Stranger than Fiction

BREAKING NEWS

Anyone read the news lately? Watch it on TV? Talk about it around the water cooler. There's always lots of news. Not all of it good. People shot. People set on fire. People doing horrible things to other people. And the newspapers putting large photographs of the killers on the front page of the paper, while the victims barely merit a photo. But that's a political comment. And I wouldn't make a political comment about how these people that have all sorts of problems and are starved for attention know that they will get it. They know the more people they take with them, the bigger the article will be about their lives. They know that the neighbors that ignored them yesterday, will be talking about them non-stop for days, weeks, months or maybe even years. Is it right? Should the criminals get the glory and the victims be ignored? Oh yeah, I wasn't going to be political, right?

And what about writers? Authors? Fictionalists? Do we make this stuff up? No, not all of it. I mean, have you read a newspaper lately? All this stuff inspires thoughts of stories. Some of us turn it into a mystery, following the crime and the people trying to solve it. Some of us follow the tragedy, the victims, their families, their grief. Some of us follow the victims, having their ghosts reappear after a troubled death. Some of us do true stories, books with biographies and photographs, trying to understand how it can happen. And do we feel social responsibility for this?

Well, I can only speak for myself. When I wrote my first two books, I had no problem at all. Of course, I had no contract either and no real image in my mind of what it would be like to sell or publish the books. When I wrote book 3, Sins of the Mother, House Report had already come out and Evening the Score was about to. I had been reviewed by some big journals. The books were selling out. That meant real people were reading the stuff I was writing and I had a moment where I panicked. Real people were reading my stuff - was I being socially responsible? Should I be socially responsible?

In Sins of the Mother, the first draft, a police officer gets shot and dies in the line of duty. At a call for a "domestic" actually, which is one of the most dangerous calls they can take. That and traffic stops. Isn't that interesting? Not what TV or the movies tries to make us believe. Anyway, back to this poor police officer. I realized that this book was going to go out in the world and everyone was going to know I wrote a novel where a police officer died. And I love the police. They have rescued me when I needed it, they put themselves in danger so that I don't have to be. I really had such a panic, a moment of self doubt. And I changed the book. The police officer lived. Do I regret it? I don't know if it really changed the story a lot, but I was sorry I let outside sources influence my writing. And it's funny, because by book 4, Flirting With Disaster, I was killing people everywhere and writing about a very scary serial killer. And I didn't give it a second thought.

So does this happen to everyone? I don't know, you'll have to tell me. Should the newspapers and televisions take a little more responsibility on what they say and do? I don't know the answer to that yet either. But I definitely think it should be a topic of discussion.

So be safe, and remember the last thing you should tell those close to you every time you see them is "I love you". You never know what the day might bring.