Letters to Daniel

By Amy McCorkle

Through a series of open letters to her favorite actor, Daniel Craig, the author details her struggles with abuse, mental illness and her ultimate triumph over both.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amy McCorkle
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215614471

Amy McCorkle

Amy is a successful award winning and bestselling author. As well as a fierce mental health advocate. Her films and scripts have garnered her 160 awards and 100 nominations. Her breakout film Letters to Daniel is being distributed by Green Apple Entertainment.

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Letters to Daniel © 2016 by Amy McCorkle

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover Art © 2015 by Delilah K. Stephans

Print ISBN: 978-1522864172

Published by: Amy McCorkle

Editors: Tanja Cilia and Ellen Eldridge

Dedicated to Daniel Craig, My Silent Witness

Acknowledgements

Too many to count but I thank Missy Goodman and Pamela Turner and of course Tim Druck and family. To Lea Schizas for the conversation which planted the seed that started all of this. Stephen Zimmer my project’s film incarnations of this story. To mom and dad. (Faye and John). To Tanja Cilia and Ellen Eldridge for their editorial eyes. To my Aunt Debbie and Uncle Frank. And finally to Delilah K. Stephans. I thank all of these people and so many more for supporting me through the hard times and now celebrate with them through the good times.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Letters to Daniel

Part II

Intro to Part 3 by Ellen Eldridge

Part III

Tim’s Intro

Introduction

When Amy told me she was going to do this blog and write as if she were talking to Daniel Craig, I was not crazy about the idea. Amy is such an honest and sensitive person that I was wary of her getting hurt.And she did. Some of the comments by people she considered friends were selfish and hurtful. I am ashamed to admit that after one not so glowing post about yours truly, I got upset. It took me several days to realize that this blog is not about me. Sure, I play a supporting part in the best friend role, but this is about my friend. Who she was, who she is and who she hopefully one day will be.

Amy was also the first person I ever met to say she was a writer. Not I want to be a writer. Not, I’m working a day job, but I also write (insert your genre here). She has never strayed from stating saying she’s a writer. Not even in the darkest moments of her life was her faith shaken.

It seems like I’ve known my best friend my entire life, but, in actuality, we met back in 1996. We were coworkers at a bookstore in the Jefferson Mall. It was a great job that introduced me to people who would change the course of my life. These people were different from my family in that they were interested in things like movies, art and, of course, books.

Amy was by far the weirdest person that I had ever met during my sheltered existence. Within days of meeting her, I knew her life story. I admired how open she was about everything from parents to customers to sexual abuse. It also scared me, if I’m being completely honest. Who talks that way with people they barely know? Amy does.

It’s this openness that she projects that draws people from all walks of life to her. They understand that she won’t discriminate or judge them. She will welcome them into the fold. Amy doesn’t take the word friendship lightly. With social media like Facebook the word friend is thrown around loosely. Not so with Amy. If you are her friend, she will go the distance for you. Whatever you need, she will do it. Need someone to go to the ER at midnight, she’s your girl. Need a shoulder to cry on or ears to listen? She’s got those as well. I can only hope that I’m half the friend to her that she has been to me.

I had a front row seat to Amy’s two nervous breakdowns. The first was in 2000. I admit I was stupid about mental illness even though I had been surrounded by it my whole life. It is only in the last decade or so that people have really opened up the conversation. Before that people just didn’t talk about it as much.

When Amy realized that something was wrong, she actively sought help. The road wasn’t an easy one. She went from doctor to doctor only to be turned away or told it was all in her head. We laugh at that now. Did I mention that during this breakdown Amy and I were sharing an apartment in San Antonio, Texas, trying to make a movie? It amazes me the courage and/or the stupidity of those girls that we were. Moving away from everything we had ever known. There was no family, friends or safety net to catch us.

I think it was that time in Texas that cemented the fact that we were going to be family for the rest of our lives. To me, it’s like soldiers in battle: once you have been through things together, you are forever bonded. We did not dodge gunfire and cannons, but we did survive on very little. Meals consisted of eggs, bologna, Kool-Aid, pasta and Ramen. Our feet served as our mode of transportation. The car blew up (and then was crashed into), the next-door neighbor was a soft hearted cocaine addict, we didn’t speak the language (neither Spanish nor Texan) and we had a run in with the man in one purple sock. We had no money, no furniture and no fear. While we eventually failed at this endeavour, it was epic. I wouldn’t trade my experience there for anything in the world. It was truly an adventure.

