Plumbing the depths

2010 started off feeling rather like the doomsday predictions for 2012.  Borrowing from popular culture, my facebook status changed from "married" to "it's complicated."  That, combined with my granddaughter's ongoing battle with ITP, and my daughter's recent miscarriage I'm feeling raw, disjointed, and generally at odds with the world at large. 

Now, for a paranormal mystery ROMANCE writer, this is particularly discomfitting.  Venom and romance are not great bedpartners.  At least not in a traditional romance novel happy-ever-after way.  However, venom and romance do create a cauldron to brew some wicked horror.  I'm mid-write on a co-authored horror novel with an amazing writing partner, D. Anthony Brown.  Haven't heard of him?  Trust me on this one, you will.  My contributions to our co-authored "Forgotten Kiss" have most decidedly been adding the feminine romance touches to his dark horror.  Come to think of it, "Forgotten Kiss" is without a doubt at its core a romance gone horribly awry. 

But, I've never ventured out on my own into the horror realm.  Writers cope with life by--well by writing.  So, in that vein, I've been plumbing the depths of my pain and using it to fuel a series of short stories.  You know what?  I'm a writer.  Piss me off and you risk meeting a horribly slow painful demise in my next story or novel! 

What began as one short story for a challenge I issued to my writing group has grown into a series of short horror stories.  "Baby Steps to Perdition."  Isn't that how it always begins?  One bad judgement, followed by a series of progressively worse decisions, until whammo!  Think about it, in the aftermath of school shootings, terrorism, and domestic disturbances turned into bloodbaths everyone asks how it all began.  One baby step at a time.  That's how every heinous act begins.  One baby step followed by another, and another, and another, until the most horrible act seems like the only option.

I have no doubt that I'll go back to paranormal mystery/romances, and will finish "Tales from Table Rock," the historical creative non-fiction I've put on temporary hiatus.  And, I sense my writing will increase in depth for letting myself go to the darker parts of the human psyche. 

Thank goodness I write.  It beats the hell out of actually acting on all those dark feelings we all harbor from time to time.