Writers write, and painters paint. That’s not news to anyone. So, I probably don’t need to state the obvious, but I will: ideas and colors are very much alike.
In my book Crosswinds, speaking as the author in a note at the beginning, I wrote that “. . . painters paint with colors of their choosing. In a similar way, writers paint with ideas.” I continued, writing that “. . . I couldn’t imagine anyone berating a painter for using any particular color, and . . . a book can and should be painted with any ideas that tell a story worth reading.”
I immortalized that sentiment in Crosswinds, and I’m belaboring the point here in this article for a specific reason: while any color is fair game for any painter to splotch onto a canvas, so, too, are whatever bizarre, some might say objectionable ideas are woven into some of the stories I’ve written.
My works now number around twenty-five, spanning multiple series and genres. That’s a key point, that mention of genres. And they truly do some spanning. I realize most authors pick a genre and dive in, maybe even wallow in that groove forever. At the outset, writing for me has been a swinging open of a door inside to see what might be looking back at me, waiting for a chance to step right out and get noticed. Some ideas have easily jumped out onto the keyboard’s canvas, and others needed a lasso around their necks to drag them out.
One of my favorite endeavors has been the A World So Close series, a middle-grade fantasy, coming of age sort of collection. These seven books relay the totally wholesome and uplifting adventures of Jayden Blue, Raylene Hawkins, and Jayden’s clever cats, Hex and Halo. These books sit solidly at one side of the idea palette, where the colors are meant for children but have enough complexity to absorb older readers, even adults.
Far on the other side of the palette, where bizarre and disturbing ideas are waiting to become like bloody streaks through a manuscript, lie the Risk and the Killers books. It’s no exaggeration to say that I sometimes awake during the night, amused by traces of anxiety and uncertainty about having committed such outrageous ideas to print and actually hit the proverbial “publish” button.
What kinds of ideas? I generally encourage myself to dig deep into the imagination pit, seek out or create from nothing scenes of violence and abuse, delicious sexual torment, and little regard for anything wholesome. Heck, just getting to that world that they call Below the Bay requires some unsavory or at least unfortunate events—specifically, dying while climaxing.
And in that burning, horrific world deep beneath the San Francisco Bay lurk all sorts of dangerous, predatory entities that stalk and assault shape-shifter Risk and the twin Kildare Killers. There’s Widow, an irresistible mutated woman who delights in the sadistic sexual consumption of her prey. There are herds of zombies (they much prefer the term Zombeings) who are a dangerous sort of oversexed, dirty-talking, mechanized clones. And there are various two-headed freaks, ravenous nearwolves, a razor-toothed muscle-bound cannibal, and even a snarky British vampire.
Then, there are the Frat Chat books. Those two also contain outlandish behavior and situations, but it all could actually happen to real, living people. Oh, but those ideas were dragged from that far end of the idea palette, too, and are best enjoyed by an audience from the mature regions of the reader world. No one is killed or even injured in these books, but no one is too concerned with anything close to morality either.
So, that’s the basis of my defense for writing whatever I want with whatever ideas I want. My first and greatest goal in writing is to let my imagination loose and see just what sorts of stories I can splice together. Some are totally innocent and endearing, and others might evoke scorn and ridicule.
To those that already feel a healthy wave of scorn arising within them, I’ll add another perspective. Sure, many of the happenings in the books aimed at mature audiences can be seen by some as offensive and insulting and just downright vulgar. But let’s all try to scrape out a clear view of this whole topic.
What would most readers (and non-readers too) say is the ultimate crime—the worst sin, if you will? Why, that just might be murder, right? It’s a dreadful thing to end someone’s life. So, I’d have to guess that those who might scoff and reject stories such as I’ve written, claiming that they’re simply too obscene, probably drastically limit themselves on what they read and watch. So, of course, these same folks would never, ever watch or read anything that involves murder, would they? Isn’t that the most reprehensible narrative in a book or film?
Take a moment and consider just how prevalent murder is across nearly every form of entertainment. Murder in movies. Murder in books. Murder even in cartoons. Why, heck, I believe there’s even a genre of books called cozy murder mysteries. Not objectionable murder mysteries, or criminal or sinful murder mysteries. No way. They’re cozy—cozy murdering!
As a final thought, I’d invite everyone to look inside themselves, take an honest inventory, and probably see that, at least in imagination if not in action, every color on the idea palette is there, perhaps shamed and shoved into the shadows.
And as fun and entertaining as we’ll find those sordid imaginings—the ones kept hidden away deep in the darkness—they should probably appear only in works of fiction. Let’s not actually do anything we read about in my more outlandish books—which certainly do contain many instances of gruesome, gratuitous involuntary life ending.
My conclusion? Murder in books and films is just one available color on the palette of ideas. And the horrible happenings in many of my books are just more colors that this writer has painted across his pages.