The Tsika Project has results, currently choosing from the vast array of pics.

Say hello to Tsika Tsarinkov. The name Tsika isn't Russian ... it's a nickname. A school administrator mangled and mispronounced her birth name. The class thought it was funny and abused her with it for days before she decided to *own* the name. After that, only very special people were allowed to call her by birth name "Tsarina". She looks the part of a perfect princess but has a fiery boisterous personality. Swears constantly, drinks, prone to going nuclear if her friend Glycerin is in peril.

Model: Mamiko
Ph: Piotr Pro Photo
for BHBranham (author of It Really IS Rocket Science)

Possible book cover candidate

Fan Club Print Candidate

Tsika and her Lollipop Spell

Stalker man spots me smoking. Is bad for him.

Glycerin's Daily Journal - a selected note.

Glycerin is the lead guitarist of IRIRS and a main character in the book series. Something gleaned from her personal journal:
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Today, little dove Kpau asked me, "If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill herself, is it considered a hostage situation?". She meant it funny, I thought it was funny - but then we both started crying and ended up hugging.
Some days the whole blooming band is crazier than a bag of ferrets and sugar cubes, not just me. -- Glycerin &\
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Books available at:
http://www.amazon.com/Brad-H-Branham/e/B00GBM1T0Q

"Glycerin" Glycca Ping Wendham and Dissociative Identity Disorder

The book series, It Really IS Rocket Science, is superficially about the adventures and romances of a rock band. 

It's also a collection of character studies of a group of rather unusual misfits who depend on each other. It isn't an utter secret at this point that Glycerin, the lead guitarist of the group, is afflicted ("enhanced?") with Disassociative Identity Disorder. Symptoms vary greatly from patient to patient - Glycerin exhibits one particular set of behaviors coupled with PTSD and clinical depression. 

They call their rock band The Lost Girls for good reason. I wanted the series to be fantastic but based on reality - so I did a lot of research to portray each woman with the complexity of their real disorders. Kpau and Tsika exhibit different symptoms but still reflective of PTSD behaviors. Both have coping mechanisms that mostly work. 

Glycerin is going to get to do some self-discovery of her nature in the next novel in a setting she feels safe in, where she won't be drugged into oblivion or burned at the stake. I needed more sophisticated neuroscience understanding. Here's a synopsis of one of the many papers I'm plowing into. For Science. 
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Opening paragraphs describe the general features - many of which apply to Glycerin

 Dissociative identity disorder is characterized by the presence of two or more identities or personality states, each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and the self (DSM-IV-TR). At least two of these identities recurrently take control of the person’s behavior. Dissociative identity disorder is frequently accompanied by dissociative amnesia, characterized by an inability to recall important personal information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness. Patients with dissociative identity disorder also commonly experience a range of other symptoms, including depersonalization, derealization, spontaneous autohypnotic symptoms, pseudopsychotic symptoms such as passive influence from and/or hearing the hallucinated voices of alter identities, and multiple somatoform symptoms (1) . 

In clinical studies, most patients with dissociative identity disorder have also been found to meet the DSM-IV-TR criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (2) . In epidemiological studies of the general population, the prevalence of dissociative identity disorder has been found to range from 1% to 3% (3) . 

Numerous studies have shown an association between a dissociative identity disorder diagnosis and an antecedent history of childhood trauma, usually multiple, sustained forms of maltreatment beginning in early childhood (4 – 8) . Although the accuracy of recall in patients with dissociative identity disorder has been debated, patients’ accounts of maltreatment have been independently verified in several studies by using corollary history from family informants, childhood medical records, and social service documents (6 , 9) . Accordingly, the disorder has been conceptualized as a childhood-onset posttraumatic developmental disorder (10 , 11) . Despite these findings, essentially nothing is known about the neurobiology of dissociative identity disorder. 
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Read Glycerin's story (and that of the other women) by visiting http://www.amazon.com/Brad-H-Branham/e/B00GBM1T0Q and other book retailers.