people who are also glad to see you not make it. And that's too bad 'cause I wanna hang out with the people who wanna see me succeed. And then my friendship, my children, my family, my friends - I want them all to succeed, and I hope every one of them does better than I did. You find the right kind of positive people and they don't quit. They're gonna go far. Even if you don't think they will. You just watch. They'll get there.

Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let people know where they can find the book and where they can find you online.

David: You're wonderful, Mindy, and thank you. So the book can be purchased on Amazon, easiest, just The Pale-Faced Lie. David Crow, crow like the bird. But you can get everything including how to get the book in other ways and all my blogs and stuff about me on David Crow author dot com.

Mindy:     Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

Tetyana Denford On Writing The Child of Ukraine and Talent vs. Timing

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Tetyana Denford. She was the author of The Child of Ukraine, which released this month, and originally this book was a self-published novel, although it is very much also kind of memoir, family history, and the story of your grandmother. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that and a little bit about the background behind this book.

Tetyana: It's so nice to be here chatting about it. I'm always happy to chat about this story because it's so cinematic and so epic, it doesn't sound real, but it's based on true events. So when I published this book in 2020, it was originally called Motherland. There's a lot of stories about women, motherhood, daughters and mothers in that relationship, but also there is a statue in Ukraine called Mother Motherland. It's very famous because it's this woman holding a shield and a sword, and you can see it in the center of Kyiv. My grandmother, she practically raised me for about five years when my parents were working, so I would hear lots of stories about her family and her farm. And she didn't speak very much English, so she and I would exclusively speak in Ukrainian, which is my first language. And she would tell me all of these amazing colorful stories about escaping the war. There was a piece to the puzzle that I only found out about in 2015, and that prompted me to write the book, but her story was that she escaped her childhood home when she was 18 because her brothers were murdered by Stalin's police. They were collected and rounded up with a lot of other political activists, and they were thrown into prison and shot by firing squad. She left her home at 18 - never saw her parents again.

There was German occupation as well as Russian, and the lesser of two evils was to kind of help the Germans defeat the Russians. Do whatever you have to and then come back, and she never did, because it wasn't safe. So she was in a labor camp. She met the man who would be my grandfather and then they, after the war, fled to Australia, because Australia at that point was providing land and work for immigrants and citizenship after you worked the land for three years. So it had seemed like a good deal, even though it was in the middle of nowhere, in the Dust Bowl. They traveled there and something happened to her, without giving away any spoilers, it is quite a tragedy. And she was forced to make a decision that basically changed the course of her life. So they immigrated to New York. It kind of reads like a memoir, but it has a little bit of history, obviously, in it as well. And I had to thread all of these pieces together as a novel. I didn't know all of the very specific details. So it couldn't be a memoir, but I wanted it to cross a lot of genres, if that makes sense. I wanted it to be appealing for people who don't necessarily always read historical fiction. I didn't want people to look at it and go, "Oh God, it's gonna be really politically heavy or information heavy." There's a little bit of everything in it. And I think that's what people are connecting to. The general kind of umbrella feeling is that it's about a family, and it's about love, and it's about loss and motherhood, and parenthood and marriage.

Mindy: And those are all themes that apply across humanity.

Tetyana: I wanted people to be drawn to that. I wanted to prompt people even to ask questions within their own families. Because we grow up sometimes with grandparents and even great-grandparents, and we don't really, when we're younger, we don't actually ask them anything. We see them as these elders. We see them as a very specific role. And actually, this book, for me anyway, reminded me that they are also human beings with their own baggage, and that's so important.

Mindy: The lens through which we most often struggle is seeing our parents as real people. And I think though that it can complicate things much further when you have to actually think of your grandparents as real people who were young once and who were going through everything that you've gone through too and probably more. I agree. I think as youth we often feel like we're the interesting ones. It's like, no, actually, everything that you're doing, they already did, and we should be talking to them and getting their stories.

Tetyana: With the backdrop of war, I want people to understand that what is happening in real time, to not just Ukraine but a lot of cultures, is something that we have to learn about and ask questions of our parents, grandparents. Otherwise, how do we change the narrative? How do we raise children to appreciate their own living history right in front of them?

Mindy: It is very much forefront, and people that could not have told you what colors were in the Ukrainian flag now are intimately aware of it. It's part of the larger conversation now. It's not a new story. This has happened before.

