Thank you so much for reading Come and Get Me!
I thought I would add a note at the end just to give some background to what I'm writing about and why I'm writing it. Feel free to comment any other questions, and I'll be happy to respond to them.
Where did this idea come from?
The original idea was based on subverting the heartless mafia guy, innocent clueless girl trope. I wanted an assassin with a heart and a seemingly sweet girl without one. But as I started writing Ash's character, she reminded me a lot of people I've worked with struggling with how to process traumatic childhoods. The story evolved from there.
Why write about dark topics, i.e. abuse?
One of the difficult parts of my job as a prosecutor is only getting to see a snapshot of someone's life. Unless people reach out after cases, you have no idea how victims* are doing. I have so much respect for all the victims I have worked with, and I hope they are getting the help, support, and love that they need and deserve. But not knowing whether they are is really challenging, and I think that writing about these sorts of things is my way of having some type of closure, even if it's just with a character and not an actual person.
*I use the term victims because that's the term used in the criminal justice system. Many people who have experienced abuse prefer the term survivor. I use that term when I'm not referring to my job specifically.
Is Henry (Ash's father) a psychopath?
Yes (note: psychopathy isn't technically a diagnosis. There's some debate as to whether it falls under antisocial personality disorder or is a separate condition).
Being a psychopath doesn't necessarily mean someone is violent. It increases the risk because psychopaths lack empathy. But there are plenty of other reasons people don't hurt each other - not wanting to face criminal consequences, it being too much work/energy, a lack of desire to do so, not wanting to risk losing beneficial relationships. There are also some theories that, while people are born psychopaths, an individual's environment can influence how their psychopathy is expressed. So while violent psychopaths exist, plenty of non-violent, prosocial psychopaths exist as well.
In Ash's father's case, he has very specific goals and will do whatever he needs to accomplish them - lie, injure, or kill. He hurts people because he's concluded that it's necessary to get what he wants and is worth the risk. His narcissism, wealth, and high IQ are related to that - he truly believes he can and will get away with anything.
Have you worked on cases involving a parent who made their child abuse their other child?
Unfortunately yes. The most common pattern I've seen is where an abusive parent will recruit their other children into emotionally abusing their scapegoat child (some parents are equally abusive to all of their children, but more commonly they will choose a "scapegoat" who is blamed for all the family's problems. In this book, that would be Carter).
If Ash is so smart, how does she not see that her father is abusing her and her brother?
Ash, Carter, and Dianne are all extremely smart. But by the time Ash was born, Henry had been abusing Dianne for years. He isolated her from her friends and family, convinced her to scale back at her job with the FBI, and made her believe that everything wasn't as bad as it actually was. As children, Ash and Carter were even easier to control. There is an inherent unbalanced power dynamic in a parent-child relationship; children look to their parents to guide them in understanding the world. But abusive parents, like Henry, use that position of trust to control and manipulate their children. If a manipulative parent establishes trust with their child, they can fairly easily get their child to believe them, even when that means the child has to disregard their own intuition.
Henry first gained Ash's trust, stopped her from forming any identity independent of him, isolated her, and then began to undermine her sense of reality and her own instincts. The result is that she trusts him more than she trusts herself.
Ultimately, anyone can be abused - smart or not-so-smart, rich or poor, all races, ethnicities, religions, nationalities, genders, and sexual orientations. Certain people are just more vulnerable than others, and skilled predators, like Henry, are good at finding and targeting them.
What should I do if someone I know is being abused?
One of the most, if not the most, important things people can do to support survivors of domestic violence is to listen to them non-judgmentally and believe them. It can also be tempting to tell a survivor of domestic violence what they should or shouldn't do, but people in abusive relationships have already had control taken away from them. It's better to ask them what they would like to do to give them back the power that was taken from them and then support their decisions.
Many countries have resources, shelters, and support. You can search for resources in your country at facebook.com/safety/domesticviolenceresources (I'm sorry that not every country is included - this is just the most comprehensive list I've found).
Lastly, if you are experiencing abuse or have experienced abuse, it is not your fault, and you are not alone.
Much love,
Amber
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Come and Get Me ✔️
Mystery / Thriller"Do you normally make-out with the people you're hired to kill? It doesn't strike me as very professional." "Put the gun down," Gabriel panted, not answering her. "Why on earth would I do that?" "Because you're not going to shoot me," Gabriel rep...
