Monday 30 May 2011

No-one Can Tell

 
You are too violent.
Really?  I always thought I was rather a kind and gentle person, but do go on…
Alright then, your writing is too violent.
Ahh, now we’re getting to the truth of it.  And as a small consideration I will concede that there are certain elements of my writing that lean towards the violent, but isn’t that the whole point of crime fiction?  We deal in death.
Granted, but must you insist on dealing in such violent and bloody death?
If the death is not violent or bloody, it has no place in crime fiction because it is a death by natural causes, and therefore of little or no interest to anyone not related to them.   
It certainly would have no place in my fiction.
So you created a violent and bloody world to explore the nastiness of violent and bloody death?
Not deliberately.
Then what were your intentions?
I wanted to create a world where undercover cops could roam free, taking on some of the biggest and most evil corporations known to the entire planet.   
And it stands to reason that they would be populated with people hell-bent on accumulating as much power as they can gather to them, through any means necessary.
And when their power is threatened, they become nasty and violent.
I’ll be honest, though, I had no idea that the first book would come out quite as violent and nasty as it did.  
 When the primary antagonist appeared on the scene, I was really just writing him slowly and carefully to see what he would do.
He was the Head of Security.
A perfect target for my team of heroes to go after, particularly in terms of the information he would have access to, if they were able to get it past him.
It was well known that he was in charge of identifying and disposing of traitors inside the corporation, and that he was also known to torture them for information about other traitors.
I just had no idea until he started to torture them, just how much he would delight in it.
It worried me.
Not just because this character scared me, and still does.
Or because I had no earthly idea how my heroine was going to firstly get close to him, secondly get the vital information away from him, and thirdly get away again.
It was more how easy I found it to write him.
Writing is not an easy thing to do.
And if you are a fellow writer, you know exactly what I am talking about.
But when it came to writing the scenes where the Head of Security was torturing and maiming people for information, or even just for the pleasure of it, they flowed out of me so easily.
Was this really coming from me?
If I had this readily available inside of me to call upon at any time, then how did it get there, and how had I kept it under control for so long?
Give it up for the awesome abilities of the English to suppress our emotions.
Were it not for that, our country would be teeming with killers.
As it is, there are too many already.
When I gave the pages to my trusted readers, I was a little concerned what they would make of them.
They were surprised, not unlike me.
I don’t know if it altered their attitude towards me, knowing that I had these buried thoughts inside of me somewhere.  When the book was finished and I read it again as a whole I began to understand where they came from.
And breathed a sigh of relief.
It seemed clear that many years of first-hand torture courtesy of my high school compatriots had been building up for quite some time, and were dying to be released, if you'll pardon the pun.
And now they were.
At least for the time being.
When it came to starting the second book I wondered who would appear, who would pick up the mantle of evil gatekeeper to the vital information, and what they would do.
I tried to keep it simple.
The first chapter of the first book had so much going on in it that there was almost too much for an introduction to the world of the undercover cops.   
And while it had a suitably gruesome death scene at the end of the chapter (death by train), it felt convoluted.
Fair enough.
So I simplified it down to three characters, two of them conscious, and one of them ending up on the ouchy end of the dagger before they died.
And, oh my, how they died.
If I’d thought that the first book’s torture scenes were bad, they were nothing compared to this.
It even put off one of my previous readers.
They said it was just too full-on violent for their liking.
Okay, I thought, but clearly you have never read Val McDermid’s Tony Hill novels, because if you think mine are full-on, they are nothing compared to hers.
Absolutely nothing.
Perhaps it’s best they get out now, because it’s going to get a whole lot worse before the end.
And who knows what will happen in the next book?
No-one can tell.