Amy spent the next few years submerged in her healing process. There were times when it looked as if the illness would consume her in its vast ocean. Wave after wave would push her farther and farther out to sea. In the middle of this madness Amy made me promise to make sure that she was never committed to a psych ward. I believe that it was and is still to this day one of her greatest fears. I kept that promise because I had faith in my friend. I knew that she would eventually make her way to shore. And my faith was validated when she recently graduated from her group therapy and was asked to speak in front of the board at Seven Counties about her triumphs.

As Amy’s friend I have gone on the journey with her as much as I could. I’ve listened when needed and I helped as much as possible. Mostly, I watched as she became the phoenix rising up out of the ashes. She is truly an amazing writer and an even better friend. Now it is her time to soar.

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Dear Amy,

I struggled with this assignment. I’m not a writer because I generally don’t do well writing when assigned subjects.One thousand words on a random subject that catches my fancy is an average Facebook post for me, but ask me to write a piece on a specific subject, person or place and I will procrastinate until I sweat blood on my keyboard. As a result, I rarely accept this sort of challenge. This is different.

You are, above all, my friend. That’s been true for more than twenty years now, more or less. In that time, both of us have changed dramatically, while our common ground has remained. First as classmates, then casual friends, then during a long interlude as we pursued our own paths, and friends again through the miracle of modern technology, we’ve grown to appreciate each other. I value your opinion and creativity, and I certainly hope you value mine. We’ve worked together, cross-promoting your writing career and my musical aspirations, and I certainly hope my words on this page are worthy of your talent, and rise to the level of introduction that you deserve. I’m immensely thankful for our friendship on many levels. You bear the type of light that, even at first glance, appears impossible to extinguish.

Despite our long-term friendship, I did not know many of the things you wrote about in these letters. I was not aware of the trials you faced as an adolescent and young adult, and you never made many people aware of your internal struggles. These letters as written have been a revelation to me about my friend, about the person behind the cool, confident exterior—the girl who was a class ahead of me in school, who played field hockey and held her own with the future college professors, teachers, engineers and attorneys in a gifted group of high school students. You were the girl I always thought was far cooler than I. Some of the things you’ve related in these letters are simply remarkable.Your stream-of-conscious retelling of the things you’ve learned through education and experience as a student, a writer, a woman, a traveler and a fan is riveting to read, and, at times, rises to the level of must-read for young people in similar situations. There is wisdom in these pages: the kind of knowledge that only experience can grant, and the kind of things learned with the heart more than the head. Taken by themselves, the stories of events, situations and people in general, and specific persons, the things you learned simply by living, this book is worth reading and taking to heart—a sort of coming-to-adulthood story that Forrest Carter may have expressed had Little Tree been a young person in the late 1990s in an urban high school, progressing through college and the first half of an eventful life. But, if much of this book is a narrative of a life’s learning, most of the rest is a catharsis—I nearly wrote ‘confession,’ but that wouldn’t have been quite correct.

Amy, we didn’t know. None of us. And I’m fairly sure you never knew how much we cared. By we, I mean people who will be shocked to find out just what you’ve endured, both during that time and after.

Your ability to tell a story is at times humorous and heartbreaking, uplifting and uncomfortable, but above all else it is the one thing about you that I admire the most—it is absolutely, completely authentic. In a world of cheap substitutes, you are the real thing, and your words paint pictures, sometimes of hope and joy, other times dark and desperate, but always real. And it is this reality, this stark honesty that draws me to your story, again and again.

I’m uncomfortable with the word ‘heartbreaking’ as painful as some of your experiences can read, but it is the reader’s heart alone that breaks. Your own heart remains strong throughout, a testimony to a girl who knows what she wants, isn’t always sure exactly how to get there, but won’t let anyone or anything deflect her path, wherever it should happen to lead. I admire you for that.

The common thread is so unique, and so very you—these letters addressed to none other than Mr. Bond himself, Daniel Craig. The conversational tone with which you relate the good, the bad and the ugly to this artist you admire so much lends a delicacy to the proceedings, and a tenderness that doesn’t seem possible with such weighty issues. These are real letters to a friend, and the answer to the rhetorical question, What’s On Your Mind? Daniel Craig’s penny for your thoughts, whatever they may be on that given day. I also happen to believe that Mr. Craig is a good, decent man, and I can only imagine his response to reading these letters. Daniel, if you’re reading this, I assure you that Amy is no obsessed, weirdo of a fan. And I personally appreciate the anchor you’ve provided for her to organize her thoughts and emotions and to provide a focus for the things she needed to get off her chest. As someone who aspires to a certain level of fame, I have learned through this experience just how special and important one’s work can be to someone watching or listening from afar, and I trust that you will treat Amy’s work with the respect that her deepest confessions deserve. Amy, there will be a day when your work is as important to someone as Daniel’s has been to you. I have the utmost confidence that you will not forget, that you will treat that person with tenderness and care.

