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It’s me. Sat up late and finished a scene that I’d had to leave blank. A scene that I had not the heart or patience for weeks ago. I just typed, scene here, and moved the fuck on. Last night I had to finally finish it. It was a great scene. Fun, exciting, sexy, but it was still hard, because anything with Richard and Anita, and Jean-Claude is hard. It’s their dynamics, I guess. I was pumped after the scene, and if it could have been the end of the book, I’d be exstacitic this morning, but it’s not. Last night I chose music for the scene. TYPE O NEGATIVE “Black Number 1”. on continuous play. If you’re familiar with the song then it gives you some idea of the scene.
This morning I’ve skipped back to where I left the rest of the book, over two hundred pages ahead. I’m at page 920, and not done. I was in such a good mood last night. The scene really worked. This morning I woke in a deep blue funk, so tired, emotionally drained. For me it’s been being sick with one of those icky viruses for two weeks. Only kicked it’s ass yesterday. For Anita, we’re finally seeing her pay the price on stage for no longer believing that vampires are monsters. If vampires are people, living beings, then what does it do to you as a person to be killing them on a regular basis? She’s murdering people. Yeah, they started it. They killed other people, but sometimes they aren’t fighting back. Sometimes, the bad guys beg for their lives, and she still has to pull the trigger. It’s been ugly. So through very different avenues Anita and I come to this place in the book, both emotional drained, so tired. Maybe I’m like one of those method actors, and I adopt some of what my character is doing, or expereincing, because my courage has faltered several times this book. I know what’s coming and I don’t want to put Anita through it. I don’t want to see it, or do it, and I don’t see a way to avoid it. We’re back to having Olaf and Edward on stage, however briefly. We’ll need the back-up and that says more than anything else what kind of end we have for this book.
How much violence can you see before you break? I’m beginning to daydream about a cozy mystery world where no one dies violently, and it’s always tea time. Anita needs a real vacation, and so do I. But I think that she, like me, is incapable of having an innocent vacation. I can’t go anywhere without getting a new book idea for her, and it would be her luck that she’d be out jogging, or something and find a body. I can hear her now in my head, yelling, “What is this karma? I’m on fucking vacation.” She’d be so wicked pissed to have a crime dumped on her lap if she actually left town and tried to do something normal. You know, go to the seashore, look for shells, jog along the shore. Sounds good, doesn’t it, but even if I went, I would be gazing off to sea thinking of monsters.
I’ve got an interview question waiting it’s turn in the cue of interviews. The question is why violence? Why write about such violent themes? Why write about scary stuff? The answer, simply, is that I can’t help myself. It’s how I think. Give me an idyllic scene with daffodils and bunnies, and there’d be a severed hand in among the flowers. Or maybe, better yet, a partially decomposing hand, that one of the dogs dug up. Naw, we’ve seen too many dogs digging up stuff in mysteries. It happens in real life, but fiction should try to be fresh, if you can do it. One of the hardest things about writing a series if your detective is a civillian is finding exscuses for bodies to keep turning up. It’s so much easier with a main character that gets to be a professional cop or detective. One of the reasons that Anita is a professional, rather than a civvie, is that I read mystery series, and decided I’d rather have a reason for my main person to keep being called into crime scenes.
Strangely, I’m feeling better. Yeah, I’m tired. Yes, the book is the longest yet, and that’s playing hell with my deadlines, but what I wrote is true. I write what I think about, what ocurrs to me, and that is some pretty dark shit. I’ll leave you here. Keep the light on, watch your back, and remember that noise . . . It’s nothing.