Monday 23 May 2011

A Stranger There


“I was feeling like a stranger in a strange land.
You know, where people play games with the night.”
Somewhere Down the Crazy River, Robbie Robertson

Is it true of all writers, or is it just me and Robbie who feel this way?  When I walk through this life of shadows and light, passing others along the way, do they think as I do? 
That the real world is just a place I have found myself in, possibly by accident, and that I must seek to understand it?
That I am like an alien on my own planet out of step with those around me?
Do we have the same thoughts alone?
These are simply more questions for the darkness, when all other thoughts of every day life have slipped away and only the need for answers remains.
That, and the sound of the clock ticking the moments away.
Supposed restful moments when I am supposed to let go of the daily grind, of the stresses and strains that come from just living, and let the peace in.
Peace?  What peace?
This is the time when my mind comes alive.
This is when all the questions my subconscious has been simmering away on all day come to the surface with nothing to stop them.  When every answer leads on to another question and nothing is resolved.
Sleeping tablets help.
Sometimes.
In the short term, and when the mind comes back with questions to be answered, it returns ten-fold.  The drugs don’t work, as the song goes, they just make you worse.
It’s as if the tape keeps running, and the mind is put on pause, but the reel is still going when you re-press play and runs quicker to catch up.
Drinking helps.
Sometimes.
It gives the mind a buzz and numbs it to the questions demanding answers.  It makes the questions sound like fun, like anything is possible and nothing really matters.
Wow, really ploughing through the song titles tonight.
Anyway, the drinking seems to help because it opens up the tangled writer to slowed down thoughts, therefore easier to deal with thoughts, and allows her to think of creative and amazing answers during her drunken period.
So creative.
She reaches for her pen and paper to get these wonderfully creative thoughts down before they escape for good.
She follows her train of thought into the tunnel and writes down everything she sees there in the darkness.
This is so good!
When she wakes the next morning, she will have all the answers she has ever wanted about life, the universe, and everything - and they won’t just be the number 49!
Or so she thinks.
The cold harsh truth of the matter is that when she does wake the next morning, she can’t even face a glaring piece of paper, let alone read what’s on it.
And after a wasted day on the sofa watching some cheesy American teen drama, she finally feels able to read what she wrote the night before.
And marvel.
In jaw-dropping wonder.
At the complete load of bull-crap she wrote.
Drinking didn’t make her more intelligent.  While it was killing off her brain cells, it fired haphazardly and made her think that what she was writing was inspired, just before the grey matter died a painful death.
Never to return.
But at least it pushed her into the right direction, in a manner of thinking.
Writing helps.
And for those of us who write to understand the questions, the demons and the angels inside our own minds, writing not only helps, it becomes a necessary way of life.
A way of answering some of those questions.
A break, at least, from the need to answer some of them all.
I have always written to understand the world I live in, and the world inside my mind is no different.
My mind may be a strange land, but at least I am not a stranger there.

Monday 16 May 2011

From the Darkness


Asleep to the sounds of rain on canvas.
Dead to the world.
Well, not entirely.
Not in the sense that someone has snuck up on my unprotected tent and come in without my noticing, with that high-pitched zip opening noise that only a tent-door can produce.
Heaven forbid that a face should appear at the flimsy plastic window over-looking the mist-covered Loch and seal my fate.
Okay, awake now and probably for the rest of the night.
Thanks for that.
Why is it that in the remote, often romanticised locations of a Scottish Glen and Loch, in the blissful dampness of a Scottish Summer, thoughts turn to supernatural serial killers and visitors of the knife-wielding variety?
I could blame Mr King, my usual port of call, but is he in fact responsible?
There must be something within my psyche that sought out his stories of the weird and wonderful, of the scary and the beautiful.
I could have chosen to read anything.
Indeed, the stories my mum read to me were the usual mix of fairy-tales with hidden, and sometimes not so hidden, morality tales.  They were full of princesses and fairies and magic that changed the world for the better.
So why did I feel drawn those characters who were always trying to upset the balance?
As much as I wanted to see the wicked witch defeated, why was I upset when a house landed on her head?
Perhaps we are drawn to the darkness.
Perhaps we like to see what it would be like to live in a world where we can do anything we want to do, and not have to bend to the will and consequences of the real world.
Perhaps it excites us.
The adrenaline rush of not knowing how things will turn out, of expecting something to happen at any moment that could be good, or could be bad.   
We feel fairly certain that the hero-proxy to ourselves will win in the end.
Fairly certain.
Because they don’t always.
A rise in ambiguity has led to the creation of a greater level of suspense for the reader, as they really do not know who will triumph in the end.   
Even if the hero-proxy does prevail, they could be killed off at the end having fulfilled their mission.
They could die trying and let the task fall to less able characters, those in whom we are not certain of success.
But how much sweeter the victory when they prevail.
The greater the ambiguity, the more satisfying a successful conclusion.
Ahh, but is it really the end?
How many times have we thought a killer to be defeated only to have them resurface time and again, their powers of resurrection seemingly unstoppable, giving them that supernatural ability to come back from the dead.
It’s easier to cast them in that mould because then they are not human.
For the things they have done, and the horrors they have committed.
How could they possibly be human?
I feel I am straying once more into the boundaries of the real world, so for now I will place my opinions on pause, and not debate the true horror that is humankind.
It is easier to think about and control fictional evils.
Mostly.
They do seem to take on a life of their own sometimes within my writing, perhaps through my own desire to explore the realms of the darkness.
Then they need to be reigned back in, usually with a humanistic component that makes them a little less evil, a little easier to relate to.
And easier to kill.
If I don’t give my killers flaws, how on earth are my heroes going to defeat them?
Can’t have them wandering around, looking for more victims.
In remote Scottish Glens, beside misty Lochs.
Beneath the flimsy canvas.
Can we?
Wait … what was that?
I thought I heard a noise from the darkness...

