I was recently asked why I haven't used my gift as a medium in the promotion of Shattered. It was something I had to put some thought into. Maybe it's that I don't want to exploit Amalie's spirit. Or maybe it's the fact that the man who raped her still walks among the living.
Amalie was once a real person. She is the daughter of my spirit guide Odessa. I knew the basics of what happened to her, or at least what Odessa was willing to share. I didn't start to actually channel Amalie until we started telling her story.
It was very hard to draw her out. She didn't want to tell me what really happened or how bad things really were. Much like she relied on Stella to cope when she was alive, she choose to embellish her story with a heavy dose of fiction.
I can't reveal her father's true identity because he was a very well know person in the wrestling business. That's why Odessa chose to call him William. It was his death, okay murder, that pushed Odessa over the edge. His real death occurred just after Amalie was raped. He never knew what happened, at least not while he was on this side. I think Amalie wanted the time frame changed to protect him and Odessa.
Odessa was so grief stricken by "William's" death that she wasn't able to be there for Amalie when all this went down. Amalie really did hide her pregnancy until there was nothing that could have been done to save her or the babies that she was carrying.
I guess now I have the answer about not playing up the whole channeling a spirit thing. It's to protect Amalie. She wanted her story told. She wants to help other girls who have been raped. Yet, at the same time she doesn't want to come forward with too much of the truth because she adored her father. She didn't know him as the icon that he was, she just knew him as her father and the man who kept Odessa grounded in a semi-state of reality.
A few weeks ago we got the most amazing email from a girl in the UK who told me that Amalie's story had helped her come to terms with her own rape and decision to have an abortion. I had tears in my eyes when I read this email. That means more to me than any amount of sales or making any bestseller lists. It meant the world to Amalie.
The fact that we touched one young girl's life in a positive manner made it worth every word we struggled over when telling Amalie's story.
