I signed on this morning to finish up the last 50 pages of tweaks to The Kill when this headline caught my attention: Death Row Escape

You can read the story if you want — it shows that human error can be deadly — but it’s also fascinating. I mean, this guy who murdered his ex-girlfriend nearly 20 years ago managed to get his handcuffs off, don civilian clothes, obtain a ID badge, and talked his way out of Harris County Jail in Texas.

We just can’t make this stuff up! Who would believe me?

Well, I do have a vaguely similar plot line in The Prey . . . and while I wrote it, though it seemed far fetched, I knew it was plausible based on what I learned about prisoner tracking. But there were still this niggle of doubt in the back of my mind that people wouldn’t buy into the plot twist.

No more! I’m vindicated! This real life prisoner escape is far more implausible than what MY villain did in The Prey. If I’d written that my villain just “got out” of his handcuffs (the cops STILL haven’t figured out how), “found” civilian clothes and changed, and TALKED his way out of jail, my editor would have laughed herself silly.

But this story also illustrates how writers think. While reading, I came up with ideas. Nothing fully formed, but little kernels of ideas that usually germinate in my cluttered head until one of them pops into place. In the article, the jurors are scared the guy is going to come after him. (Hello, you just escaped from prison, is revenge the first thing on your mind? Maybe freedom . . . but no, in The Kill revenge is very important to one of my villains . . . so we got the standard “revenge” theme going on.

But what if the guy was innocent (not THIS guy, mind you, but a generic fictional guy.) What if he was innocent and escaped to prove it . . . whoops, that’s The Fugitive.

Okay, back to the what if game . . . what if a woman was writing him love letters in prison (yes, they do that, isn’t it sick? “Hi, convicted mass murderer who gets off on torturing women, wanna meet for a drink?” Really, get a life.) Being a psychopath, he thinks only she understands him. But when he gets there, she never wrote them (whoops, done that — JA Jance).

Then, I got to thinking about a thread I read about on one of the chick lit loops. Apparently, prisoners read romance novels. The guy gets fixated on a writer, escapes, and wants his own happily-ever-after, which for him means she’s dead and he’s free. But I’m sure even THAT has been done before.

Maybe we CAN make this stuff up.

Yay! Finally a decent wireless hookup. I can blog.

Girl Friday
That’s me. Karin Tabke. I wear lots of hats (I aspire to be one of Deb’s wonderchicks). One of my fav hats is erotic suspense author. Yep, it’s a sub genre, so don’t laugh. I like my characters to have drop dead in your face (or other body parts) sex. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there is a plot and characterization, but bottom line is, my books are sexy. When I get tired of my characters tearing up the sheets, I kill someone. Usually by scarfing, electrocution by a supercharged dildo gone awry, or my fav, death by ingesting toxic edible underwear.
OK, seriously, while I just gave myself a couple of ideas, the only one I’ve actually used is the scarfing.
I sold my first book back in May to Hilary Sares at Kensington. See my hot cover to the right? Scroll down– a little more, ah, now, is that a piece of work or what?
OK, back to biz. I’m in the launch month for the new Aphrodisia line. Erotic romance, hotter then Brava (which is a stretch, because I’ve read some really hot Brava stories. Can anyone say Thea Devine?) and most definitely pushing every corner of the erotic romance envelope. Lots of excellent authors. I also just turned in my first (GOOD GIRL GONE BAD) of two contracted books to Pocket. My agent loves it (whew, was that a holding my breath until I turned blue moment). My books are about hot cops who clash and lust, and as they try figuring out that crazy little thing called love they pursue truth, justice and the American way.
Hubby is a retired cop so I come by the life naturally, and my stories ring true.
I love writing passionate characters whether in bed or out chasing the bad guy. Not me in bed or chasing the bad guy, my hero and his lady love.
OK, so that’s the quick run down. When I get back to California I’ll participate more. I hope y’all come back and visit us often. Us murder chicks have clicked and we hope click with you. Otherwise….. ve have our vays of making you comment.
Ciao for now.
K*

I’m really a very nice person, but my thoughts aren’t always so pleasant. I tend to think of the most macabre thing that can happen in any given situation. When I hear a news story, my imagination goes wild. Even the most benign story has dark overtones.

People have always been fascinated and repelled by evil. I think it’s hard-wired into us from the dawn of time. Look at Eve. She knew damn well she shouldn’t touch the apple, let alone take a bite from it. The lure of the serpent was powerful. In The Hunt my heroine thinks about the beauty masking evil, that the serpent must have not been repulsive because otherwise Eve would have been running, screaming, back to Adam.

When bad things happen, we ask ourselves why. Why why why? How could someone be so cruel? How could he rape, kill, torture someone? How could anyone get pleasure out of inflicting pain until death?

I think one reason I get deep into my villain’s head is to try to find a reason for the evil act. No reason justifies it, but as a human being I care about why bad things happen. What makes someone kidnap, rape, and hunt down women?