I should wrap this up before I begin my habit of rambling pontification. Amy, I wish for you the success that you deserve. If I were the person who would chose who is entrusted with the things that come with fame and fortune, I would choose someone like you, a woman who will always remember what it was like to be that scared girl just starting her life, who’s lived and loved and learned and survived to tell the story. I wish for you to meet your hero Daniel Craig on an equal footing, so that when you tell him what his work has meant to you, he can tell you what your work means to others. And I wish that this work, this remarkable collection of letters, saves even one person from abuse and mistreatment and shows them the value of hope and perseverance. You know why the caged bird sings, and someone, someday just might leave the door open.

I’m proud and thankful to be your friend. We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.

Yours most faithfully,

Tim

Letters to Daniel

Dear Daniel,

Let’s get the elephant out of the way. I don’t know you. You don’t know me. But I know your work. And it’s impressive. And what it’s done for me is really beyond anything I could’ve hoped for. Or even expected.

I’m a successful small press and soon to be indie writer. I write everything under the sun. Short stories, novellas, novels. I even write screenplays. None of which I’m sure you’re ever going to read or see. But I’m big believer in paying it forward. So, I’ll do what I do with anything I write and begin at the beginning.

This blog is really a platform to thank you for all that I’ve been blessed with over the last two and a half years. But the seeds were planted in September of 2009 when I rented Casino Royale. I went out and bought it. And that’s saying a lot because I wasn’t much of a Bond girl myself. It’s not that the movies were bad; I just found they weren’t for me. But I’ll admit, the scene where you came up out of the water at the beginning of the film did make an impression on me. However, there are plenty of films where I think men are nice to look at, but if the story isn’t there I won’t go see it. I’m a bit of a film snob in that regard.

That being said, I loved the movieand thought Vesper Lynd was the best Bond girl ever. I know people say Bond Woman now, but the reality is this: I’m from Kentucky and I am 37 years old, so I say girl. It’s just the vernacular. I liked Vesper Lynd so much I chose Lynd for my last name on my sci-fi and dystopian books that I write. I digress. The May 2010 Coyote Con, an online writing conference, included a writing contest called MayNoWriMo. I wrote a 50,000-word book in 30 days. It was called Another Way to Die. And, for the first time, I used you as the hero template. In February2011, at another online writing conference, called Digicon, I pitched the book and eventually landed a contract with a Canadian e-publisher called MuseItUp Publishing. I was 35. I’d been writing for 30 years. Seventeen of those years I’d been seeking publication. Finally, validation. I cried.

I had been through so much. And, really,I’ve been through so much in my life that I couldn’t possibly cover it in just one post. Hence, the blog.

I’ve been emotionally and sexually abused. I live with a bipolar diagnosis. And right now I seem to be going through some sort of renaissance. I’m more confident than I’ve ever been. I have signed 23 publication contracts since February 2011. Seven of them are out under my given name, Amy McCorkle, or my pen name, Kate (for Kate Winslet) Lynd (Vesper Lynd). I’ve won awards, the high point so far being a 2012 Moondance International Film Festival award for Best Short Story.

There have been extreme highs and lows. At one point I was going to bed hungry and waking up hungry. Struggling with symptoms of bipolar disorder can be very hard. All in the name of trying to make a movie. It’s just been recently that I’ve turned back to a love of mine, screenwriting. I’m better now. Sane now. And this summer and fall I’ll be going out to promote two books, Gemini’s War and City of the Damned, which includes a huge double launch that is going to be a sanctioned event at Fandom Fest/Fright Night Film Festival. Kind of like SDCC only not as big. Although, for me it will be.

Your work has inspired me, even during some low and scary times, to hang onto my dreams and pursue my passion at all costs. As a thank you, I’d like to invite you, your wife and your daughter to the launch. Now, I don’t know anyone who knows you. And this is a relatively new blog, so I won’t hold my breath or even dare to think you would for a split second think about coming. I’m not that self-absorbed or self-involved. But all the same, I really think you should know that you’re a big part of why this summer is going to be so huge for me. Again, thank you. I am forever indebted to you.

