Never Touched – Laney Wylde

Never Touched Chapter One

My soul is crooked and dark, depraved and destined for hell. At least, that’s what Pastor Jeff told me…

Smile, Sawyer. I couldn’t. Stop crying. I tried to stop. You’re defiant. I had to be. Don’t you love me? No. Don’t you love Jesus? I didn’t know anymore. Why can’t you obey like Simone? Because I’d rather go to hell. Simone, show Sawyer how to be good. I didn’t want to watch. Sawyer, open your eyes. I did. To Simone’s—blue, clear like shattered glass. Shattered by the threat of hell. Shattered by Jeff.

The therapist I was forced to see wanted me to talk about this, I presumed, since she wanted me to talk about my childhood, about anything that could have led to my December incident.

Bitch, please.

“Is there anything on your mind, Sawyer?” Dr. Harper started each session with the same wordless stare before crumbling into this question. She had two personas: soft, sweet therapist with a gentle manner, and assertive pain in my ass. I imagined her psyching herself up for our forty-five minutes twice each week. I liked to picture her in front of the mirror saying some kind of Sawyer-specific mantra—I will make it through the whole session as sweet-therapist. I will not break character. I would have felt bad for her if she wasn’t making so much money off my incarceration.

Her simple question, “Is there anything on your mind, Sawyer?” was already an admission of defeat. Every session was a game of Talk Chicken. Who would cave to fill the awkward silence first? The first time was the longest, a full six minutes before she broke. Our fourth round, the undefeated champion: me.

I shook my head.

“You’ve been here for two weeks now.” Was that all? She crossed her legs and propped her delicate face in her spider-leg fingers with her elbow on the arm of the chair. “How have you been adjusting?”

I shrugged.

“Do you like your roommate?”

“I don’t like that she has six pillows.”

“Are you saying you don’t have enough pillows?”

“I have one.” Which wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t paper thin and my spine wasn’t battered from years of gymnastics and cheer. “The second night I was here, I asked one of the nurses for a second one, and she said they were all out. But I knew where they were. She offered me a Trazodone to help me sleep.”

“Did you take it?”

“No. I don’t need medication.”

“I have here in my notes,” she started as she lifted a page in my file, “that you are on Effexor and Zoloft daily, Xanax as needed, and were given an injection of Haldol on the tenth. Are you saying you’re not swallowing your medication?”

“Haldol? Is that booty juice?”

“Yes. Did something happen on the tenth?”

“Sure.” I switched my bare feet to squish under the opposite knees. “Some nurses pushed me face down on the solitary room bed, then pulled off my leggings and panties.”

“I’m sorry if the shot was triggering for you.”

I scoffed. “It’s not a trigger. Nothing’s a trigger. It’s just normal instinct to fight someone when they pin you down and take your clothes off, isn’t it?”

“What led up to the ‘booty juice?’” she asked, but she already knew. She had the file.

“I’m told I threw a chair at Louie…” I flicked my fingers as if I this had yet to be proven to me. “During lunch, apparently.”

“You don’t remember?”

“Of course I remember,” I lied.

“Okay.” She lifted her chin from her palm, her brown hair swishing over her collarbone as she challenged me. “Where’d you hit him?”

“In the thigh.” Lying again. And to a psychologist, which was basically lying to a mind reader.

“No, Sawyer, you missed.”

Shit. Of course I missed. I should have guessed that. Dad always said I had terrible aim.

I crossed my arms. “Then why did I get booty juiced?”

“What was the last thing you remember before throwing the chair?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you tell me why you did it?”

I shook my head, though I knew. Sure, I was violent, but not without reason.

She softened her voice and leaned forward, her sharp elbows poking into her knees. “Sawyer, I know what he called you. Were you feeling unsafe?”

I snickered. “You all say that word a lot, you know? Feeling. Like everything I experience is some delusion, a deviation from fact. But if you know what he called me, you know I wasn’t feeling unsafe. I was unsafe.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s almost visiting hours. Can I leave now?” I asked as I dropped my feet to the carpet.

She sighed, her eyes moving past me at the clock on the wall. “You may, but do you understand the conditions of your hospitalization?”

“I’m here to pay my debt to society.”

“You’re here to get help—”

“Mandated by the courts.”

“But if you don’t let us help you, we can decide that it is in your best interest to stay longer. If you continue to cut your sessions short—”

“Okay.” I sighed and bounced my toes against the floor. It was probably a psych patient thing; I’d scan any circle of us here and find a lot of restless legs and fingers. Or maybe it was just this place. It was January, and the AC was blasting. We were all bundled up in our drawstring-free hoodies, shaking to get warm. “Tell me what I need to do to get out of here.”