Tetyana: Oh yeah. When all of these unfortunate events started happening in February, the mentality was, well, we're ready. We've been ready for this for decades. It's not anything new. These are the stories, almost in parallel, the stories that were happening to our grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. It's wildly upsetting that it's so similar, and it's the same playbook. I was speaking to a journalist friend of mine who's in Ukraine, and I was saying, enough is enough. Now we use our literature, our art, our activism. Now, this is the watershed moment. Now we are the future, the younger generation Ukrainians who are saying, "That's it." We are using social media to then push a new narrative forward. I was reading somewhere that I think this is the most photographed and recorded war in modern history. And it helps that we have a President who's not some dusty old politician, who actually represents the future, the modern young Ukrainians who are taking to these social media channels and saying, "Hey, pay attention."

Mindy: From what you're hearing from family and friends that are still over there or in the moment that are there every day, does it feel like it's different this time?

Tetyana: I think it's half and half. They're exhausted by it. It feels like the same thing over again. I think if they try and, it's difficult, but if they try and remove themselves from the devastation that's happening right in front of their eyes, they know that they have a much farther reach than they ever have when it comes to reaching the media. Western media is kind of complicated because sometimes it seems like it's playing both sides. But Ukraine is now being seen in a very different way. Maybe more in lines of the humanness behind who we are instead of what the media has portrayed us historically within the lens of a scandal, or gangsters, or mafia, or rent a bride. All of those things have been quite damaging and maybe now, even though it's so unfortunate what's happening, maybe now people are looking at us slightly differently. They assume that we're just some dumb bunch of farmers, when actually, we are wildly industrious, creative, intelligent - all these amazing things that nobody really kind of understood before.

Mindy: So you mentioned the media. You also work as a translator for Frontline News since 2014. So can you talk a little bit about that experience? And did that serve as motivation in some ways to work with your grandmother's material and get that family story out there?

Tetyana: That's an interesting question actually. Nobody's asked me that. I think so. When they reached out to me during the Revolution of Dignity, it was through a friend of mine who I went to college with. She very kindly put them in touch with me saying, "Listen, I know you speak Ukrainian fluently. They might need somebody." And then since then, it's been an absolute honor and joy to work with Frontline because they are one of the few news outlets that really push a very truthful and painful narrative. Not just Ukraine, but they expose a lot of what's happening in the world when it comes to politics and world events. I think it really maybe planted a seed without me really knowing that it did. I started working with them in 2014. 2015 is when I got the call from my mother about this massive secret within the family that nobody knew about, and I started writing notes. And then I thought, I'm the only one that can write this. I'm an only child. This needs to be recorded somehow. All of these kind of events, because it is... It was completely unbelievable and cinematic and I thought, "Okay, well, I can do this." But I do think that Frontline reminding me of what my insides were, and by that mean I've always been a proud Ukrainian. But I've never really had many opportunities to really fly that flag proudly in the sense that I was living in the UK 'cause I'd moved there with my English husband and we had started a family. And there was no Ukrainian community that I could connect with. So I was a little bit removed. But having that reignited who I was, deep down. And my grandmother was still alive then, and I was still in contact with her. And all these things started happening all at once. That, I think, really just started kind of blossoming within me. And then when I started going out on submission to try and get traditionally published, initially, with Motherland, I received so many amazing responses from agents, but at the time they're like, "yeah, historical fiction, especially about Ukraine, it's not gonna sell." Because it's timing. It's a business. I didn't take it personally, but I was still proud of the story, that's why I self-published. But now, all of these things are happening all at once. They converged in this massive mountain for me and for so many other Ukrainians. I'm just proud that I'm part of it, and part of this larger momentum and this group of people that are like, Okay, now let's all start paying attention.

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Mindy: So coming back to the book and talking about the actual process of writing it. You said that your mother had contacted you, there was this family secret, and your grandmother was still alive. So were you able then to work with her in terms of the content?

