How Different My Life is from the Lives I Write About

My favorite topics to write about are murders and the mysteries surrounding them. I also love writing about people who do terrible things and those who put themselves in danger to solve the crimes.

Only once was my life touched by murder and that was back when I was a kid, and one of my mother's church ladies killed her husband with an ax to the head while he slept. I don't remember either of them. What I do remember, is another of my mom's friends saying, "He was so boring, if I'd been married to him I'd probably have done the same."

Because in both my mystery series my main characters are in law enforcement, I'm often asked if that is my background. The answer is a simple, "No." However, growing up my uncle was an L.A. police officer as was a neighbor--I babysat his kids. I had a son-in-law who was a cop and then a deputy, who shared his stories with me, and now I have a grandson who is a police officer and a grandson-in-law who is a deputy.

I belong to the Public Safety Writers of America and I'm friends with many men and women who are or were in all different kinds of law enforcement, so I have many people to ask questions.

As for people who do terrible things--I've known a few--no murderers, but those who haven't made the right choices in far too many ways. However, I've never totally based a villain totally on a real person, but rather drawn on bits and pieces from this one and that one, molding a fictional character into someone who will, under the right circumstances, do something horribly wrong. And the most fun is to create someone who is just down right evil.

My own life, though certainly not boring, is more what you'd expect a grandmother (and now a great-great) to live. Hubby and I are surrounded by family of all ages, and we truly enjoy it. We don't do much traveling anymore--but once we did. I still do book festivals and attend Sisters in Crime meetings in Fresno and over on the Central Coast. Love to give talks to writers and service groups.

One of the best things about being a writer is you can still write about everything, whether or not you can still do them.

In my latest book, there is intrigue, murder, a huge forest fire like California is experiencing in many places now (we had one right up the highway in the mountains only a few days ago)--and I have a friend who works on these fires who helped me. And as with all of my Deputy Tempe Crabtree books, there is a bit of Indian mysticism. (And that seems to just pop out of my imagination.)

From the publisher in all different formats:

http://mundania.com/book.php?title=Seldom+Traveled

And of course available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Villains and the Nature of Evil

by Janis Patterson

I admit it. I’m a cartoon junkie. I love watching weird little animated creatures dancing across the screen in all kinds of improbable story lines. In my opinion, the older cartoons are preferable, with better storylines. And better art. Give me a Rocky and Bullwinkle marathon and I am in pure heaven.

Something I have never understood, though, is the villain – human, hybrid, alien or animal – shouting that he is doing whatever he is doing solely for the sake of evil. Skeletor of the lamented He-Man franchise did that a lot.

Now I believe in evil. I know it is real, and I’ve actually seen it a time or two. But I must also believe that doing something solely for the sake of evil makes no sense, at least not in a mystery or thriller novel. Even the darkest dye villain does what he does for a reason, and in my opinion doing evil just for the sake of evil is not a reason. People do bad things, yes, and they do them for money, or power, or love, or some distorted and ugly thing in their brain, but to them it is a logical (sort of) and effective way to fulfill their vision… whatever twisted form that might take.

For example, a man who slaughters a schoolbus load of children is definitely evil, but is he doing it solely for the sake of purposefully serving evil? Or is he doing it to get publicity so that people will have to think of him? Or to avenge a real or perceived wrong? The end result is the same, but that’s a totally different thought process and rationale.

We believe in and accept heroes because in our culture it is accepted that it is right and desirable to do the ‘right’ thing. As a people we find it difficult to believe that one can do evil simply for no other reason than it is evil, and therefore we must attribute motives and desires to our villains. This renders them understandable to us – in our minds, at least.

But in our books do our villains really do evil, or do they merely go after what they want in a way that is unacceptable to our culture? Does the villain rob the store simply because we are not supposed to rob stores, or is it because they want something the store has – goods or money or whatever? Or, in a horrible extension, the life of someone in the store, perhaps in return for some real or perceived slight? Perhaps when looking in the news media you find stories of someone saying they wanted to do a crime just to have done one, or some similar rationale of evil, but that is real life. We deal in fiction, and fiction has rules. Real life doesn’t.

Genre writers have worked long and hard to make their heroes (and heroines) real and believable people with flaws and dreams and quirks. We can do no less for our villains, for if we don’t we run the risk of having our corporate raider morph into Snidely Whiplash, a two-dimensional sketch who twirls his mustache and threatens to foreclose the mortgage. Just pick the villainish cliché of your choice.

A hero who is real deserves an antagonist who is real, and it is our job as writers to make them both as believable as possible. 

Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?

All writers have a different style – some are plotters, some write by the seats of their pants, some work with a combo of the above or their very own construct. It doesn’t matter how the author creates, but what the author creates – and what the writer creates is a story filled with characters we root for and against.

There is a great deal of information available about heroes – alpha or beta, romantic or hard-boiled. Is he tall, athletic and handsome, or do the ladies adore his geekiness?

Our favorite heroines are generally smart, funny, and accomplished. But then again, there are the Stephanie Plums of the world, too! She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s klutzy!

But villains – where do the villains come from? Are they archetypes, constructs from our days of hearing fairy tales and myths? Are they the product of nightmares or do we pick our boss’ least appealing characteristics and make them bigger than life? Do we build him or her from people we read or hear about in the news? In documentaries? Or are they only a product of the writer's fertile imagination?

As far back as man has created, the villain has been a crucial component of the storyteller’s craft. The villain – or villainess, as the case may be – creates a great deal of stress and angst for our lovely hero and heroine. The villain will thwart them at every turn, for a while, and then their brilliance, bravery and moxie will shine as the villain is conquered.

What was our bad guy’s fatal flaw – hubris, stupidity, inexperience? Whatever it is, it brings him down in the end.

And isn’t that what we all want – to see justice done, the villain stopped and our hero or heroine win the day?

Who is your favorite fictional villain and why?

Libby
Libby McKinmer
www.libbymckinmer.com
Romance with an edge
Find me on Facebook, Twitter & Goodreads

Where Do You Find Your Villain?

All writers have a different style – some are plotters, some write by the seats of their pants, some work with a combo of the above or their very own construct. It doesn’t matter how the author creates, but what the author creates – and what the writer creates is a story filled with characters we root for and against.

There is a great deal of information available about heroes – alpha or beta, romantic or hard-boiled. Is he tall, athletic and handsome, or do the ladies adore his geekiness?

Our favorite heroines are generally smart, funny, and accomplished. But then again, there are the Stephanie Plums of the world, too! She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s klutzy!

But villains – where do the villains come from? Are they archetypes, constructs from our days of hearing fairy tales and myths? Are they the product of nightmares or do we pick our boss’ least appealing characteristics and make them bigger than life? Do we build him or her from people we read or hear about in the news? In documentaries? Or are they only a product of the writer's fertile imagination?

As far back as man has created, the villain has been a crucial component of the storyteller’s craft. The villain – or villainess, as the case may be – creates a great deal of stress and angst for our lovely hero and heroine. The villain will thwart them at every turn, for a while, and then their brilliance, bravery and moxie will shine as the villain is conquered.

What was our bad guy’s fatal flaw – hubris, stupidity, inexperience? Whatever it is, it brings him down in the end.

And isn’t that what we all want – to see justice done, the villain stopped and our hero or heroine win the day?

Who is your favorite villain and why?

Libby
Libby McKinmer
www.libbymckinmer.com
Romance with an edge
Find me on Facebook, Twitter & Goodreads