To read an excerpt from the book, please click on the following link:

ashaveilbook.blogspot.com

An excerpt from The Pleasure Palace, my romantic comedy, can be found here:



Saturday, September 17, 2016

Back, More Thoughts on Asha's Book

I have been away for some time again due to various reasons--including research on Asha's book--and hope to resume posting regularly, if not daily.

I would like to first say that, for anyone who knew Asha and is now a regular reader of this blog and of the website with her book: I have a great deal of awkwardness in approaching the family simply because I am so concerned about being sensitive to an unimaginable grief.  There are times I don't really even know how to ask.  How do you ask someone to speak to you of the worst thing that could possibly happen to a friend, a child, a relative?

I want to express that the intention of my story is to honor Asha and her child, and to help people understand what families and friends, and even communities, must bear after this sort of violent crime.  In the United States, at least, the media always focuses on the criminal.  McClish, who committed the crime, is now the one news stories focus on, and Asha is simply mentioned as the nice cashier from Poland. I want her to be known as the brave person she was.  I wish to treat her, and her story, with the utmost respect.

To all of Asha's friends and family from America and Poland who have visited this blog, I thank you for reading my words about her. I resonate with her because I was once a young pregnant woman far from home, carrying a child that many people did not want me to have. I had not the love and resources Asha seemed to have, nor a loving family back home. I know she was much stronger than I was then, but I still feel a bond to her because of my own life.

Please know that any information you can give me about her helps me to bring her more fully to the world. I do not want the name "McClish" to be the one most remembered in the course of time.