Tetyana: I would have liked to. She blocked out a lot of the trauma for a lot of reasons, which people will discover in the book, but it was too painful for her. And the only thing that I could do was work with my mother on a lot of the information. And she would glean information, not just verbally, but she managed to find records - court records, documents - of what had happened to her in Australia. So that was the extent of my research. I couldn't go too deep with my grandmother because she, for over 60 years, she had completely erased the memory of what had happened to her. She had to block out what she had had to do and the people that she was in contact with. For her to survive her life, it had to have never happened. So when my mother confronted her with this information, and I say confronted, they met for a glass of wine and dinner a few times. And it took a while for her to get it out of her, and then my grandmother would talk to her. But it's not something that I think I would have felt comfortable talking to her about because it's older generation. You don't talk about that stuff with your grandchildren. Not even with your children normally. But my mother managed to get that. So I worked with my mother on research, and then I worked with genealogical records, Ancestry dot com as far as passenger lists. And I remember telling her I was writing a book based on the story of her life, and she looked at me and goes, "Mishka" - it means little mouse in Ukrainian - she goes, "Mishka, why would you write a book about my life? It's not that interesting." I remember thinking, she probably says that because there were so many women in her position at the time. Not just Ukrainian, but after the war, so many families that were separated, and so many people who were displaced, and women who had to go through a lot of trauma that was not recognized because it was a man's world, especially then.

Mindy: There is that narrative of, yes, there was this incredibly traumatic and momentous thing that happened to me, but I'm not special. It happened to a lot of people. That's harrowing that someone can have something that traumatic happen and for one thing, of course, have to block it out, but for another to just be like, "you know, it's not that special."

Tetyana: I look back, and I always thought, to my mind, my grandmother, and my mother, but my grandmother especially, just... I felt like she was made of steel. I know so many Ukrainians where we've had the same conversation. Well, you see it now. You see what Ukrainians are like. They are just relentless. I wanted to convey that in the book. Ultimately there's always a villain. Yes, there's a villain in my book, definitely. But the characters of my family made choices that probably were not popular. They sometimes became unsympathetic characters, and that's what I wanted. I wanted people to go on that journey and think, "I don't know how I would have behaved when all of this was thrown at me." I wanted people to feel conflicted and eventually sympathetic because my grandfather was, in real life, he was abusive emotionally. He was kind of even physically abusive. There was conditioning that led to that and we find that out in the book.

Mindy: So talking then about the path of publication for this book. You said that you had originally aimed for the traditional publishing model with this, and you didn't have any luck because timing, like you said. And that is a really typical story. And I think it is very interesting and one that is super relevant to my audience is that you can write something and it can be a great book, and it can be a wonderful story, and it can be something that a lot of people would connect with and find moving, and it can have great writing, and the narrative can be super strong. But if the market isn't open to it at the moment, it's not gonna land. So if you could talk a little bit about the process at the beginning with this book and then how it ended up where you are today.

Tetyana: One of my favorite things is talking about the process of writing and getting a book to publication, 'cause I've learned a lot. And what I imagined it would be turned out to be very different. One of the most important things is even when you're submitting, you have to give yourself the best chance you can. So your query letter, your email that you write to them as a pitch, it has to be so compelling and so good, and you also have to embody the business of getting a book to publication. You're not just some starving artist who sits in the corner and hopes for the best. You have to carry yourself in a way that engages an audience, engages the agents. You have to sell it. I was very lucky in the sense that when I was sending out the first three chapters of my manuscript and I had the query letter down, and I personalized each letter to each different agent. Because you do your research and you make sure everything is pointing to yes. It doesn't guarantee, but at least you feel good about what you're presenting. In the first couple of months, I received 12 full requests. It's a unicorn. Like, a full request is a big deal. And then the request came back eventually and they're like, "You have such beautiful writing, but we needs more of this, or we need more secondary characters. We need more tension. The market isn't great." There are all these kind of factors that were in the way.

Agents, I realized, are human beings. They're doing a job. It's not personal, and every single one of these agents that responded to me in kind, even though it was a rejection, they were so nice about it. A couple of agents actually wanted me to change the story and re-submit it, and I thought, "Oh, I'm not sure I can do that because this is based on a true story, and I know you wanna make it compelling and commercial, but I kinda wanna stick to what happens." They were all so lovely, and I made so many wonderful connections. And we are still friendly and still connected, and they are so supportive. And it made me realize that it's just one aspect of the business, and I see so many amazing writers who are waiting for the yes, waiting for an agent, and I thought to myself, am I gonna sit around and wait for somebody to open the door? Or am I gonna open it myself? Because ultimately, why am I doing this? Am I writing to be on a best seller list? Am I writing for the fame and the money? Because if that's true, I'm in the wrong business. I want to write a book to get it on a shelf.

