Hi, my name is Kait. You and I have
met before; I’m a writer who kills. You’ve had me as a guest a couple of times
in fact, but this is my first meeting, such as it is, as a regular blogger on
Writers Who Kill. I can see y’all sipping down your coffee, and a couple of
you, tasting something stronger. We don’t have those rules here. You can drink
what you like, long as you know who you are and what you do. Heck, you could
probably light up a smoke or two. Might even help the atmosphere.
Ok, enough. I need to get down to it,
I guess. I mean, you didn’t come here to listen to me wander all over the
Southeast and points north. Fine.
Here’s the skinny on me. I’ve been
writing since I could hold a pen. Nice, simple, stories, you know the kind. The
house with the door and four windows in the front, the mommy and daddy, the
brother to go with me. One face in every window. The true American Dream. Car
in the garage, rose bushes alongside the steps. Regular stuff. I liked it. I
liked that other people liked it. I really liked that the teacher liked it, and
I got high praise for my efforts.
When you’re a kid like that, you
think it’s never gonna change. No one is ever gonna look under the cover, flip
the drawing over, see the inside. But that kid. She knows. She knows how many
knots you need to tie into the sheet to get out the bedroom window. How Daddy
is funny with one drink, a laugh a second with two, and someone you never met
with three. All that while Mommy stands back and says, “He’s your father, do
what he says.”
That’s when you want that family of
four to look just like you, ‘cause if they don’t, there’s no place left for you
to go. No place but down, and that’s where you’re going.
By third grade, you stop drawing that
family. Those teachers, they’re smart. They figure you know your own house
enough now. They don’t need to know what really happens. But they teach you
something better. Something way better than drawing circles for Mommy and Daddy
faces. They teach you to write. And they teach you about fiction. Pretty soon,
you’re bringing home gold stars on your papers. Your teachers praise your
creativity. Your parents put them up on the refrigerator. You’re going to be a
writer.
For a while, you read every book you can
get your hands on. Phyllis Whitney, Edgar Allan Poe, Louisa May Alcott.
Everything. Nothing is immune from your reading need. You start to incorporate
details from each of your heroes in your books. Suddenly, your teachers aren’t
talking about classwork, they’re talking about careers. You and your career.
You are a cut above. That’s rich. A cut above. If only they knew.
It’s about this time that some
teacher hands you the book that changes your life. Some old guy named Antoine
de Saint-Exupery wrote something called The Little Prince. It’s a short book,
you read it twice before dinner. It was there that I learned to judge by deeds
not words. That words are the source of problems and to love something, it must
be let go.
That’s when I became a writer who killed.
All of my prior stories were stories of my perception. I wrote what I saw.
There was always a happy ever after. But after I learned that words were the
source of all problems and deeds their resolution, well, I discovered that one
must look deeper. Deeper than words. Some characters by their acts need killin’.
And so, I’m a writer who kills. I look at the story world, and I listen to my
characters, right and wrong, clear-eyed and self-deluded. Then I ask myself.
How to help them write their own real stories?
What about you? What’s your criteria
for a bad guy? Bad through and through or merely someone who through twists and
turns, maybe jealousy and envy, becomes irredeemable?
You can reach Kait Carson at Facebook
www.facebook.com/kait.carson.1,
@twitter, or at www.kaitcarson.com. Her
books are available at bookstores everywhere and at http://amzn.to/1IZvImt
