Cairol Dawson is a writer who has written a very interesting thriller entitled Mind on Fire. 

1.  Give us some background, when did you start writing, do you only write fiction?

I was a sophomore in high school when I first became serious about writing.  I knew then it was more than just something I enjoyed. I aspired to every creative writing class I could attend not only through the school year but in the summers as well.

I studied under Betsy Colquitt at Texas Christian University as well as Dennis Beck. I loved the assignments and the challenges that went with it. I had thought about being a photo journalist, but it became boring when all they wanted was the facts, “just the facts Ma'am” and I wasn't ‘that' kind of girl.

2.  Tell us about Mind on Fire, a psychological thriller/horror novel.

The book opens with a brutal double homicide. Cally James, a chief homicide detective and her assistant Jessie Roberts arrive at the scene and make their summations of the situation. They soon realize there may be a hostage, a 20 year old girl missing from the house. The case starts to resemble one of their more famous cases known by the older deputies.

Cally was kidnapped, tortured, and raped 20 years ago, by an unknown person. She became pregnant, there were complications and the baby was stillborn, so she thought. Today Cally is married and they are expecting their first child. Her parents died in a fire when the house burnt down as one of the crime scenes. Cally's husband, Jack, does not know of the former pregnancy.

The unknown man returns to claim what he thought should have been his, Cally and the baby. He is not alone and has help from inside the police department. She is eight months pregnant when the story begins. The course of the story is about a month but when he returns to claim Cally, the entire town of Fort Worth is determined to find and stop him before history can repeat itself.

The relationships of the players are not what they seem. There are many family secrets revealed and will determine how Cally will proceed to survive the next thirty days…and save herself, her marriage and her baby.

The psychological effect of these people and the effect they have on each other is quite unbelievable. For years, it was thought that genetics determined who a person became. Then it was their environment. This story explores how people are now being looked at as individuals and how they perceive trauma and intellectual damage cause by trauma. Instead of splitting personalities and suppressing identities, the EGO takes over as one huge personality and there is no splitting. The EGO takes over everything and is driven, to survive at any cost.

Mind on Fire is about such people, all related, and all with the same defective minds unleashed on Fort Worth , Texas without remorse, or conscience.

3.  Where did the idea come from, what kind of study/research did you do to prepare you for the writing?

I have been preparing for this story for years. It's been brewing for some time but one night I had a dream and that was it. Someone I know who used to be a Chaplin and counselor ordered the book online without telling me, read it and called me.

I said, “So how'd you like it?”

“Well can we talk about why you made them…” and I interrupted.

“No, we can't. It's fiction. It's nothing personal. Let it go.”

“But…”

I said,” Let it go,” we talked a little bit more then when we hung up; I haven't heard from her again and I've known her at least 20 years.

One has to remember it is just a book and these people can live next door to us, but I am not one of them. My older son tells me I shouldn't tell people what I write that people think I am weird. He's correct on that note. I do walk to a different drum. I am an artist first.

I have been surrounded by one type of mental illness or another from within my family. Perhaps that's why I have always been interested in why this or that. Perhaps too, that is why I am not afraid of it. So I had a lot of first hand information on the defects of the brain and its personality.

Years ago in some of my research, I read a book by Alice Miller a German Psychiatrist, The Hidden Key. She gave a perfect explanation of how childhood trauma ‘affects' each child, or person differently but the key is the perception of the child or person. Picasso was about 2 or 3 when his family had to flee the house one night when the house caught on fire from some type of invasion. His mother was pregnant, and had to carry a suitcase in one hand and carried him under her other arm, parallel to the ground. In order to see the fire he turned his head sideways to see. So, if you look at his paintings you'll see or can justify the affect the fire that night had on him…as he continued to perceive it.

It's not so much what really happened but how they perceived it happened, who was to blame, etc. The longer one remembers something a certain way, it happened that way, no matter what really happened. I watched a lot of movies, read a lot of books, articles, medical reviews but over periods of time over the years.

4.  When you interviewed Henry Lee Lucas, what did it feel like to be in the same room talking to him? 

First, you are not allowed to be alone. Only through plexi-glass with a guard present. He was still on death row when we spoke and we also wrote letters back and forth (to a P.O. Box). At first he acted shy. He was disfigured somewhat from all he'd been through and he was very creepy. He had a peculiar odor. It wasn't filth, just off somehow. He constantly tried to manipulate the conversation back to me and my world which was unpleasant at times and often uncomfortable. I did not discuss my world. His stare bothered me. He was blind in one eye.

5.  What did you take away from the interview? 

Before I went I read his psychiatrist's book for factual background so to have intellectual constraints and know when or if I was being lied to. He was pathetic in any sense. Here sat a man who was okay with killing his mother… among others. I understood that his trauma went way deeper than killing his own mother would solve. Even he knew this after she was dead and he'd served his time up north. I think he thought he would feel better, but he didn't. He confessed to me that he felt nothing and hadn't since the molestations from an early age by his mother's gentlemen friends. Even his own mother tormented him. Mostly I took his childhood sorrow away with me but no regret of where he was.