“Basically, I can’t sign off on your discharge until I have evidence you’re not going to repeat the kind of behavior that got you arrested last month. Are you ready to tell me about that night?”

“Isn’t everything in my file?”

“I meant talk about it for your sake, not mine.”

“I’ve already told the story a hundred times: to the police, to my lawyer, to the shrink who evaluated me for the plea bargain—”

“Right, but you haven’t talked about how you felt.”

I summoned my most melodramatic eye roll yet. I could imagine Dr. Harper’s view of it: the white of my eyes showing as my pupils revolved back into my head in slow motion. Contemptuous and gorgeous. I’d been working on it for years. “I feel that it wasn’t my fault. I feel that I shouldn’t be locked up here. I feel that it is unfair.”

“Unfair, okay—”

“If I have to stay, can we talk about something else?” I sank back into the couch, crossed my arms, and kicked my bare feet onto the table, one ankle dropping onto the other.

“Of course, Sawyer. What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing.”

Dr. Harper sighed discreetly and flipped through my file. “Why don’t we talk about your CBT assignment from yesterday?” She pulled out a stapled packet of papers, glanced at it, then dropped it on the coffee table between us. Her needlelike fingertips pivoted it my direction. “I was intrigued by how you filled it out.” That was shrink talk for—I was pissed to see that you didn’t even try to follow the directions.

I didn’t have to see the Behavior Chain Analysis form, which was a diagram of blank bubbles representing links in a chain from a trigger to a bad behavior, to know what I wrote. The idea was for us to fill in all the bubbles, and then find the best link in the chain to break before we misbehaved again. Over the entire page, I had scrawled JAKE in intricately filled bold letters.

“What was the problem behavior you were trying to address?”

“December 2.”

She nodded. The date was more than enough to explain. “And who is Jake?”

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September 2, 2018/by Laney Wylde

Never Touched, reading, spirituality, Twelve Pieces of Flesh Series

On Receiving a Forearm in the Mail (And Maybe a Hand, Too)

“Okay, I have two items of homework for you….Ready for them?” Jonalyn asked at the close of our mentoring session.

“Ready!” I was anxious to know I was doing the right thing, or at least not the terribly wrong thing.

Her assignments: read Judges (the book of the Bible) chapters 19 through 21 and jot down every graphic atrocity, then ask God why he included those passages in his Word.

Easy enough. I’d read Judges at least twice, probably more. No biggie.

Oh, pre-assignment Laney, you were so naive.

To say Judges 19 is rough is a cataclysmic understatement. Want a summary? You don’t, but you’re getting one:

Concubine cheats on Husband.

Concubine leaves him to stay with her dad.

Husband picks up Concubine.

On the way home, Husband and Concubine stay at a Stranger’s house in a town of the tribe of Benjamen.

Men of Benjamen (MoB) pound on Stranger’s door imploring him to surrender Husband for gang-raping fun.

Stranger says that that’s not polite to do to a guest. “But, here, take his concubine and my virgin daughter instead.”

MoB accepts offer of Concubine as object of gang-rape.

Mob rapes Concubine until they tire of her.

Concubine crawls back to Stranger’s door.

Concubine dies.

Husband nearly trips over her body as he leaves in the morning. He tells her, “Get up; let’s go,” before realizing she’s dead.

Husband cuts her into twelve pieces and sends her body parts all over Israel to rally vengeance against MoB.

Chapters 20-21 detail Israel’s war against their own tribe Benjamen, their genocide of that tribe except for a few hundred men. These survivors, of course, deserved women to bear their children, so they kidnaped some and killed other virgins’ families so they’d be free to marry them. Lucky ladies.

Still with me? Good.

I’ve read this story before, but only glossed over it. This time, though, I was that concubine being shoved out the door to that mob. I was terrified. I was betrayed. I was worthless.

I was that virgin daughter hearing my dad’s eagerness to throw me into anguish and disgrace for the sake of some guy he just met. I watched that scared concubine take my place. I had to go on living with this father who saw me as something to hand over to any man.

Of course, until I was killed in the genocide.

Three chapters are dedicated to this narrative and these chapters are bookended with, “In those days Israel had no king.” The last chapter ends with, “everyone did as he saw fit.”

