“Who knows what bugs are crawling around in someone’s head?” That’s one of my favorite lines from my fourth book, Shadow Hill.
A few weeks ago, I spoke to a group of Rotarians about writing and, more specifically, a little bit about my books. The first book I talked about was Random Road , where six nude bodies are found hacked to death on an island. The book also goes on to talk about sex clubs and swingers.
In the second book, Darkness Lane, my protagonist, Geneva Chase, has a brief, tawdry affair with a lascivious actor.
The third book, Graveyard Bay, is about escaped convicts, the Russian Mafia, dungeons, a dominatrix, and S&M.
As I spoke to this group, I could see eyes widening and looks of surprise. You see, before I retired, I worked at a day job as the president of our county’s Chamber of Commerce. A straight-laced, conservative organization by definition. I think the Rotarians were a little shocked.
This past Thursday night, my wife and I attended a social/business event, and one of our community leaders came up to me and told me she had read all of my books, including my latest, Whisper Room, which is about an escort service run by women. She smiled at me and said, “You know, I held out your latest book and told my husband that he should read this. He won’t believe that this all came out of your head.”
I get that a lot, from friends, from readers, from neighbors. Where on earth does this stuff come from? Often, they’ll ask my wife, “Aren’t you concerned?”
Cindy dryly replies, “I sleep with one eye open.”
Before my stint with the Chamber of Commerce, I worked for newspapers and magazines for over thirty years. I've seen some strange things, been in some decadent places, and met some scary people. So, I can draw upon that while I’m writing, but more importantly, I depend upon my imagination.
As writers, the characters that we create might share some characteristics or bear a resemblance to people we know, but they’re figments of our imagination. That includes the good guys as well as the bad guys. And let’s be honest, aren’t the villains fun to write? Isn’t it a kick to be evil, even if it’s just on paper, to increase the tension and the suspense of a story?
In my books, I’ve killed an old boss or two. It’s cathartic. It really is.
The good guys, the bad guys, the peripheral characters…they're all us, the writers. In my opinion, writing fiction is about as close to being schizophrenic as you can be. As a writer, don’t you hear voices in your head? Is the dialogue playing out while you’re driving to the grocery store? A plot twist appears when you least expect it, like while you’re taking a shower or having breakfast?
Once, a friend of ours, who also happened to be a fan, told me, “You think about death a lot.”
Yeah, crime novelists think about death a lot. I think we all have a lot of dark shadows lurking in our heads, rattling around in our skulls. Mystery novelists just allow those shadows to slither out of our heads and onto a blank sheet of paper. And man, is that ever fun