6. Did he surprise you any or did he just reinforce things you already knew or thought about serial Killers?

Hmm. Don't think I am siding with serial killers. I believe in the death penalty for some things and this is one of them. I am not one of these women who seek out men in jail, or groupies, etc. There are some people in this world who never had a prayer's chance in hell of knowing life on this earth. The sadness in his eye, his face, the scars he wore like war medals are enough to break a mother's heart BUT it does not excuse who he became or he was made into. I am a mother of two sons. I may not condone what they might do but I could not stop loving my children much less torture them into being serial killers. Some things can be prevented but with Henry, he was encouraged to go the other way. I wasn't expecting a sadness coming from a mother's heart, meaning mine, and could not understand how any mother could destroy their own child or let anyone else do it while they watched.

Another thing that has disturbed me since 1979, is that as far as I know they never identified Orange Socks, one of the victims. She was found dumped on the side of the road at an entrance ramp in Georgetown, Texas, completely naked except for the orange socks she was wearing. With our technology today why haven't they used it on her? She deserves it. I think they should reopen her case. There's bound to be a match for DNA by now. Maybe she had a mother who cared, maybe not. It's the least they can do for her since no one claimed her, but Henry and Otis named her Orange Socks. I hope this can be resolved before I expire.

7.  Was the interview with Henry Lee Lucas in any way a help to you when you started writing the book?

Yes it did. There was a part of him that shown through from time to time, where he stepped out of his serial killer façade and for two or three minutes at a time, he seemed like anyone else; almost childlike. I tried to make my characters, the killers, real and seen for who they are. See, when they are in true survival mode, their ego will protect their physical self at any cost. They are totally incapable of tolerating pain of any kind and have a low tolerance of being hurt. Henry also made me realize how easily they can walk amongst us undetected in all walks of life and economics. That's beyond any horror imaginable to me, besides being dumped, left dead and nameless. It just doesn't seem right not knowing who she was or who she belonged to. Someone just has to have missed her.

8.  Obviously you have an interest in serial killers ( true crime ?), proven by the fact that you interviewed one and you wrote a fictional account of three generations of serial killers.  Why do you think this subject interests you? 

I've always wondered why people do things like kill their parents, bosses, wives, children etc. I never got a long with my mother, never. I can't even remember a time when we got a long but it is because we never bonded - but I did not kill her nor have I thought about it. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents but they passed on in 1972. Mother and I haven't spoken in 10 years but that was her decision. After many attempts to make nicey-nice, I gave up after a few years of returned cards, etc. and respected her decision. It has been a peaceful 10 years for the both of us. Someone else in that position might handle it differently and go postal, so-to-say. Why? What makes them snap? Therein lays my interest in these psychopaths.

9.  I was very interested in your next project.  Can you tell us about your next book?

I have several. From the Ashes is the second in the series (Mind on Fire), I can't tell too much about it without giving it away or the ending to MOF. I can tell you this will be even more intense than MOF. These characters will go forward and keep going. New family members will be revealed and old ones revived. I know the ending of the series so when it ends depends on the interest. I am re-writing MOF into a screenplay. I am hopeful of movie interests. Lol, aren't we all?

Another project is a short story collection entitled Conversations with Death. These are conversations the newly departed have with Death, one in particular (there are many Deaths), who has quite a few questions for these souls in transformation. He has questions for them about life, just as they have about death. There is humor, tears, and a much desired justice in some of these tales. It has also been suggested that I make it into a play or a television series similar to the Twilight Zone format.

My Mother's Daughter is a play I am writing in which a daughter has been called to her mother's death bed, to administer the DNR and pull the plug as a last request of her estranged mother. The decision - whether she will or will not after psychologically debilitating conversations with herself.

Last but not least is a coming of age story over the summer in a small Texas town which is inhabited by Aliens. So far I have named it The Lights. It's a fun story and the teens are true to life in their expectations of relationships and how self is their center, until they have to try to save the town.

I try to stay busy and keep moving. There was a radio interview in Weatherford , Texas on June 27, 2009 at 10am on Books n' Authors, with Linda Bagwell, hosting, on KYQX-FM 89.5

I think I have another 20-30 years left in me, and God willing and the creek don't rise here in Texas, I would like to direct horror films or shorts. I have a great eye for detail and such a creative edge for creating scenes and dialogue.

10. I see that you are under contract for a poetry collection.  What kind of poetry is it, and who has contracted the book?  When will this one be out?

I should clarify that I have been offered a contract but I am still considering other options. The publisher is backlogged right now so instead of just waiting (something I do not do well), I'll look around while the stack goes down and when my number is up I will make a decision then if not before. The poems are a dark stream of conscientiousness. Some structured, haiku's, and free form. I named it From the Dark Side of the Moon. I am very proud of it and thank you for asking about her due date.

11.  Where can we get a copy of your work?

Amazon.com $15.49 s&h $3.99 or shipping is free with the $25.00 purchase. Least expensively ordered at bookstores, Barnes and Nobles and Borders for $15.49 and no shipping. ISBN 9781438901138 Mind on Fire by C.A. Dawson