Monday 9 May 2011

As If I Would

 
You what?
You want me to do what?
I do like that you’re funny, but I think this time you’ve got a bit …
Oh you’re not joking.   
You really want me to. 
I suppose I could try it out if that’s what you really … yes, okay I said I’d try.
Geez, give a girl a break why don’t you?
Why Don’t You?!
I used to love that show for the irony. 
You know, they were telling you to go outside and do something less boring than watch their show.  Which you always ended up doing of course.  The ‘watching their show’ part, not the ‘going outside’ bit I mean.
I’d much rather stay inside and watch any old rubbish that was on the goggle-box than have to go out into the brightly lit world and deal with the noise.
And the people.
And the killer worms.
Okay so I made that last part up, but I'll bet that's a book waiting to be written.
Or maybe it has been and I didn’t think it would sit well with me, particularly in light of watching a boy in my class at school eat worms and wondering in my innocent, pre-Stephen King days what happened to them after he ate them.
If Mr King got hold of the idea they would have taken over the boy’s body, or morphed into evil worms that left his body and took over everyone else’s bodies, until everyone became massive worms that took over the world.
Gross and disturbing.
But I digress.
As a child I was happier to deal with events happening on the television, or stories on the radio, or anything between two book-bindings.  
 And I don’t think it's because I was an only child, or because it made the grown-ups happier if I sat and read, rather than tore up the town and vandalised property.
I think it's because books can have their protective covers closed.
And the television and radio can be turned off.
But people can’t.
In particular, children can’t.
But they can, I discovered, be ignored.
If you stick your head far enough inside a book, I found, they will stop throwing things at you to make you come and play with them, and get bored.
Plus, grown-ups like quiet children.
To be seen and not heard, and all that.
So if they see one they cannot hear, who looks like they are not going to make any loud noises or demands, they will smile and let you be.  Better yet, they will even encourage the other children to leave you alone to read.
It’s true that other children will think you’re strange.
Perhaps not so much now with the popularity of children reading books on the increase, thanks to a certain young wizard, but certainly when I was young.
Plus, they think you can’t hear them.
After the name-calling ceases and they leave you alone, they actually become oblivious to you and think you have dematerialised to another planet, or something.
And if you’re the kind of person who likes to listen to other people’s conversations, it’s fascinating.
A veritable goldmine.
And it’s a skill I’ve cultivated over the years; to be in a place with other people and not only do they hardly register you're there, they are actually surprised when you move or cough.
The art of stillness.
I'll bet I’ve nicked that from some meditation book or other I’ve read over the years, but I like it.
I love it.
It’s perfect, in fact.
It means that we writers can sit around in coffee shops all day, notepad and pen at the ready, gazing out of the windows to where the real world is going on.
And if someone asks us what we were doing all day, we can say we were ‘Practicing the Art of Stillness’.
Better yet, we can say we were ‘Practicing the Art of Stillness for Our Craft’.
Ooh I like that, there may be a book in there somewhere too.
Maybe.
You what?
Look, you should know me well enough by now, to know that I cannot just sit down and write with a purpose in mind, or with a specific point to make.
Hah!  As if I would.

Monday 2 May 2011

Could it?



