A Word Please

Last night, I sent my upcoming novel The Cutting Edge off to Bob, my good friend and also my new editor! It’s a huge relief to have a professional editor to do the fine-tuning. This means I will not be forced to re-read my own words countless times, to the point of losing my last shred of sanity! Editing your own novels is tedious and difficult – and not something I’d suggest.

This will also be the first time someone else reads it. That always creates a bit of anxiety.

My mother also received a copy to read that night. But that doesn’t really count.

This novel is about a hairstylist with murder on her mind. Her clients are driving her mad and she fantasizes about killing them in gruesome ways. She crosses paths with a serial killer who believes she’s a kindred soul. Is she?

Ever wonder what your hairstylist is really thinking? In my upcoming book The Cutting Edge, I’ll be revealing some secrets from my 15 years in the business. You may never feel the same way about getting your hair done!

Skye is a hairstylist with murder on her mind. She’s burned out and people are driving her crazy. She fantasizes about what she could do with her scissors while smiling at her clients. Then she runs into a real-life serial killer who believes that Skye might be a kindred spirit. If given the oppportunity, would Skye really kill someone?

I was hoping to have The Cutting Edge complete and available by summer. Health complications have set me back a bit, so I’m shooting for late summer / early fall.

I’m a peace-loving hippie – or so I’m described by my children and my husband. I’m not aggressive and I don’t like to fight. I’m not pro-war. All of this is why I sometimes find my writing process disturbing. And, no, I don’t mean that it disturbs me to write aggressive or twisted scenes. Actually, it’s quite the contrary.

Yesterday, I was writing a rather creepy scene from a killer’s perspective. As I was writing, I realized that I was happy. This is what I found disturbing. How can I enjoy writing a murder scene when the core of my being wants to “Give peace a chance.”

I could rationalize and say that it’s the writing process that makes me happy. And it does. But that would be ignoring the fact that the particular scene I was writing made me happy in a specific way. Of course, I would not want to be that killer. I certainly would not want to be the victim. I would find absolutely no joy in the scene becoming a reality. So why the happiness?

I think I enjoy the process of stepping completely outside of my comfort zone – of becoming someone the polar opposite of my real self. In this way, I can release all of my frustrations and irritations without ever really hurting anyone. I can feel what it’s like to unleash all that rage. I can be the bad guy for a brief moment in time and gain a brief glimpse into their world.

Maybe we should teach people to write murder scenes as a deterrent to committing real-life murders. It’s worth a try, right?

I have been writing to a man who is on death row. He committed a murder, which he confessed to. He had no trial and requested the death penalty, which he received. I won’t give his name or the state. But I want to share something he wrote in one of his letters. I had asked what death row was like for him emotionally. For those of you who aren’t aware, being on death row is total isolation, total confinement in a small cell all day, every day. This is part of his reply:

“It doesn’t feel real to me…. I mean, I know where I’m at but the feelings or actual realization of it just don’t seem real when I’m sober. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t think about it much. I block it out. But I think I deserved my punishment. Why should I enjoy the blessings of this life when I took that from someone else? A lot of people cry out the death penalty is wrong but those same people don’t consider the isolation of a person from the world and other inmates. This, right here where I’m at, caged in the cell 24/7 with no physical contact with anyone is worse than death.”

If we are going to put someone to death, why do we first torture them for years or sometimes decades?

Something to think about.