And the first thing that came to mind when I saw them was,
Have you stopped abusing your kids, Richard and Tracy? I doubt it, but then, with DSS on your case after Richard choked Tracy’s girl, maybe they finally forced you to change your ways.
That girl must be about 19 now; I wonder what she’ll do now, where she’ll go, if she’ll still keep in contact with the one who almost killed her a decade ago and beat the crap out of her when she was little, or with the mother who screamed like a demon at her and called her stupid.
You tried to blame it on me when I avoided you, Tracy, tried to make all our problems my fault. But no, it was all on your head: I wanted nothing to do with an abuser and a bully, someone who included me in her list of abuse victims.
And Richard, you tried to force me to be friends with such a person, even when I saw her abuse you and the kids. I knew you had issues, but I thought you were trying to do better, until I learned what you did to your child. I knew Tracy abused you, even hit you, but I didn’t know at first that you also abused her. I also didn’t realize yet how you manipulated and abused me, too.
I don’t know why you guys still read here (happy 8th stalking anniversary in two months, BTW), because that won’t change. I will never say I deserved any of it, or that you were innocent of child abuse. I will never say you didn’t abuse each other. I will never say you were kind to me. I will never stop blaming you for everything that happened. I will never want anything to do with you unless you repent. And you couldn’t silence me: My friends and family know what happened and have seen your mug shot.
Meanwhile, I feel the same frustration as the professionals who try to stop abuse but don’t see results. I post here, I share articles on Facebook etc., yet keep seeing the same old comments everywhere: “My parents hit me and I turned out okay!” Um…no, not if you’re hitting and screaming at little kids.
Tojet is a fairy tale for adults. A mysterious girl named Tojet appears in a convent-run school one day. Two teachers, Sister Elizabeth and oddly-named Merkit Terjit, take her under their care.
But is she a lost, imaginative orphan or a time traveler with fairy powers? How does she know who Merkit is and how he was named?
Tragedy drives her away, but she returns as a young, beautiful woman, far more mature than she should be. She shows Merkit a world of obsession and dark fairies.
He can’t help falling in love with her, but what about the monastic vows he’s about to take? Can he fight the temptations that surround him?
[Longer, alternate summary, from old website:]
Written by Nyssa (penname Nerissa McCanmore), this novel is a combination of the fantasy, time travel, and Celtic genres. It combines the author’s imagination and European fairy lore to create the world of fairies in the novel. This is not a child’s fairy tale.
A nine-year-old girl appears at a convent-run school in the 1990s, saying her name is Tojet and she, a Celt, was born on a fairy mound in England in 566.
Merkit, a lay teacher, takes her into his home when asked to do so by Sister Elizabeth, a good friend of his.
Tojet says that the fairies of the mound have always favored her. They gave her the ability to transcend time, chose Merkit as her husband (knowing, unbeknownst to Tojet, that his wife would soon die), and named him so Tojet would recognize him.
Tojet now gives Merkit what she calls dream visions: interactive and sometimes dangerous dreams of her world of good and evil fairies, mixed with sixth-century Anglo-Saxon life. The longest dream vision takes him underneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, where he encounters mermaids, mermen, and undines.
When Merkit’s wife dies in a car accident, Tojet feels guilty because, for a moment, she wished his wife would leave. She disappears, taking all her belongings with her.
After two and a half years, Tojet returns–aged by nine years, mostly spent in other centuries. Now beautiful, brilliant, and well-educated, she wants to claim Merkit as her husband.
However, he has entered a monastery, and does not wish to leave it. Tojet does not give up on Merkit, and resumes showing him dream visions.
Without meaning to, she also leads him into dangerous experiences with fairies–and into temptation. Two prominent figures in the dream visions and real life are the fairy queen and the goblin king, who are their ambivalent allies.
Buy here(e-book or paperback, various retailers) or here (downloadable file to use on your Kindle or other e-reader).
