Dallas Writer Robin Michael Smith's Latest Book Aligns Itself With the Heart of a Serial Killer

Story by Philip Sherburne Photo by G. Marc Benavidez

The last two months have been hell for Dallas writer Robin Michael Smith. After he released his stark memoir With Deepest Regrets last November, he began to receive threatening emails from members of the small community where he taught high school English. The threats, which came from people who had a problem with the content of his book, eventually led to his resignation. Smith is hoping his chaotic life turns around as he gets set to release his first fiction book lovehatelove, a ferocious story that aligns itself with the tormented heart of a female serial killer. The 200-page book comes out on January 24, 2012, and can be purchased at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. lovehatelove is a quick read that is written as a first-person journal and is steeped with sharp turns that follows a sociopath from her Highland Park home to Deep Ellum, Greenville Avenue and the coast of Texas, before the main character, a wife and mother, treks across the United States in an attempt to find the Holy Ghost while feeding her demons with daily slaughter. It pretty much follows the design of any good Disney movie, Smith joked. Last summer when I interviewed Smith, he was a few months away from publishing his memoir With Deepest Regrets. He was a disheveled heap, who hid behind a sizable wall as we talked, but things have changed. For this meeting he was spruce and very deliberate in the things he wanted to say. He was sure of his words and it was a struggle to keep pace with his involved answers to my questions. During the interview, he drank water and ate a few vegan tacos at Spiral Diner in Oak Cliff. The crease between his eyes told me that he was serious business today. Smiths two books have both used the Dallas-Fort Worth area for the setting, and he is warming up to the idea of being attached to Dallas for the long term.

Id prefer to be surrounded by mountains or have an ocean on the other side of my door or be in Manhattan, he said, but my son lives with his mother in this area, so Ill be here for a while, and I've started to own the idea of being a Dallas writer. Theres something terrible and yet terribly romantic to me about the notion of being a torn southern novelist, and my experiences in the Dallas-Fort Worth area do protrude in the dripping dread that I compose. It isnt easy being here though, Im a vegetarian, I'm a bit of a socialist, and Im also a non-material minimalist, and those things go against the grain in this part of the world. In his new book, Smiths nameless main character blames her insatiable hunger for mayhem on the world that created her, but Smith claims that he is not trying to teach any moral lessons and is uncomfortable calling the book a satire. But it is society that creates sociopaths, he said. We treat people terribly and then we expect them to function normally. We also expect this countrys victims of abuse to hide their uncomfortable baggage and push through life with a smile. And many victims attempt to do this, but the internal turmoil eventually reaches through the haze of the created facade to do damage. One of two things happens when this occurs, the victim collapses upon him or herself, or the victim takes it out on the world. To avoid a collapse, the antagonist of my story slits the neck of society. The book has a dark energy and is filled with tragedy and suspense with a clever twist near the end that one would never predict. Smith, who is a past victim of societys cruelty, which is outlined in his memoir, does not completely disagree with the idea that his first fiction book lovehatelove is an escape for him. Maybe writing the darkness out of my system does help, but I do not affiliate myself with the main character in the story in any way. No. I am not a violent person. I dont hurt people. Im not malicious. I am filled with love even as I despise society as a whole, even though I know that humans are a failed race of selfish souls. Smiths first book came out only a few months ago. He says the book is doing well, although it hasnt reached all the people he wanted it to reach. I was told by agents and publishers, who I left on the opposite side of a burning bridge, that my memoir would make a splash and garner the attention of the national media because it uncovered an illegal military plot to assassinate a foreign president,

