|
You Gotta Kill Somebody
I started my writing career by killing off people in my Theresa Galloway mystery series. A confession: I had a hard time killing my first character, the kind, elderly, Mrs. Turner in SOMEBODY ELSE'S CHILD. My writing group members urged me on by chanting "You gotta kill somebody" until II finally did.
And it's true what they say--after the first murder it gets easier. Now I'm almost psychotic in my quest for blood on the page. No unseemly gore for its own sake, but there's got to be a body somewhere in just about everything I write including my most recent novel, SMELLING HERSELF, a coming of age story set in 1964 Oakland, California, with an eleven-year-old black girl as protagonist.
In case you're wondering where I've been the last few years--I've been "raising chil'ren"--mine and seemingly everybody else's. I've also been listening, and learning, hearing voices and being glad about it, nourishing the fictive dream. And writing. Has this been time well spent? We'll see. I think it has, but your opinion is more important to me than mine.
Remarkably, I have a cadre of very loyal fans who keep in contact, urging me to give them something to read. I am grateful for all of them. They keep me sane enough to write.
I work from my home studio in Sacramento, California.
|