The common “theory” is that it’s a combination of environment and personality or psychosis that sets someone on a criminal path. Overwhelming, serial killers were abused physically, emotionally and sexually as children. Does that make me feel sorry for them? Hell no. The hero in The Hunt makes a comment that while he can feel sorry for the child the killer had been, he has no such compassion for him as an adult.

But not all abused children turn into killers; not all killers come from abusive backgrounds. The latter are particularly scary. Those are the killers psychiatrists want to understand. How can a normal, well-manner, middle class child raised by two loving parents grow up to be a vicious murderer?

Here at Murder She Writes, we’ll be doing little featurettes on things that interest us that relate to suspense writing; expect more about serial killers from this Sacramento soccer mom.

I know, I know, if you’re checking the time clock on this post, you’ll see that Wednesday’s child is about 30 minutes past midnight, which means my post is late as hell. Instead of Wednesday’s child, I feel more like Wednesday Adams…except she’d probably smell better than I do at the moment!

I JUST did get into a hotel room after driving 18 hours today, so my butt’s numb and my fingers aren’t being very cooperative right now.

As I was pulling into the overpriced parking lot, here at the Madison Concourse Hotel, I thought about what I might post here tonight. Of course, with a brain deprived of all nutrients save for potatoe chips and bottle water most of the day, not much in the way of intellectual stimuli was available, but this did come to mind…

One of the most common pieces of advice a beginning author receives is; Write what you know. So that’s what I’m going to post here tonight…things I know..

I know:

–There are 1082.04 miles between Lafayette, La. and Madison Wisconsin

–That 987.5 of those miles are under construction.

–That every women’s public bathroom between Jackson, Ms. and Chicago, Il. has pee droplets on their toilet seats.

–That my bladder and the fuel gauge on my Pathfinder operate in reverse tandem. When one is empty, the other’s full.

–That my Pathfinder has just proven it can operate just fine on a oil change every twenty thousand miles

–That’s there’s a nice looking police officer in Memphis, Tn. who’s willing to trade an author a warning (instead of a ticket) for an autographed book.

–That Spicy V-8 and DingDongs DON”T go well together.

–That my vehicle, at this moment, should be condemed by the board of health.

–That the female cashier, sporting black and blonde hair, at the Pilot Truck Stop in Bloomington, Il. has the hots for Meryl Streep

–That all day I recorded, on a tape recorder, chapters for a manuscript that’s due Dec. 15th, and I can hardly make out any damn thing I said.

–That by tomorrow, this hotel will be fillied with Fantasy fans from all over the world, and I wrote psychological suspense.

–That I’m getting delirious and need serious sleep before the cyber censor gods blow up my computer!

–Night all

…and I’ll be your host for today’s Murdershewrites.com blog. I like puppies on sunny days, walking in the rain, pina coladas, and I hate mean people.

What? What’s that you say? Oh, my most important cause is campaigning for world peace. Thank you. Oh, and those mean people? I will slowly, methodically, kill them, most in a terribly unpleasant way.

Now will someone get me OUT of this dress and high heels and back to my computer?

Before you call the cops, I should mention I’m a writer (or maybe you knew that), and nobody ever really dies by my hand, except on paper. But that IS very gratifying.

I’m sort of perplexed about blogging here at murdershewrites.com, because at my personal blog, I’m all sarcastic and sardonic, and I get a lot of hatemail from a certain religious group, so I ALWAYS have material to write about. Here, I’m a little worried that I’ll be, well, boring.

I didn’t really start out to write murder and mayhem. I just found that no matter how light and airy I tried to write, I always ended up with dead bodies. I also found I’m not light and airy. For example, I could not write Chicklit to save my life. Not because I find it personally abhorrent, like all those “literary” writers getting publicity for their books by dissing OTHER people’s books and genres, but because TOO MANY PEOPLE DIE in my books. The darker side of life, the questionable parts of the human pysche, fascinate me.

And of course, one of the darkest aspects is that capacity to take another life. What drives people to murder? My second manuscript was a book that asked just that question. I took characters I created in my first book, which was about a polygamous cult in central Utah (can you say RIPPED from the headlines before there were headlines?) and moved them to another venue, where my killer was obvious from the start. The question in this book was never WHO was the murderer, but rather, WHY? I thought it was a good question. The publishers who rejected it did not agree. “I figured it out from the start,” was one of the comments. Well, DUH.

Of course, both of those books are now under serious consideration with a publisher, so you JUST never know. Keep your fingers crossed.

But I think the “why” of murder is a good question, obviously, and so, here we are.

One chilly November night, back when I was in junior high school, Debra Kent disappeared from Viewmont High School. She was supposed to pick up her younger brother, who was a year or two older than me, from Classic Skating, a place we all frequented, after she left a play at the High School. She never made it.

Debra Kent was a victim of serial murderer Ted Bundy.

They never found her body. Her mother left the light on for her for years. I never forgot that exposure to the darkness of the human soul.

And that’s a little bit about how I arrived at this odd profession.

Happy Tuesday.