I began the process of teaching myself how to self-publish, and I made a lot of mistakes along the way. I didn't hire an editor, so I was practically going blind after eight drafts. I started a Kickstarter just to raise money for upfront costs, like having a book designer help me with the cover. And to get a hard cover at the time, Amazon, it was not allowing hardcover books. And I wanted a hard cover book of Motherland. So I went to Lulu, which is a different self-publishing platform, and they allowed hard covers, but it was hard to work with them. When it was finally launched, and so many people supported me on Kickstarter, it was wildly powering, and it made me so happy that people wanted to read the story. I made money within the first couple of months. Again, it's not what I'm doing it for, but it was a little bit of validation, like people want to buy my words. I really want people, especially now, when we have all of these amazing platforms - like Amazon is now doing hard cover, can self-publish a hard cover. There are so many brilliant authors out there that don't need to wait. It's a very fickle industry. It's really hard. Yes, it's great to have an agent because they open doors for you to get into magazines and newspapers, and they kind of push and market. But knowing the behind the scenes, teaching myself the behind the scenes of what goes into publishing a book, then put me in a really interesting position to feel like not just a writer but having a business brain, and approaching it in a really knowledgeable way. And two years later, I get a call out of the blue, or an email rather, from the Hachette imprint, Bookouture, saying, "Listen, we're really interested in signing you." Now, again, I was like, "Oh, this is great," but a lot of writers jump at it, at the chance to be with a publisher. And this is direct to publisher. This is not an agent going to book a tour saying, "Hey, how about you publish my client's book?" They reached out to me saying, "your writing is so compelling," and they were so kind and it was so lovely. But when we had a meeting, I said to myself, "I do not want to be in a position where I'm hat in hand going, Yes, whatever you can give me, I'll take." Because I have a very specific vision about how I want to work with my publisher. And if they are not collaborative and they treat me like a cash cow, then I am very happy to keep self-publishing. And having that, being in that empowered position, I've got myself here. Now, what can you do for me? How can we work together? And they presented themselves in such an amazing professional and forward-thinking way, I was really happy. Eventually after a couple of meetings, they ended up signing me and again, it's not about the advance. It's not about the money and the fame and whatever. It's about getting people to be impacted by my work. That feeling is priceless. When people say to me, "Oh my gosh, I've handed your book to a friend of mine or the reading group, and they're asking so many questions about their own family," all of that is just beyond. That's exactly what I'd hoped to achieve as an author.

Mindy: So tell me about them finding you. How did Hachette go about discovering you? Were they looking for stories about the Ukraine? How did you pop up on their radar?

Tetyana: This is a little bit cynical, but I think publishers and agents were observing what was happening since February. I think probably were looking for the angle as to how we can get more voices and stories about Ukraine out there. The best thing you can do is amplify what's happening and not within a war narrative lens. It's about the humanity behind what's right next door. When February happened, I kind of went into high gear Ukrainian mode. I wanted people to understand that if they wanted somebody who was connected to Ukraine, but in a modern way, I'm one of those people. So I managed to make sure that all of my social channels were very focused on Ukraine creators, literature, art, activism. What I didn't want to do is put the focus on... Russia is evil, talking about Putin... All of that, it's so negative, that even though that was the reality, I wanted people to understand about who Ukrainians were. So I put myself in hyper-focus, and I'm pretty sure, if I'm not mistaken, that a couple of the editors at Bookouture were already following my Instagram and my social media. So they were aware of me because I'd only spoken about my family story over the years, but now it went into overdrive. And I think they were just kind of maybe monitoring me. Maybe I was the atypical writer. I'm very social media friendly. So I kind of cover all grounds, and I think they were probably, if I'm not putting words in their mouth, I think they were just interested in what I had to offer as far as kind of a well-rounded author that they might be able to work with.

Mindy: I really, again, just love that idea of you having a great story and good writing and a powerful narrative, but just the timing not being there. I was just looking at your Instagram. Obviously, that is where you're really super active. With that in mind, last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find the book, The Child of Ukraine.

Tetyana: I feel like I'm everywhere. I have a website, Tetyana Denford dot com, and you can find links to order any of my books. I've also self-published some poetry books. People can drop me their email there and that way they can stay updated. I'm on Twitter at Tetyana Writes - quite active on there, as well as my Instagram, which is the same handle at Tetyana Writes. I also do a show that I host called The Craft and Business of Books, and it basically interviews editors, publicists, agents, authors about the behind the scenes of their experience about being traditionally published and even self-published. I'm part of a documentary with Frontline News coming out at the end of the summer about what happened in Ukraine. It's not easy viewing. I love Frontline, and I think it's gonna be a beautiful and harrowing documentary. And The Child of Ukraine, you can find it on Amazon. It's out on audio, ebook, as well as print everywhere.

Mindy:          Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.