Yikes.
So this ties in with the previous blog about really inhabiting my characters’s brains and how much I enjoyed playing with multiple Points of View. Blood Will Out is in third person (my main character) and first person (my burgeoning serial killer.)
I did a bunch of research first, studying Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer. I have to say these were some awful months for me. I am freaked out by cruelty especially that which targets animals and children. I thought about ditching the book numerous times but I almost felt as if I owed it to my main character to get her out of that cistern (not a spoiler since it is written on the jacket copy) and I also felt a compelling responsibility to my serial killer.
How to tell their story as honestly as I could.
There is some debate about whether mass killers are born or created. Certainly abuse seems to be a common thread but I also looked at neurological science. That part, about the identification of a ‘killer gene’ does make it into the book. My killer character scoffs at Freud at one point, disbelieving that their own history of abuse has anything to do with their outlook on life.
I can say that after the research and many months of letting that knowledge and information slosh around in my brain, and the constant re-examination of motives and actions that characterizes the writing process, I had some idea of why my killer was the way they were, and what they wanted, and what was important to them. I knew their primary goal.
I am just a writer. What I imagined may be really far off. I didn’t interview anyone accused of being a serial killer or admitting to being one. My character exists only on the pages of the book and for a long time in my head. Thankfully they have been replaced by other characters now and I am sleeping better.
I scared myself. I felt haunted by that character.
It was a unique experience certainly but I am grateful that writing and reading give us a certain measure of control as far as what darkness we let into our lives.