because it uncovered the death of a soldier who died by illegal means in an astonishing way, because it uncovered three days of torture that was perpetrated against me by the U.S. military in a U.S.Army hospital. But the media doesnt care anymore about righting wrongs and serving justice. Smith, who has a degree in journalism and worked as a reporter and editor for several years, left the field because it wasnt the pure, altruistic occupation he had hope it would be. The media barely has a pulse when it comes to justice these days," he said. "The media is too busy following around the Kardashians and turning egomaniacal and imprudent people into celebrities, the media is too busy conspiring with the government to create false fears. They are too busy pitting sides against one another, making sure that we live in a partisan country, keeping real progress from ever finding its way. We are a stagnant nation these days that spins its tires, digging a hole from which we will never escape, and the media and its nasty personalities are driving that spinning vehicle. Smith started last year as a high school English teacher in a small community north of Frisco called Celina, a town that it is known for high school football and conservative Christian values, but he ended last year unemployed because of controversy surrounding his memoir. Smith released his first book during his schools Thanksgiving break, and on the weekend before he was to return to work, he began getting anonymous hate email. The mail said that my book was pornographic, graphically violent and sacrilegious, and that I should not be teaching the kids of Celina. More emails came after the break, which warned Smith to never return to Celina because his memoir was corrupting young minds and was destroying the innocence of the children in the community. I decided to take a few days leave, but not because I was scared of what might happen to me, he said. I took leave because I wanted assurance that I had the support of the leaders at my school before I returned to my classroom, but the support never came.

Smith sent three emails to the principal at Celina High School, Rick DeMasters, but according to Smith, DeMasters never returned the emails or reached out to him in any way. DeMasters was unavailable for comment. I heard nothing from [DeMasters] over the course of three weeks, he said. I still havent heard a thing from him. He made it very clear that he did not support my return with his silence. But the non-support went a step further. Smith says that he heard through other staff members that DeMasters was saying unpleasant things about him. Everything I heard was through a third-party person and not directly from DeMasters himself, so I do have to be careful with what I say, Smith said, but I trust those people who gave me the information, they are my friends, and it was obvious through the things that DeMasters was saying about me to some staff members that my return was not welcome, and since he has refused to communicate with me, I can only assume that everything that Ive heard from those people is true. Smith said that the main reason he decided to teach in Celina was because he was looking for a quiet place to rest his spirit after several difficult years in his personal life. But in the end I was chased away by the community I was looking to for support. The novelist is discouraged, but said he will be fine as long as the students in Celina understand why he resigned. Ive been at Celina High School for four years and have a sound teaching record and evaluations that rate me as a teacher who exceeds expectations, he says. DeMasters has been in his position at the high school for only four months and he knows very little about me. But I know a lot about him now. As far as Im concerned, he has shown a complete lack of leadership in dealing with this situation and he is someone that I would never want to work for again. I worry about the staff and the kids in his care because his ego is suffocating. Im not sure how anyone can breathe with him in the building. Smith says he probably wont teach again and was crushed by the entire experience.

There are people in Celina who have said they will make sure that I never get another teaching job, and I have no doubt that you will find those people at a church on Sunday morning, he said. I offer them forgiveness and love them regardless, even DeMasters. Smith gets emotional as he continues. I miss my students and most of the staff members who have always gifted me with a considerable amount of love, love that I really needed. Those kids at that high school saved me on a daily basis. Smith says he also misses the immediate gratification that came from seeing kids succeed at academics and life, especially those students that are deemed as trouble by administrators and other teachers. The first inclination of a student who has had a tough life inside or outside of school, or doesnt relate to the topics that are being taught in class, is to just give up, he said, but what those kids need to understand is that most of the people in the education system dont care about them, so the students arent failing the system by flunking or dropping out of school, they are only failing themselves. Smith says the education system is flawed on a high level. Administrators at the federal, state and local level want kids to buy into their illconceived system because then the students can be easily manipulated by their propaganda, and when the students dont comply, the educators become bitter that the students arent following their order and they eventually give up on the kids. What Ive learned is that most educators are really, really lazy and choose not to understand the students, so what students need to know is to NOT fall behind just because the system doesnt understand them. Instead, they should fight their way past the establishment through personal success and fix the system, or break it into a million little pieces, when they get to the top.