…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.

Thanks to Allison for introducing us, and welcome to murdershewrites.com. Be afraid, be very afraid. I thought Jennifer Apodaca and I were ENOUGH trouble when we were blogging together as we sorta stalked Kelly Ripa. Turns out neither one of us was very good at stalking, since Kelly doesn’t know us from Regis Adam, but we tried.

Right now it’s kinda a free-for-all around here, with the blog just up and running, and all of us trying to get our thoughts in on top of each other (except Karin, who is APPARENTLY cruising somewhere. Does SOMEONE have TOO much time and TOO much money on her hands? Hmmmm?) but bear with us.

We shall have a regular blogging schedule, and all that good stuff. We’ll try not to make the body count too high, or too low, and we’ll certainly try to keep you entertained.

I just think you all should know that my suggestion for our tagline, before the Mae West quote, was “Killing Them Softly, One M%#&er F&%$@er at a time.” I got outvoted.

Do you think I could end up being the rebel in the group?

Do you think they’re laughing? Do you think they are about to boot me?

Oh the thinks I think when I’m thinking.

Thanks for stopping by!