So, you could say that the biblical writers included this story in the Canon to show what the kids did when Dad was away or to show why there were tens of thousands of Jews just missing from history. Fine. But why so much detail? Why did I need to know the concubine died with her hands on the threshold of the stranger’s door? Or know that he used a knife not a sword to cut up his concubine? Or have the image of him chopping her up “limb by limb?”

Because that’s storytelling.

Because I wouldn’t be outraged if I knew some men raped a woman a few thousand years ago. I’d be indignant for a minute. But I wouldn’t grieve. I wouldn’t wonder what her name was or what she felt as she died. I wouldn’t ache over the human condition–over the condition of even God’s people. I wouldn’t think of my condition–of the violence or greed or flagrant selfishness I’m capable of.

That’s what this writer of Judges did with a few concise but gory chapters.

If the biblical writers did it, why can’t the Christian author? Why can’t he document the ugly side of humanity with the same sharpness and clarity? Why don’t Christian literary agents accept submissions with even one curse word or whiff of sexuality? If we look through the shelves of a Christian bookstore, why can’t we find characters as broken as the concubine?

Characters as broken as Sawyer?

Is it because Sawyer, and subsequently her author, use unwholesome talk?

Is it because she has extramarital sex, and her author is guilty of writing sex scenes which must be erotica which causes lust which is sin?

Is it because her author’s portrayal of her sin would cause us to stumble?

Or are we afraid that, if we look at Sawyer, we’ll see the desperate friend we never reached out to, the abuse we turned a blind eye to, the unloved Jesus sought but we shunned?

Or are we afraid we’ll see ourselves?

That was the final part of Jonalyn’s assignment for me: see if my motivations for writing Never Touched in all its R-rated glory aligned with God’s reasons for including stories like Judges 19 in the Bible.

The Evolution of a Love Triangle

It is a rare thing to find your last love in your first. No one told me the same applies to writing fiction.

As I mentioned in my post “The Evolution of Sawyer”, I originally planned for Never Touched to be the love story of Sawyer and Guy A, with her personal trauma creating secondary conflict. In other words, I wanted to write a romance novel without Guy B.

As I wrote my first draft I learned three things:

(1) I am not a romance writer. Maybe it’s my personality. Maybe it’s that I’m philosophically against HEAs. Maybe it’s that I want you to believe those reasons and not the fact that writing romance well is a monstrous task. I used to laugh and tell my husband that love stories were the easiest thing in the world to construct. Oh, how little did I know.

(2) Sawyer is not a romance protagonist. If you asked Sawyer if her story was about finding love, she would laugh in your face. Then she’d pour you a shot of whiskey and say, “We only have a few minutes before he catches us with hooch. Let’s begin…”

(3) Sawyer’s story would be flimsy at best without Guy B. No. That’s not true. Guy A, Guy B, and Sawyer aren’t a love triangle; they are the three legs that her story stands on.

Just because this isn’t a romance novel doesn’t mean Never Touched is devoid of love. It means that love is so much more than attraction and electricity and sex. It’s compassion and devotion and holding the hand of someone who needs you even when they fight to be rid of you. It’s indignation and grief and undeserved heartache. It’s thirst and hunger so the other can be filled. And, sometimes, it’s surrender.

Sawyer and Guy A have all of this. Sawyer and Guy B do, too.

That’s a love triangle.

In other words, if Never Touched was a war for Sawyer’s heart, Guy A and Guy B would be equally matched. They would be worthy opponents. You know how I know? Because Guy B was never supposed to get the girl and he did. I had no choice but to let him after this one stupid chapter I wrote back in November that changed the momentum of the entire story (it’s in the final draft; see if you can spot it). Because half my beta readers were outraged by the ending and half were giddy. Because even Sawyer didn’t know until that critical moment who her heart belonged to.

It’s a stretch to say I crafted this love triangle. Truly, I stumbled upon it. Sawyer forced my hand. That’s just how she is. Guy B is pushy too. I blame him a little. But that’s the most rewarding kind of writing, isn’t it: when you learn your characters’ desires better than they do and scramble to write down their choices as they make them?

I can’t wait to hear what you think of Sawyer’s choice. Until then, here’s what I want to know: what’s your favorite love triangle in literature, television, theatre, or film? Mine: Jane, Michael, and Rafael in Jane the Virgin. I sympathized with both Michael and Rafael. I rooted for either in different episodes. I couldn’t predict who Jane would choose in the end. That is a well-crafted love triangle.

That’s my favorite. What’s yours?

Psst…that’s what the comment section is for.