Sincerely,

Amy McCorkle

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Dear Daniel Craig,

I need to tell you something. If I’ve learned anything over the years it’s that people let you down. Depressing, right? I was taught early on that I was more likely to find my heroes in books, films and the theater than I was in real life. But as hard as my life was, I don’t want to paint a lopsided picture. As bad as it was when it came to my biological father, his family (with the exception of his sister and her family), and his network of cop and marine buddies, my mother and stepdad, who I call dad, were at the other end of the spectrum. Most of the time.

The worst thing I can say about my mom is that she probably suffers from the same disease that I do, and without treatment bipolar disorder can make you one unstable human being.As warm and loving as she was while growing up, I never quite knew which mother I was going to get. But for all her flaws I never doubted once that she or my dad (stepdad) loved me.

I don’t have this thing about my alcoholic father’s behavior being my mother’s fault. Mom is an early childhood education public school teacher. My dad (stepdad) went back to school later in life and went to law school to become a public defender. Neither of these jobs pay like, say, wealthy person’s salary, and when I told them I wanted to become an author, my dad said you can be like John Grisham, a lawyer and a writer.

What I wanted was to be an author and to be involved with the movies. I had no idea how to do either so I just wrote, everyday. I even wrote a screenplay when I was 17 years old. It was bad. So bad that I think I burned it. My mother was a teacher and she believed in getting your education. So I went to college900 miles away from home. And I promptly experienced a continuation of mania. Homesickness. And the inability to sleep. The only noteworthy thingswerestarting my first serious relationship, and writing my first attempt at a novel. I also got addicted to soap operas, and because I was in two different zonesI watched them all.

I took a creative writing course, too, for poetry. And it was dark. All of it so dark. But Dr. Oldknow was so awesome. And he taught me a lot about how to write. So I guess it wasn’t a total wash.

I saw a lot of bad movies too. A forgettable Charlie Sheen movie, a female centered western called Bad Girls, which is really unintentionally funny. But anyway, I digress.

Daniel, I can count on one hand how many men have shown me love and kindness. And even they, my stepdadand an uncle, could break my heart. My stepdad would take my sisters and me to the library every weekend. My uncle and my aunt would pop popcorn and fill a large paper grocery bag with it and take me to the drive-in (yes drive-in) and we would sit in lawn chairs in the summer time and watch the latest blockbuster.

I didn’t get to this point in my life alone. But, I see a lot of them in you in some ways. In the few interviews I’ve seen with you, you seem intensely private and protective of your friends and loved ones. And since I feel about as unprotected as a babe in the woods, I find that to be a highly admirable quality. And it gives me hope that someone out there will one day be protective of me.

There is so much to be grateful for in my life right now. And I have to say the success I’ve received over the last few years has given me the kind of confidence to believe other parts of my life will eventually iron themselves out. And whenever I doubt that, I just pop in a movie of yours and I watch it. I think you hit a homerun every time out, even if the film isn’t perfect. And my personal favorite is Cowboys & Aliens. (It’s the geek in me). Again Fandom Fest is in July, so just in case hell does freeze over, you and your family are invited to attend.

Sincerely,

Amy McCorkle

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Dear Daniel,

Ever been scared? Me, I’m scared of everything. Heights, bugs, closed-in places. But I’m not talking about that kind of scared. What I’m asking is, have you ever been afraid for your life because of what someone else was doing? Some say murder is the only capital crime there is. But I disagree. I think rape belongs up there. If you go by that, I’ve been scared for my life so many times by so many different men that maybe I should be used to it by now. One time stands out more than the others.

When I was 5, a cop stuck his service weapon in my mouth. Ever tasted gun metal? It gags you. And the worst part isn’t the pain your predator is putting you through. No, it’s the sheer terror of the gun going off in your mouth if you so much as cry, flinch, or scream—as my predator put it—for help.He will not just kill you, but kill your 3-year-old sister, who is sleeping just feet away on the bed.

You feel so alone at that point. Like no one loves you. Like no one will believe you. Like no one will ever find you worthy to be loved or find you beautiful again.

In some cases, the violators’ faces blurred together, and their voices became just an amalgamation of every bad thing you ever heard.

In my biological father’s case, it was hearing these words while he was molesting me. Stupid. Ugly. Worthless. Whore. Slut. No one will ever believe you over me. And when I tested the waters by telling my mother as an adult she confronted him about it. So, do you think he said,Yes, I did it. I irreparably harmed our daughter and I’ll never be able to atone for what I’ve done to her?

I honestly don’t know what she expected him to say. Mom just assumes because she wills it that makes it so. So, when he feigned ignorance and denied it,Mom tried to put it off on another member of his family. And, while one of his brothers is guilty, too, he never shoved a gun into my mouth while he was raping me.

