Author: Valerie Hegarty

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The Art of Obliteration – Novel Excerpt

At first I only knew the more recent events, you had tried to kill my great grandfather, and when your murderous urges failed, my great grandfather dying of old age, you turned your attention to my mother. You have been able to injure my mother in unfathomable ways, eaten away at her psyche, ravishing her body and shattering my parents’ marriage, but you have not succeeded in pulling her completely under; so far she had kept her head above water, even on the days her mouth is submerged and her nose takes in water. Later you would tell me how it all started, long ago in Ireland with a tragedy involving our two families, but even you admitted maybe it went back even farther than this, before you were born or before you evolved to have the facility to think, to feel, to remember.

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The Sharks Were Circling

It is a misconception that there is a cure for addiction, our inner monsters are not slain.  Rather we learn to live with our monsters and sometimes it’s torturous and sometimes it’s hilarity. Most of the time, for me, it’s an annoyance, an empathy, an echo of another life, a window into another’s pain.  For those same reasons I am motivated to write: that another person may relate to the feelings I express and in turn feel inspired, seen, understood—and most of all—like I feel when I read and write—less alone.