—So far, this book has been given the highest rating by four readers. Also see professional reviews here and here. [Update: Last link was to Wayback Machine, but doesn’t work anymore for some reason.] Excerpts:
Ms. McCanmore does an amazing job of bringing fantasy and reality together. Tojet grabs you and brings you happily into her world. I found myself waiting on the edge of my chair for a new story to emerge. The story is wonderful and the characters of Merkit and Tojet are endearing; I also found Sister Elizabeth to be an inspiring character.– Fallen Angel Reviews
TOJET is a fantasy inspired inspirational story brought to life by author Nerissa McCanmore. . . . TOJET is a story that mixes many elements which on the surface would seem mutually exclusive. Strict Christian faith from both Tojet and Merkit and faerie opulence. Faith in one’s God and devotion to Him, or secular love. Is it a sin to lust after Tojet after devoting his life to the church, or would God want him to love this woman? Are the faeries pushing him to love Tojet or God or is it his own free will? . . . Interesting and unusual, TOJET is a good book if you are looking for something different.– Romance Readers Connection
Since whenever I revise the book, my reviews go away, I put them here for you:
A Modern Fairy Tale for the Modern Reader [6 stars] 19 Feb 2005 (updated 19 Feb 2005) by Thom Strizek:
A modern fairy tale, Tojet really brings the realm of fantasy to life. Nerissa McCanmore really knows how to paint a picture. Here’s a quick synopsis:
A little nine-year-old girl named Tojet appears at a Catholic school, where an orphan named Merkit Terjit teaches fourth grade with Sister Elizabeth. Tojet is an imaginative little orphan herself that talks of living with fairies, traveling through time and about how she and Merkit are betrothed.
A few months later, tragedy happens, and Tojet disappears for three years, only to reappear as a beautiful eighteen-year-old maiden to a very bereaved Merkit, who has decided to become a monk, and is about to end his time as a novice and take his first vows to actually become a monk. Now, he must choose either Tojet or the monastic vows he is about to take.
Throughout the book, Tojet takes Merkit on dream-visions (a power taught to her by pixies) where he experiences a world that most of us only dream about: fairy hills, exotic creatures, and European life in the 6th century. He experiences feelings and desires that we can only imagine; lusts that we can barely comprehend. He is abducted by a mermaid, entranced by a fairy queen and is disgusted by goblins. When she returns to him as a maiden, hoping he will accept her as a bride, her dream-visions become more sexually explicit.
McCanmore deserves props for her attention to detail; not only her definitive descriptions of dress and surroundings, but also to historical detail, citing the evolution of language and time measurement.
Throughout the book, I felt as though I was being pulled into one of Tojet’s dream visions. Every time I opened it, I felt as though I was instantly transported to another realm, and when I was forced to close it, the current scene I was in lingered in my mind, making me feel almost as though in limbo between her world and the real world.
The only part about this book that isn’t in every way perfect is the end. I felt as though almost robbed of the climax by too much happening within the last couple pages. That aside, Tojet is a wonderful piece of work; a perfect introduction of an author into the fantasy genre. I give it a big 3 thumbs up. fairies and pixies and all things fantastic . . .
[6 stars] 17 Feb 2005 (updated 17 Feb 2005) by aurorawolf
Beautiful writing! Scenes such as this one stirred up my old childhood fantasies and made me smile: “The fairy child flew up to his shoulder and kissed his ear. “You’re friendly,” she said. “We like you.’ Merkit tumbled down to the floor and sat there, laughing. He had wet pixies in his hair, a fairy on his shoulder, fairies in his sink, and a Celtic medallion in his hand. What more did a person truly need?” (This is one fairy tale worth reading!)
Where did this story come from?
Tojet was based on a dream I had in 1996. The dream itself was caused by a story in Science Fiction and Fantasy magazine, in which Alice Liddell (of Alice in Wonderland) was a child vampire trying to tempt Lewis Carroll. My dream took on a life of its own after I wrote it down and began plotting out a story.
