Bad Guys

Last night I watched No Country for Old Men the gem adapted by the Coens and written by Cormac McCarthy--No Country for Old Men (Vintage International) for the 87th time. Now if you haven't checked out either one...what the heck are you waiting for??  Javier Bardem plays the baddest bad-ass Anton Chigurh.  The book and the movie are pure, unadulterated, killed by an air tank awesomeness. I dig bad guys.  Perhaps because I fancy myself a bit of a, well it rhymes with dussy. And I one of my favorite parts of writing books is the creation of my bad guys. 

They always even the tinest trait, at least mine do, that makes them a bit likable--even if they represent everything that's repugnant to you, or me. When I was revising Five Percent of Nothing, the one of the main bad guys (and there are quite a few the heroine deals with) is Dylan Parker.  He's a drug addicted, abusive adulterer.  Not much there that would qualify him for a Nobel, but he has an air of charm.  I'm editing my newest release The Umbrella and the bad guy Billy, has a most disgusting "solution" for world famine and is a thieving psychopath, but again, there's something there.   

Most of my bad guys are, well guys.  But I'm working on a bad girl (and not the minx-ish, pillow fight kind) for my upcoming novel that I'm having a lot of fun with.  And there's no need to page Dr. Freud because I recognize the usefulness of these bad guys and gals not only in my books, but in my life.  I use them to release the stress of being.

Because while the me that's sitting in front of this screen at 2:45 am on Wednesday, August 31 may not want to terrorize someone like Manu Tushar does in Brazilwood, I really got pissed off at the at the man in the grocery store today who almost hit me with his Prius and released my anger by writing a fantastic thriller scene for my latest WIP.

Welcome To My Life

So I was instructed by my editor to begin a blog. Actually, it was a demand. The demand was followed by..."Hell, I can't believe you don't have a blog! Why everyone has a blooooog!"  "And there you have it, I suppose that's why I don't," I responded.


But I'm really not that flippant. Nor that affected. Truth is, authors (not all, but some) find comfort in hiding behind their characters. I can be a drug dealer who beats the hell out of his wife as my character Dylan Parker does in Five Percent of Nothing, I can be a maid who commits the ultimate horror as my character Ana Cartena does in Brazilwood, I can be a woman who takes advice from a leaky faucet like my character in Conversations With Verbs of Prey or even someone who talks to a bubble as my character in Suffering Surfactant does. But here, well here I'm just me. And if I'm just me, well then I risk it all.


So this is me. I am many things, like a raging hypochondriac...I was convinced I carried Ebola, Legionnaires and gangrene of the elbow at the same time. I have weird phobias: latex balloons and those canned bread products in the grocery stores among others. I am bombastically sensitive and extremely flawed.  I have a photographic memory and vividly dream in color. I hate getting drunk and haven't run across a drug that doesn't make me ill. I am currently concurrently engaged in one of the saddest and exciting times of my life. I'm allergic to Novocaine.


And the rest I hope you can work out with me along the way.