Writers Who Kill

"Where do you get your ideas?"

by Carla Damron, author of the Caleb Knowles Mystery Series

As a mystery writer, I’m often asked this question. It’s right there with, “How did you get your publisher?” and “Which way to the ladies’ room?” (That’s a question we authors used to get at book signings, back when there were these places called “bookstores”). I must confess though, I HATE to get the “where do you get your ideas” question.

I mean, it’s a reasonable query, and I don’t spite the asker of the question. But it makes me face something a little unpleasant about myself: I NEVER run out of murderous plots. I know plenty of people who need killing (by my pen). When I read in the newspaper about a chemical spill, I couldn’t help but mentally file it away under “Death by poison,” in the sick filing cabinet I have in my brain. I can’t walk through a hardware store without marveling at all the potential murder weapons. I once stood in front of a giant auger for a full ten minutes imagining a creepoid killer using it to bury bodies. (That thing had an eighteen-inch bit—who wouldn’t see its homicidal potential?)

And you don’t want to sit beside me on a plane. The poor guy who introduced himself to me and said he was an “environmental engineer” probably didn’t expect an hour of interrogation about what industrial solvents are the most lethal. When a friend described how his bone marrow treatment for leukemia actually altered his blood type, I sympathized, I celebrated his recovery— then pondered how a killer might exploit the change in blood type, especially if the police had old blood evidence on file. This is just how my mind works.

There are advantages to this little quirk of mine. When a good friend was horribly mistreated by a jerk on her job, I looked her in the eye and promised: “I will kill him in my next novel.” And I will—though it will be under a different name and gender. There is little I can offer my buddy who is going through a horrific divorce, but her ex and his mistress may add to the body count in some upcoming project. And that newspaper article about the coach who turned out to be a predator of little boys? Oh yeah. He’s going down.

Note: Fiction can be a very therapeutic outlet. (My husband says he feels safe as long as I keep writing.)

So the question “where do I get my ideas” isn’t one I struggle with. My problem is this: I have so many plots in my head, so many murders to write, I can’t possibly get to them all. I’m not a fast writer—it takes a year for me to complete a novel—so, if I’m to write every murder I have on my list, I need to live to be (have my calculator out, doing the math …) nine hundred and twelve years old.

I better start working out.

The next time I’m at a book signing, and a reader asks me where I get my ideas, I think I’ll smile politely and reply, “Been to any hardware stores lately?”