For the longest time I had this compelling need for people to believe me when I told them what had happened to me. Now, I realize the worst reaction is indifference. I’ve faced that within my own family. I had my mother tell me that she would never ask me to be in the same room with him about an uncle on her side who had preyed upon me. That wasn’t really the reaction I needed from her. What I needed her to say was,String the sonofabitch up by his toes. Since that wasn’t what I got, I learned pretty fast family wasn’t exactly the place to look for comfort and healing in this particular matter. What I realized was that only a therapist and my closest friends would ever stand by me in this matter. So, when the night terrors and nightmares plagued me, I turned to an old source to calm down as an adult. My magic sleeping pill was a copy of Cowboys & Aliens.

Don’t get me wrong, the movie didn’t bore me, but Jake Lonergan had inspired several works of my fiction. Well, your performance of him had. And the idea that he wasn’t beyond redemption, and that he could be a hero appealed to me. The fact he loses two loves wasn’t lost on me at all. But the way he was willing to stand up for a woman, well, let’s just say that was a welcome respite from the flashbacks, which are panic and terror inducing.

I know you’re not Jake or Bond or Mikail. But you’re an artist plying your trade. I don’t know your personal story, and in many ways I prefer it that way. It enables me to work my imagination to project onto a character that looks like you. I don’t deserve to know what goes on in your private life. Tabloids don’t interest me. I’m telling my story not because I desire some sort of reality television program, but because I want, for some reason, for you to know where I came from and how I survived and succeeded in the face of terrible odds. And I guess I want others, who might be in similar situations, to know that if I survived, so can they, and that this is one way to do it.

Your work did a lot for me. And if the universe turns further in my favour, maybe, perhaps, I’ll get to work with you. As it stands, I am content to just thank you.

Sincerely,

Amy McCorkle

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Dear Daniel,

So I’ve told you all about this heavy, dark shit that most people take to their graves. Or maybe share once in a lifetime. Me, I don’t know, I think I have to share it for my own peace of mind. However, I thought I might change it up and tell you about the first time I produced a film. An independent film, produced on a shoestring budget.No way in hell am I ever going to let that thing see the light of day.

Let me start by telling you about my best friend and sister-from-another-mister, Missy Goodman. I met her while working in a bookstore, and I should just tell you now that you’ll be hearing a lot about her. Not because we’re dating, but because she’s one of those kinds of friends everyone should be so lucky to have. She’s the one who took care of me and bore the brunt of the hard stuff when I had two breakdowns in Texas (more on that in another post).

What we discovered at that bookstore was that we both loved to write, we both loved General Hospital (a soap), and we both loved television and movies and books, period. And when she came to me to write a romance novel, I said Yes, let’s do it for the money. That was in 1997. But this post is about "Too Far From Texas," our first foray into directing and producing.

In 2004, we had kind of fallen down on the writing end. Our writing partnership had petered out, although our friendship was stronger than ever. But, and I don’t think I’ve mentioned this part before, I identify myself so closely with my work that it’s hard to explain to people that, while I want a readership that enjoys my work, I think people confuse that with me wanting fame. I don’t really desire fame and celebrity. You lose something when you get famous, your privacy. One might argue I’m sacrificing my privacy by doing this, but ‘this’ is just another form of self-expression for me. A way to address the kind of pain I’ve been through. I value my anonymity, and the computer and Internet give me at least a false sense of it.

Anyway, I’ve wandered off topic. In 2004, I was sitting in my therapist’s office apologizing and crying over a car wreck I’d had, where I totaled Missy’s car. It didn’t hurt anyone, but she was justifiably upset with me. I’d been driving sleepy and hit the gas when the stoplight turned green.I also hit the caran inch in front of me that hadn’t moved. Missy was there, and she told me it was okay, that it was in the past (a good year and a half in the past) at the time. Then I started talking about not writing and how I felt like that part of me had just died some kind of death and I was miserable.

I can’t describe to you just how miserable I was. It was like I had deprived myself of food, water, and oxygen and then just watched that part of myself shrivel up and disappear. But in 2004 Missy did one of those kinds of things a friend who is more like a sister does. Or what a sister is supposed to do.

She’d been my writing partner and we’d once dreamed of making movies together. But somewhere along the way, my bipolar breakdowns and lack of money had stopped and robbed us not just the drive but of the kind of passion that drove me to write.

In the car later that night on the way home she looked at me and said, "All right. Let’s do this thing. Let’s make a movie."

With those three sentences, she lifted me