Alias

Everyone assumes a mask is meant to hide the person beneath it.

I've always thought that was a rather unimaginative way of looking at masks.

Sometimes the mask is the only face honest enough to tell the truth.

So before we go any further, you should understand something about me.

N.E. Body is a name that hides as much as it reveals.

Perhaps more than it should.

It could belong to anybody, which makes it a particularly useful name for somebody who prefers to remain nobody.

There is, of course, a woman beneath it.

She has another name. Another life. Responsibilities. A reputation. A perfectly respectable relationship with daylight.

She belongs to the world outside these pages.

I belong here.

In the shadows.

In the uncomfortable thought that arrives after midnight and refuses to leave.

In desire without apology. Fear without reassurance. Women who behave badly. Men who behave worse. Beautiful things with something rotten underneath. Love brushing against death. Truth dressed convincingly enough to pass for fiction.

After all, the mind can be a dark place.

Names are heavier than they look.

They arrive dragging expectations behind them. They remind you who you're supposed to be, what you're allowed to say, which doors a respectable woman ought to leave unopened.

A mask travels lighter.

I can follow a story wherever it wants to go. Into the bedroom. Into the graveyard. Through the locked door. Across the line someone else drew and told me not to cross.

I can write desire without blushing and darkness without apologizing for turning out the light.

I can be obscene.

Tender.

Cruel.

Strange.

Unladylike.

Honest.

And when the last word is written, She can wash the dirt from her hands, step back into the daylight, and leave me here with the evidence.

That's the freedom of an alias.

Or perhaps the freedom of a mask.

Everyone assumes she puts me on when she writes.

I've never said which of us is wearing the disguise.

Look at the photograph again.

Am I putting the mask on?

Or taking it off?

Exactly.

If you're hoping I'll clear that up for you, you're going to be disappointed.

I chose this nom de plume carefully.

A name ordinary enough to disappear into a crowd and peculiar enough to make the curious look twice.

And if you do look twice, you may notice something else.

The name is hiding in plane sight.

It reveals more than it hides.

I won't tell you how.

Where would be the fun in that?

I will tell you this: if E were my middle initial, it would stand for Erotica.

The rest you'll have to investigate yourself.

I've left a papertrail.

A sentence serving life on the page.

A turn of phrase that gives it to you straight.

A Freudian slip of the pen.

A word disguised as another.

A detail I probably should have changed.

An initial.

A place.

A memory wearing fiction's clothes.

A fingerprint pressed into the prose before I remembered to wipe it clean.

Some of the clues are accidents.

Some are invitations.

I'll never tell you which.

Follow the footprints.

Mine seem to be wearing stilettos.

Eventually, you may feel that peculiar little flicker of recognition:

I know this woman.

Maybe you do.

Maybe you're supposed to.

That's the lovely contradiction of anonymity.

From the shadows, I can tell you things I could never say in the light.

So, the less you know about the woman who writes these stories, the more honestly you may come to know her.

And perhaps, eventually, you'll get very close.

Close enough to recognize the silhouette.

Close enough to solve the whole damned thing.

Follow the clues. Collect your evidence. Make your theories. Compare notes in dark corners. Become absolutely insufferable about that one clue you're certain everyone else missed.

I expect nothing less.

And should you ever discover exactly which face is the mask, I trust you'll know what to do.

Revel in the pleasure of knowing our little secret.

And the exquisite burden of keeping it.