January 15, 2018

Announcement: I'm moving EVERYTHING to Patreon

My beloved Hamsters,

I’ve made a big decision to move EVERYTHING—my client and fan groups on Facebook, the tiny sales tips newsletter I started, and even this blog (I’ll be blogging less often and opening it up to guest posts, so pitch me)—to Patreon. It’ll make my life easier. (Plus, it was my New Year’s resolution to rest).

In the course of working on TUBE I’ve been able to see that I continue neglecting my needs like the adults who neglected my needs when I was a child. Only I don’t have those adults in my life anymore and yet I’m still doing it.

Enough.

December 31, 2017

Happy New Year, and Thank you

by Ksenia Anske

Happy New Year, my loves!

This year wouldn’t be possible without you, and I can’t begin to tell you how much it means, you sticking with me along this wild ride of ups and downs. So many changes have happened that the only thing I’ve learned is this: change is constant.

TUBE has taught me to be humble, to submit to the story and its demands and to understand that if a book takes years to complete, it’s not up to me to rush it. It also taught me to be patient with myself and give myself time to learn the craft. And it taught me that to write a book takes a village. I couldn’t do it alone, and this is no longer my story. It belongs to you and to all of you who are helping it happen along the way, and helping me grow as a writer.

January 16, 2016

I'm not killing people. I write books.

by Ksenia Anske

There could be a different path for me in life, the one to a different kind of fame. The more I read about serial killers as research for Janna, the more I see the characteristic killer-making patterns that were present in my life and that could push me in that direction but never did. For every badness that came my way there was always some goodness that canceled it. And then I fled. I learned to flee early, first out of my body, then together with my body out of my country, and twice out of my marriages. Maybe that's what kept me sane. My therapist told me that all signs were there for me to turn out bad but that I somehow miraculously avoided it. It other words, I was fucked up but didn't turned out fucked-up in the head.

I'm reading an excellent book right now on female serial killers by Peter Vronsky, about deadly women who overthrow our conventions and social constructs on who a serial killer is or could be. It's no longer just a white male in his late twenties who stops killing around his 40s, it is also a woman in her thirties who kills up to her 60s and 70s and beyond, getting only better and better at it, until apprehended.

There is no solid body of study on female serial killers so not much can be glimpsed about how one becomes a serial killer. Much of what we know is unclear and not backed up with enough data. Some things seems to stem from the environmental damage, some are congenital. We simply don't know why some battered lonely disadvantaged children grow up to kill, and others don't. Why? What factors contribute to pushing one over the edge?

January 12, 2016

The daily battle with fear and conditioning

by Ksenia Anske

"Do this. Do this. Do this. Don't do this. You're not doing it right. Do it like this. I said, like this. Do this. Do this." The constant directing and scolding and reprimanding that starts early eradicates something in you, the rush of spontaneity, the impulse to have fun, to simply jump around and do nothing and be happy for no reason but being alive. The fear sets in. "I'm not doing this right. I'll be scolded. I better do a good job." Girls get the heavy end of the stick. When boys are allowed to "be boys" which is total bullshit, girls are taught to confirm, to be good girls, and to watch boys have fun as reward.

"Don't you dare come home dirty. Shame on you. Dirty as a boy. Go wash yourself." We can't get into fights. We can't tear or stain our clothes. We can't masturbate. God forbid we get caught. With boys it's inderstandable, "They have the urge." Which is another bullshit myth that we've been fed. Biologically a woman's libido is stronger, if we're reduced to talking about ourselves as animals. Which is yet another bullshit underneath the first bullshit. When we talk gender we reduce it to biology to hide behind bogus ideas.

December 22, 2015

Investigating my past

by Ksenia Anske

"So, mom, remember when dad took me to that 5-day daycare in Tula?"

"Tula? Are you out of your mind? It was much closer."

"Well—"

"He didn't take you to no Tula, he took you to that daycare from his work, APN [Agentstvo Pechati Novosti, aka Novosti Press Agency]. Look it up. Look up their daycares. And why are you asking me?"

"Oh, I was just—"

"I told you not to ask me. I told you that everything that traumatized me in the past I have erased from my memory. ERASED. I don't want to hear about it, I don't want to know about it. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, mom, but—"

"I'm done with this. Done! Why do you keep digging? You just can't leave it alone, can you? You already asked me and I already told you. Well, don't you remember? Didn't you write it down? I don't want you to ask again. I have found some peace at last, I'm going to church, and you're laughing at me, at my faith."