February 20, 2018/by Laney Wylde

Never Touched, writing

Getting Published: Advice from an Amateur

My journey to being a published author has been a little Legally Blonde-esque, but my publisher wants all the new authors to write a post that could be helpful to other writers. So, here’s the advice I’d give to myself when I started. Hopefully, it’ll be helpful to you!

1. Write like no one is going to read it. Edit so anyone can read it.

You don’t have to read any further. This is my best advice.

I wrote my first book paralyzed with the fear that people would judge me by my writing. Consequently, the end product was awful and will never see the light of day.

Then, I remembered why I write: because my brain hurts when I don’t. Writing is therapy, and therapy only works when I’m honest.

So, when I started writing Never Touched, I assumed no one would want to read a twisted story narrated by an irreverent teenager and written by a Christian author. I had never read a book in the New Adult genre and didn’t have a particular reader in mind when I started. I just wrote the most genuinely flawed protagonist I could and let her tell her story. Anytime I was concerned that her words were too brash or too dark, I let her say them anyway because at least they were true.

2. Take a shower.

Or sit in traffic with the radio off. Or go for a walk with your cell phone in your pocket. You’ll be amazed at the scenes your brain comes up with when it’s resting.

3. Collect helpful quotes about writing from the greatest.

I have a cork board in my bedroom (where I usually write) with advice from Hemingway, James Patterson, and Stephen King. I also keep marked-up drafts of my old chapters from writer’s group there for encouragement and to remind me of my habitual mistakes.

4. Make characters so real they can make their own choices

Get to know your protagonist. If she’s not like you, research, research, research (but don’t let this stop you from getting started on your first draft). I spent a lot of time learning about the psychological and social effects of sexual abuse and trauma, including consulting health professionals and reading a survivor memoir, Not My Secret to Keep.

Next, empathize completely. Be so honest with your own emotions it makes you uncomfortable, then write your character’s experiences out of that discomfort. Get personal. It’s fiction. No one needs to know where you end and the protagonist starts or if there is any overlap at all. For more about how I developed my protagonist, check out The Evolution of Sawyer.

5. Throw away your first draft

I was about 60,000 words into a very different version of Never Touched when I read Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects and started Dark Places. I took two long days off from writing to evaluate my voice as an author, and realized my current draft wasn’t me, and, more importantly, wasn’t Sawyer. On the third day, I opened a new document and started over.

Subpoint: read! Read everything!

6. Share your draft with semi-honest friends.

Honesty is over-rated. My best friend, Stacey, is my go-to affirmer. I call her every time I have a “creative crisis,” and she is always excited to read my roughest chapters. Her unwavering enthusiasm keeps me going even when I doubt myself.

Find someone who will tell you to keep writing even when your chapters suck. Find a friend who is willing to blindly support you. Find a Stacey.

7. Join a writer’s group with real, live people.

No, online doesn’t count. My writer’s group taught me grammar, story structure, how to use dialogue tags (I abused those liberally). We celebrate each other in our success and encourage each other in failure. No excuses. Join one. If there isn’t one in your area, start one.

8. Find a mentor.

Rebecca Forster, is a USA Today best-selling author, friend of my aunt, and one of the most selfless humans I’ve interacted with. I’ve never met her in person, but she offered to read my first three chapters and query letter. Then she told me they both had serious problems. After that heart-breaking news, I bombarded that poor woman with a deluge of questions for weeks. God bless her.

9. Throw away your second draft.

Because your mentor said so.

10. Cry for a day (I told you the advice went downhill after #1).

Yep, feel your dream crumble, fall, and crush you because your beautiful brain baby isn’t as cute as you thought it was.

11. Get over yourself and rewrite.

Yes, all 70,000+ words.

12. Build a platform because agents and publishers want this.

No, I have no idea how to do this, so ask someone else for advice. But, definitely get advice.

13. Write and rewrite your query letter.

Take this seriously. Read articles written by agents about what they want to see in a query letter, then follow those rules to a tee. Share it with your writer’s group and/or mentor before you send it out.

14. Send the letter to 40 agents and publishers to start (40 more after 2-3 months).

I decided not to give up until I had been turned down or ignored by 100 agents and publishers. Thankfully, I was rejected by fewer than ten before Crimson Tree offered me a contract. This was only 13 days into my pursuit of a book deal (praise, God!). I’m still getting agent rejections in my inbox. Yes, even though I have a publishing contract it still stings. But, joke’s on them, right?

15. Cry tears of joy when you get a contract.

…even though it confuses your three-year-old.

16. Send your mentor See’s Candies as a thank-you.

Call everyone! Thank everyone who helped you! Especially because they aren’t even close to being done helping you.

