The finalists for the Eric and his Great Pumpkin contest have been announced. I'm thrilled and honored that my other entry, Samhain, made into the finals. I hope you all go to the site and read and vote for your favorites. Go to http://www . fanfiction . net/~EricandhisGreatPumpkin (remove the spaces around the dots). Dead Boys is not a finalist, but that's okay. It has a special place in my heart and I hope the hearts of other women and here's why…
I got the idea for Dead Boys when I read a thread on the Sookieverse where women were discussing that they wished that Sookie had "dealt with" her rape in the books. They felt that Charlaine Harris had done a disservice to her readers by sweeping it under the rug. So, I started to explore the idea of recreating the rape scene but with a different outcome. It's funny because I didn't even think about it until Dead Boys was finished and posted, but I gave Sookie the ending that I wished I'd had when I was a victim myself. I was very young and didn't have the tools or strength to "deal with" it. And so, like Sookie, and I would imagine a lot of other women who find themselves in the same boat, I did nothing. That is until I wrote this story. I empowered myself with a fantasy in which the victim did do something. She told the police and took responsibility to get help for herself. Of course, adding our perfect Eric to be there for her was the cherry on top.
For those of you lucky enough to see this as just another human version of our favorite heroine's story, I hope you sat back and enjoyed. But for those who see themselves in Sookie's inability to "deal with" it, this story is for you. I hope it makes you feel a little better seeing the "right" result if you're like me and never got it in real life.
I have a companion piece to Dead Boys told from Eric's perspective that I will post soon called Beyond Dead Boys.
As always, thanks for reading.
Suki59