Tojet is a fairy love story; The Lighthouse is a Gothic story collection. To learn more, click on the above pictures.
What I’m Working on Now:
Typing An Unwilling Time-Traveler, a novella I wrote in high school, onto my main website, revived my old passion for that story. Ever since October 2015, I have been working on a full revision. The original was about a teenage girl abducted to Nazi Germany by a time-traveler; the new version has become far more complex. Now woven in are various themes such as narcissism, authoritarian religion, and falling for a Svengali figure. You can read about my revisions in my writing blog.
The Lighthouse, story collection available here and here.
Enter the world of the Lighthouse, a club for supernatural beings and social misfits. In this Gothic story collection you will find castles, ghosts, vampires, romance and terror:
Bedlam Castle–An American college girl loses herself in the hallways of a 900-year-old castle. Eccentric characters invite her to dinner. One is a genie, one is an undine, and most of the others are ghosts. One man intrigues her the most–but is he a mortal man or a supernatural creature like the rest?
Jarkin–Becky Stevens falls in love against her will with Archibald Jarkin, an eccentric, austere and charismatic preacher. Their passionate marriage is tested when Jarkin’s TV ministry turns into a witch hunt. When Becky discovers the Lighthouse, their life together takes a startling new path.
Alexander Boa: Or, I was a co-ed vampire slave–When a young woman’s college is taken over by a vampire, she becomes his secret mistress. Will she be torn apart when her friends decide to kill him?
Candida–A young man is stricken with a girl who falls under a vampire’s spell. Soon married and pregnant with the vampire’s baby, she has no idea what danger she’ll be in if the baby is a boy.
The frame story–Jenny, a social misfit, is introduced to the Lighthouse, supernatural creatures, and a deceptive man. When he leaves her and then accuses her of stalking him, she can only vindicate herself by facing the horrors of a haunted cave. Will she survive? Will she fall in love again?
I really enjoyed this story!…I really did enjoy it; it was a sweet story – I’m looking forward to reading her other works now!(jewelgirl1966)
I read it and loved it!…It was very sweet….I had never read a paranormal romance before ‘Bedlam Castle,’ and found it surprisingly enthralling and fun. I enjoyed trying to guess what was going on, and was impressed that it was original and not full of romance-type cliches. I hope it has a sequel someday. Meanwhile, I look forward to reading your next book: Tojet!(Alicia GA)
“Bedlam Castle” also got two ratings for an average of 6 stars.
Where did this book come from?
“Bedlam,” “Alexander Boa” and “Candida” were all based on dreams I had in college. The Lighthouse itself was also based on a dream:
I discovered the lighthouse at the top of the hill: all you had to do was hang on while a rope took you up a mountain to it….It became my favorite hangout….My parents objected because the other kids “liked to joke about coarse things.”
…Then I’m ready to go uphill again, so I’m given the rope. It starts tugging, sometimes stopping and jerking up again. I have to dodge some worms and possible slugs on the wet pavement.
I go by my front yard, and the rope suddenly turns a corner. I lose it, and make a lunge for it with both hands (possibly scraping a worm with my fingernails), but miss it; I keep trying to get it so I’m not stuck this far up the mountain, but I lose it for good.
I wait around, and someone finally picks me up and takes me either to a wait station or the lighthouse, where I wash my hands off.
Around 2000, publishers didn’t like novellas and magazine editors didn’t like long short stories. So I pulled out the lighthouse story I’d written based on my dream, dusted it off, changed a bunch of things, and turned it into the frame story for one book with a central theme, a club for the paranormal and the strange. Around that time I also saw the video for Baby by J Ralph (Spy) one night. As I watched the con-man TV preacher, I wondered what it would be like to be married to such a man. I also saw Du Hast by Rammstein, and the woman who watches her lover join the evil ones. That sparked “Jarkin.”
