News

You’re probably going to get two blogs today. This one is to correct the mistake I made in yesterday’s blog about the killings in Carnation. I wrote that the woman who killed her family was the sister of the woman she killed, but no, it was the husband who was her brother. The son of her parents, his wife, their children, that she killed. I’m not sure it makes a difference to the horror of it all whether you kill your sister or your brother, but it was a mistake in the reporting and I amend it here.
I was upset by the story, and I thought I double-checked my facts, but apparently, not good enough. This is one of the reasons I took maybe two journalism classes and had to stop. I tended to have trouble staying emotionally detached from the bad stuff, and I also tended to elaborate. Not on purpose, but I’d make these intuitive leaps on the reports. Sometimes I’d be right, but it’s not a journalist’s job to editorialize, or guess, in the initial story. That’s for later, if you get a chance to dig at the story. But, really, it’s just the facts ma’am. I was never terribly good at just the facts. I always thought, what if?
I guess that’s why I write fiction and not non-fiction. I do my research for the fiction; scarily, people in New York tell me I research more for my fiction than most writers do for the none, but in the world of fiction I can fudge and it’s okay. I can take what is true and build on it, until it’s my world, my characters. Built on a foundation of truth, but the tower above it can be as fantastical as I want, as long as the foundation is solid. Solid first; airy-fairy second.
So, my apologies about the mistake, and a lesson relearned. Real world reporting just isn’t my thing. Never has been. I like my realities seen through the patina of vampires, zombies, ghouls, shapeshifters, and myth. There’s a lot of harsh stuff in my books, but always it’s a step back, to the side, so that all that harsh, almost-truth, goes down a little bit smoother. Mary Poppins had her spoonful of sugar, I guess I’ve got my spoonful of nightmares. It works for me, and from what you guys tell me at signings and in messages, it works for you, too.