At this point I’ve
killed several people. They all deserved it.
Since I’m too big a chicken to ever face prison, it’s all
been in print. But the satisfaction was real.
My first murder victim was a woman who tried to take control
of my business and have me thrown out. My only trepidation in killing her was
the fact that I’d likely end up on the suspect list. And that would be
inconvenient.
Aside from killing her, I was able to assassinate her
fashion sense. She killed her ethics all by herself.
Killing her was cathartic, as Linda Rodriguez points out in
her 5/2 blog post entitled: A Good Person to Murder. But the best part about
killing her was that it quickly became a mere detail in a body of work that
enabled me to share so many other things.
I want to make people laugh, and I do that by telling the
truth. I see a whole lot of ludicrous behavior just waiting to be chronicled. People
ask why I don’t write a business book – I believe I have. A creative business
is infested with overblown egos – even the good guys can appear comical. It’s all
grist for the mill.
My hope is always that I’m giving folks a good read, a solid
murder mystery. In and around that, I want to make them laugh. And apparently I
have some folk wisdom to impart, but none of that is deliberate – it just
happens.
My second victim is a woman who plagued my early work life
and preened her puffed up feathers while she did it. My story recounts her Machiavellian
manipulation of others—mostly me—to her ultimate self-destruction.
I waited a long time to kill her. It still felt great! And
the humor seemed to evolve naturally from the behaviors that I observed on a
daily basis. Sure, I added a few comedic “incidents” to keep things moving, but
the real humor is in the behaviors, and that’s not something I imagined. It’s
something I documented.
For my third attempt I tried to kill a friend. That didn’t
work out so well. It wasn’t fun for me and the writing was a mix of stilted and
gushy. Apparently, I have to stick to killing people I don’t like.
As I continue to write this third book, I have been forced
to twist and turn things so that I can kill the bad guys and save the good guys.
That has been a true revelation for me. I always figured I could write what I
wanted, but I was wrong. There appears to be some divine force that guides and
dictates my work. If I stray from my fundamental tenets I can’t make it work.
Now don’t get me
wrong. Just because there’s divine intervention, does not mean I think my work
is divine. It’s just that I’m starting to realize it’s less about me and more
about a message in need of delivery for some reason, and I’m just the delivery
tool.
I guess that about sums it up.
Robin Leemann Donovan always imagined herself as a humorist,
somewhere between Cornelia Otis Skinner and James Thurber, but never had the
time to bring this dream to fruition. Her Donna Leigh Mysteries have combined
this dream with the ability to kill off those who have annoyed and/or thwarted
her through the years, thus providing much needed therapeutic value. She is
also president of the advertising agency, Bozell, and has published Menologues,
an award winning blog on menopause. She lives with her husband and three bulldogs,
Roxi, Sadie and Frank.
