Monday, January 17, 2011

BLOOD COLORED GLASSES by Karen Duxbury


I invited today's guest blogger Karen Duxbury to join the staff of WWK.  She turned me down flat!  But, I did spur her into writing a blog for us, and I hope she'll do so again.  When Karen graciously volunteered as Treasurer for the SinC Guppies subchapter, I got to know her.  Karen is one of the Great Unpublished authors with whom I have confidence one day will become a published author.  E. B. Davis
Recently a story was posted to the SinC Guppies forum about a death in South Carolina.  A woman called for help saying her elderly mother was having trouble breathing.  When Medics arrived they found the 98 year old woman covered in bed sores and lying in an unheated, bug infested house.  When the woman’s pet parrot kept repeating “Help me” followed by laughter, it lead investigators to charge the daughter with abuse. They surmised that the parrot was mimicking the elderly woman’s cries for help and her daughter’s laughter as she abused her.
Within thirty minutes of that story being posted, members of our writing group had morphed the sad but simple tale of an elderly woman being abused to the nefarious scheme of her other daughter who taught the bird what to say in order to set up her sister for the abuse of their mother and keep the inheritance to herself.

This got me to thinking about how writers see the world. I always counted myself as a proud member of the Rose Colored Glasses crowd until my husband and I took a trip to Hawaii many years ago. We were driving the twisting, narrow Hana Highway one day and got stuck in an hours long traffic jam due to construction on one of the many one-lane bridges. As we sat there we noticed a woman walking from car to car. She would stop and chat for a moment then move on. When she got to us she said hello, asked about our trip and then left for the next car. I didn’t give her another thought until later that night as we drove back to our house. I was half asleep when I began to wonder what would have happened if she had left our car and gone to visit the next one in line only to find a dead body slumped over the steering wheel. That became the opening scene in my first novel.

Since that fateful day, I’ve realized that I tend to ‘see’ the gross, disgusting, illegal, scary possibilities in lots of otherwise mundane everyday scenarios. When I walk across the old wooden bridge over a nearby bayou, I don’t see the gnarly tree branch floating by, I see a body. When I smell something dead in the wind, I don’t imagine an animal; I wonder who died, who killed them and how they got here.

So I have to ask my fellow writers and readers out there – do you too filter all of life’s simple, inconsequential, everyday occurrences through your Blood Colored Glasses?

Karen Duxbury is a happily reformed accountant living in Houston, Texas. She is in the process of completing her fourth novel and editing her third. A CLASH OF SKULLS follows the daughter of a cursed woman battling mysterious forces as she tries to right the grievous mistake that led to her mother’s death. A MURDER OF CRONES is the story of a woman who infiltrates a bogus grief counseling retreat to search for her pregnant niece before the unborn child becomes a pawn in the final and greatest con of a family of elderly grifters. When not observing the world and writing about it, Karen spends time on her duties as Treasurer of the Sisters in Crime Guppies chapter.

9 comments:

  1. Elaine, and Karen, what a terrific, terrific post--did I say terrific? I think that if you are a mystery writer, you're always looking for the unusual in everyday events. I don't take a walk in my area (loaded with trees, mountain lions, foxes, coyotes, oh my, without thinking about suspense -- or finding a dead body in which the coroner rules it a death caused by a dead animal, only to find....

    One of my dear friends is a coroner, it's even worse for her. She can't go by an abandoned vehicle without thinking the worst.

    Don't know that this is good or bad, it is what it is, but the thankful news is it's led to some fantastic whodunits!

    Thanks for letting us know blood-colored glasses are normal ;)

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  2. Karen, sounds like you've got a bad case of Mystery Writers Syndrome. All you see is the potential for crime.

    Good news is, it's not fatal. Bad news is, it's not curable.

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  3. As a mother, I often imagine worst-case scenario happening to my kids. Maybe murder mystery is a positive outlet for my wild imaginings, which is bad enough without guessing what a coroner might dream up. Blood colored glasses indeed! Thanks for the post Karen.

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  4. Once a wrier friend and I noticed that a co-worker was late for work. we quickly imagined that he body was lying on the floor of hi locked office on the fifth floor of the building, We worked out a series of possible means by which he had ben killed and were debating the way the door got locked when, sadly, he walked into the office,

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  5. Great post! Yes, I see through blood-colored glasses, too, although my imagination is as likely to cook up a paranormal explanation as a criminal one. Or both. The world is a strange place, but there's always room to make it stranger. :)

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  6. I enjoyed the post. I've had a couple of co-workers who keep telling me about the guns they own and how proficient they are with these guns. They've become bad guys who need guns to hide inadequacies.

    An acquaintance who saw moral lapses everywhere became a secret and deadly judge who destroyed others so she could continue to see herself as close to sainthood.

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  7. Karen is having trouble signing into blogger or google, but she has asked me to pass on her comments.

    Donnell said: Thanks for letting us know blood-colored glasses are normal.
    Karen replies: I never thought of it as normal, until I saw the labels applied to my post:
    criminals, Karen Duxbury, mystery, psychologically disturbed individuals, Writing, writing and life Psychologically disturbed individual - maybe, but I draw the line at criminal!!

    Ramona said: ..you've got a bad case of Mystery Writers Syndrome
    Karen replies: Nah, I'd call it a GOOD case! Makes life a lot more fun for me and a whole lot scarier for my husband.

    Warren said: ..we imagined his body lying on the floor of his locked office..
    Karen replies: One of my earlier blood-colored incidents was when I saw men climbing around on the top of a building across from my office window. They were far enough away that all I saw was that they were wearing dark military-like uniforms and carrying long dark objects (guns??) Turns out they were inspecting the building prior to a complete gutting and rebuilding but hey I got a good short story out of it and my coworkers got a good scare. Of course, it is entirely possible that the only thing they were scared of was me.

    Barbara and Pauline: Making a strange place even stranger, or an acquaintance even odder, makes the world a much more interesting place to be!

    LOL-I stuck in the labels, Karen. E. B.

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  8. Great post--I love the concept of Blood Colored Glasses!

    When there were two cops cars parked to block off the street yesterday, lights flashing, I immediately assumed there was a drug bust. Turned out they were protecting traffic from a small sinkhole. What a let down.

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  9. Great post, Karen. Yes, I have the same affliction. I see places to hide the body and wonder how it would ever be found. Ramona's funny--not fatal but incurable.

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