I want justice.
It’s the reason I read crime, it’s the reason I watch crime, and it’s most certainly the reason I write crime.  I want justice in a world where there seems to be too little of it to go around.
And within those fictional worlds of crime and punishment, I know for fairly certain that there will not be one without the other.
Unlike the real world.
It is an unfortunate fact that every day crimes go unpunished, that the guilty walk free from our legal system, and that the innocent are left to pay the price and wonder why.
This happens within our fictional worlds too, but there will always be another kind of justice to take over should that system fail to punish the guilty.
Poetic Justice.
A criminal walks free from court with a smug smile in his victory, only to be run over by a truck/bus/tanker - take your pick really.  Something befitting the nature of the crime, possibly with a hint of irony that brings a smile to the face.
Something that reaps the crime upon the criminal, and they get to know what it feels like, for the pain they have caused to others.  Ignoring the fact that they are probably so disturbed as to not care, it can be quite therapeutic for the reader, and often doubly so for the writer.
A pyromaniac who burns people alive in their homes, gets caught out by his own fire and it burns him alive instead.   
Aha, we say, he had that coming, and having his own evil turn itself upon him is an added bonus.
Someone who rapes and tortures others and ends up in prison, at the mercy of another person who enjoys doing that very same thing to them.   
Aha, we say, you reap what you sow.
Eye for an eye, basically.
What happens when the inflictor of pain is one of the good guys?  Does it depend on whom they are inflicting pain, as to whether it makes them bad or not?
A cop who beats up criminals, that’s okay.
A cop who beats up an innocent person, not okay.
A cop who inadvertently kills an innocent person, definitely a bad guy.  But the innocent person was not so innocent and had a deep dark secret of evil in their bloody basement.
Aha, the cop is good after all.
The cop trusted their instincts and their methods are vindicated.  They may make mistakes at times, but our cops in the fictional world are generally on the side of right.
Even if they bypass all legal avenues and stomp on the human rights of criminals like they were ridding the world of ants, it’s okay because we know that they have a moral code, hidden somewhere inside their chinked and rusted armour.
They will always do what is right, even if it seems to be morally questionable at the time.
We trust that they are exacting the justice and the punishment that befits the crimes.  We trust that their strong sense of what is truly right and wrong will give us the justice we demand.
And if they are unable to exact justice themselves, then poetic justice will step in and do the job for them.
We the readers have witnessed the criminal's behaviour and do hereby judge that they are guilty of their crimes and sentence them to the punishment that best serves our own vengeance.
That’s right, vengeance.
We take the law into our own hands and we live it through the actions of others, exacting fresh vengeance upon all those we deem fit to receive it.
And within the confines of the fictional criminal’s world, this is allowed.
Vengeance can be as exacting and as bloody as we deem fit, sometimes the bloodier the better, as we get back at all those who have hurt us in the past.  We can be as torturous to them as we can stand to be because they deserve it.
The end justifies the means.
But what about a criminal who hides?  One who exacts his fury on the world around him through the actions of others, and persuades them to kill and maim for him.
The legal system cannot touch him, there is no proof.
No-one can get near him.
Nor find him.
How is one to deal with a criminal such as this, who refuses to come out and face the world for the things they have done?  How do we deal with the frustration of being unable to punish this criminal?
In the books and TV shows we send in a crack squad of military types, lead by a maverick called Jack, who has a heart of gold and would die for any one of his men.  Someone who has been hurt by said criminal, and who probably lost a family member to their cowardly actions.
They overcome many obstacles to reach the hiding place of this criminal, face them down, have a manly conversation about honour and courage, and realise that this particular criminal will never be convicted in a court of law.
So they take the law into their own hands.
And they kill him.
Not a decision of their own making, of course, in spite of the family member lost to this despicable criminal, but one sanctioned and even encouraged by their own government.
So they kill the criminal and become heroes.
Everyone who has ever been hurt by the criminal feels a sense of satisfaction, of justice, of having their vengeance sated for a fraction of a second.
There is no need to worry about his human rights, because he wasn't really human.
 The criminal is dead, and justice has been done. 
And in the fictional world of crime and punishment, the story comes to an end, as the heroes and villains go about their business once more, without the ramifications of moral lines being crossed because they are not in the real world.
Fictional stories of murdering criminals because they are seen to have deserved it live only in the pages of books, or the chunks of TV between the advert breaks.
This story could never be condoned in the real world.
Or could it?