17. Don’t overthink your next project.

Repeat step one. Write like no one is going to read it. It got you this far.

February 9, 2018/by Laney Wylde

Never Touched, writing

The Evolution of Sawyer: Creating an Unpredictable Protagonist

“Can we take a break from watching sex crimes?”

I cut my eyes over to my husband as the Law and Order: Special Victims Unit theme song pounds through the signature BUM BUM. Apparently, he finds the show “depressing” and doesn’t “want to watch the same season for the third time” and “the way you talk about Barba doesn’t reassure me that you’re not going to leave me for a Latino.” (E, you have no reason to worry unless I actually meet a real-life, Cuban, Manhattan ADA who wears three-piece suits and evokes a defendant to choke him with his own belt in the middle of court to secure a conviction.)

What I haven’t yet been able to convince my husband of is the fact that SVU quenches my thirst for justice. That’s what those “especially heinous” crimes deserve and often get from New York’s finest…and Barba.

In my favorite episode of SVU, Barba finds a loophole in the New York State law which gives the victim he’s fighting for tons more justice than most he represents.

And, boy, is that woman entitled to every ounce.

In the last scene of this SVU episode, said survivor is actually smiling and hopeful. And, as most episodes of SVU are, this was based on a true story. So, I Googled it and found a New York Times article about the two real-life victims Barba couldn’t get justice for.

If only their stories ended with smiles.

In the article, these women describe what each day is like as a survivor, the severe limitations their assailants shackled them with despite their talent, intelligence, and effort, and how no amount of justice the courts can give them will make any of it go away.

None of it will ever go away.

For a lot of us, trauma’s that etching an event carved under our skin. We’re all familiar with it to some degree. We watch the nightmares and we wake up. We take a few deep breaths and, eyes wide, peel off the shirt clinging to our sweaty backs. We remind ourselves that it’s over. We fear it’ll happen again, but, for now, it’s over. We try to fall back to sleep.

These girls wake up, take a few deep breaths and, eyes wide, see the rest of the world watching their nightmares. Years later. On repeat. With relish.

Now, I must confess that these resilient women were not initially on my mind when I sketched Sawyer. One of my friends still entreats me to title it after its initial three-word premise:

Stripper Math Genius.

Yes. I actually thought, “Hey, what if a stripper was good at math?” (to which my husband replied, “Is this your secret life?”).

But, after reading that NYT article and researching all I could, I took a terrifying step and scribbled a kind of trauma into Sawyer’s past that I had no experience with, no right to write about, praying that I’d tread carefully enough that those anonymous women in that article could read Sawyer and not want to punch me in the teeth.

I know, horribly presumptuous.

Let me be clear, I don’t know those women, but I know Sawyer. I know because I got everything about her wrong for weeks. But then she got her voice, and, holy balls, was it loud. So loud that I had to tear up the entire storyline I had spent hundreds of hours writing for her and start from page one. Once I did that, I learned just what she sounds like.

“My soul is crooked and dark, depraved and destined for hell.”

Ah, that’s my Sawyer.

Turns out, she is witty and socially inept, bookish and sexy, badass and scared shitless, and…

…didn’t love the guy I had destined for her.

Yeah, that was a tough one for me to wrap my heart around. Never Touched was supposed to be about Sawyer and Guy A. Even when I was onto my fourth or fifth working title, Sawyer still ended up with Guy A. I kept working and reworking and re-imagining the final chapter and realized I had it all wrong.

I had her all wrong.

I was trying to construct her story when in reality, all I could do was write what happened. I couldn’t dictate the choices she made, just record the results of them. And she wouldn’t choose Guy A.

Enter Guy B.

Guy B was already there, sure, but he was supposed to be a transient figure. He walked in, left his mark on her, and exited stage right. But Sawyer wouldn’t have any of that. She fell stupid in love with him. And, much like love in real life, it screwed up everything.

But that’s also when I realized that Sawyer’s story isn’t a love story, though there’s one (or two) in it. Hers is a quest for security, a safety she knows doesn’t exist for people like her, and until I understood that, I wouldn’t get why she did all the logic-defying things she itched to do. Or resorted to doing.

So I stopped judging her. I stopped trying to fix her. Instead, I stood in awe of her. Then I gave space on the page for her thoughts, no matter how ugly.

And I’m going to ask you to do the same.

Because maybe you also have nightmares. Maybe you ache, too. Maybe your thoughts darken when you realize the justice you never got, never will get.

And, I’m betting you didn’t get Barba to plead your case either.

February 1, 2018/by Laney Wylde