ABOUT THE NOVEL
Thirty-year-old Maria is recently divorced, hears phantom voices and sees people who aren’t really there.
THE INSIDERS: AKROTIRI is my 85,000-word upmarket adult fiction for neurodivergent and marginalized voices. It is Matt Haig’s THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY meets TJ Klune’s THE HOUSE IN THE CERULEAN SEA.
When Maria leaves her South London teaching job for one in the Eastern Mediterranean, she denies she’s running away. But she is running, all the way to Royal Air Force Akrotiri on Cyprus, where she hopes the phantom voices and visions won’t follow. But they do, of course, the moment her aircraft leaves England.
What Maria doesn’t know is that she’s struggling with undiagnosed dissociative identity disorder. What she does know is her insiders, as she calls them, are planning a mission to rescue an internal child. As Maria is drawn further into their world, she believes she falls in love with not one, but two different men, and realizes she doesn’t stay present during sex. An insider is doing it for her; an insider that’s damaged and hurt, and in need of the help Maria doesn’t want to give.
What Maria learns could easily bring her down, but with the help of her insiders, particularly the Old Mother, Maria makes sense of her world and learns who she truly wants, and needs, to love––everyone within her, and in doing so, accept all the challenges and complications that loving them brings.
As a language arts teacher with dissociative identity disorder, I lived Maria’s life on Royal Air Force Akrotiri. I’m an active member of Writing Away Refuge and I won Writing Away Refuge’s 2024 First Chapter Contest. I have a professional website, and I’m an active member of The Porch Writer’s Collective in Nashville, Tennessee. THE INSIDERS has series potential.
Newest Novel
ABOUT MERRICK
MERRICK SCAIFE
Writer
Teacher
Pilot
Musician
British native Merrick Scaife was born in the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England, and has since lived in Wales (part of Great Britain), Cyprus, California, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in Music from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. After obtaining her Post Graduate Certificate of Education from Trinity College Carmarthen, she taught music in Wales for a year, then moved to Kent where she taught primary school education in a small historic village school. Merrick spent a couple of adventurous years in Cyprus before finding her way to America. She now resides in Nashville, Tennessee with her two college-aged sons, two cats, and a Yorkshire Terrier. When asked where her favorite place is in the entire world, she’ll tell you part of herself stayed forever in Cyprus, but that she’s grown to love the relaxed vibrancy of life in Nashville AKA: Music City.
GET CURIOUS ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH
Merrick writes from an interesting and unusual perspective, as she has a complex dissociative disorder. She is passionate about education and advocacy for students and adults with mental health troubles. Merrick Scaife teaches in a school for children with learning differences in Nashville. Her hope is that she can support students while they learn about and come to terms with their differences. Additionally, she has written a novel based on her personal experiences. Her hope is that it will help destigmatize mental disorders, while shining a spotlight on dissociative disorders in a productive and healthy way.
