A Writer's-Eye View

Okay, for those of you who have been to my website and have read the “Research Extra” feature about researching Frozen Fire, I have another “moment” for you to enjoy.

In the Research Extra article, I mention the odd and even unsettling real coincidences that my co-author, Bill Evans, and I encountered as we set out to write Category 7, and the even stranger research coincidences that we encountered after Frozen Fire was written and in production. (I won’t go into them here. Here’s the link to the Research Extra; it’s a quick read.)

So the latest odd moment happened earlier this week, when President Obama swatted that nasty fly during an interview on national television and had PETA jump all over him for doing so. I read that and started to laugh, not just because it was utterly ridiculous. (And it is utterly ridiculous. I mean COME ON—it was a FLY. A germ-carrying, garbage-and-worse eating, vomit-disgorging FLY. Did it deserve to die? Maybe not, but the world won’t miss that one, even a teensy bit. Irrespective of what Jeff Goldblum and Stephen Colbert have to say about it.)

But, no, the reason I thought it was so funny was that in Frozen Fire, our über-villain is a character named Garner Blaylock, an eco-warrior who looks like Brad Pitt in Troy, has all the charm of Ted Bundy, and possesses all the compassion of Charles Manson. In short, Garner is not a nice man. To double-down on the ick factor, Garner believes that humans are the scourge of the earth and the other creatures, particularly the scorned (rats, cockroaches, and flies, for instance) have greater intrinsic value than humans. Nice, huh? Well, he was a lot of fun to write. (From the creative perspective, it’s wonderful to build a character who has no conscience and for whom no action is too horrific to take—and take pleasure in.)

There’s a scene in Frozen Fire in which Garner actually admonishes his lover for swatting at a fly. The woman doesn’t kill it, but Garner still doesn’t like that she’s annoying the poor little bug(ger). I won’t tell you how he gets back at her for that and other transgressions that he perceives as slightly more critical, but, as I said above, he’s not a nice man.

So I have to admit that when I was deciding just how bad, creepy, and off-the-charts nasty we should make this gorgeous villain, I really thought that there wouldn’t or couldn’t be anyone alive who would defend the life of a fly. But there you have it. PETA trumped us. And showed the world that–once again–Truth is sometimes just as strange as Fiction.

Back to my manuscript now. More anon.

Marianna

In most things in life, I’m a highly risk-averse late-adopter. For instance, platform shoes first appeared on the scene when I was in late grade school and have disappeared and reappeared several times since then. I’ve never bought a pair; I’m still not convinced it’s a trend that will last. When e-books came out, I scoffed. Blogging? Hah.

 And here I am. My books are available on Kindle, and I have a blog. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter–the jury’s still out. Still no platform shoes, but that could have something to do with being naturally tall.

 So I’m dipping my pedicured toes in the water. I can’t say how often I’ll update it in these early days, particularly since I’m in the crunch mode of a looming deadline and it’s summer time, which rarely helps a deadline, but I’ll try to stay on top of it and will post when I have something that needs saying…or that I just need to say. (Never been a problem for me……)

For now, thanks for stopping by. I’ll get more interesting soon!

Marianna