Choosing the Murderess.

     Where I am almost absolutely positive that other people don't sit around thinking about creating murderers for a living or even as a hobby, there are quite a few of us who do.  Today, I found myself browsing through photos on Getty and other sources to find the woman who will become the inspiration for the villain in my new book, the murderer.   The hero of sorts, but rather just an all-around good person, is the medical examiner, a woman in her forties who has a good life, a good family, and an intelligent plan for herself, and she's already been named. Her name is Deanna Gainer, so if there's any beautiful, lean, black Canadian woman out there by that name who happens to be a medical examiner, you'll have to forgive me; I'm not changing it.

    The M.E. will be a big part of the book, in that she's working on the dead people that show up in her morgue. The villain, an unknown individual, will ultimately be revealed to be a woman in her mid-to-late 20s of mixed heritage: Chinese, Native American, German, and likely some Scots-Irish ancestry as well. She's the product of a very unhealthy family situation; no family, really, just a worthless mother who abused her. When the baby was adopted, she was returned. She went through the system, and it failed her. It failed her in such a way that she wound up falling through every crack before ending up the way she did.

    This book is a tragedy - Shakespeare got away with writing them, so I decided to give it a go. This one will recreate several stories and parts of stories in reality that manifest in this fictional work, and hopefully in a way that is both entertaining, disturbing, eye-opening, and interesting. It is going to be fun to write; challenging, and maybe I'll stretch my mind a little -- I tend to hold back, but in this one I can't. I shouldn't. Think Criminal Minds meets Burke and Hare.

    I'm going to name the murderess today - and that fact makes me happy. I won't start writing the book until August, but I'm gearing up for it - thinking about it, and I'm studying the area where it all happens. I was going to make it a wharf thing, but I did that with my book "Cask". This one will be an inner-city location; in the dark and hidden away, where no one wanted to look but had to at some point.

    Believe me when I say it's interesting to go to a site like Getty Images to find a murderer - she's already done her dirty work in my head. I just have to write it out and make some sense of it. Will she get the help she needs? Will it be in time? Will she end it all so others can't move forward? I know the answer, but I can't reveal it until it's printed, which will be sometime in late September.

    I'm thinking Boston, Baltimore, or Bangor. I haven't worked that part out yet - but I will. I just need a little time to study them all and make a good choice on where she'll wind up. The book is titled "Silent Bay," so it should be close to water; that much I know.

Photo Credit: WanderingVeena.com