I’ve started this weekly blog about my life as an erotica author. Why and how did I get started? How is it going? What have I learned? These posts are suitable for general audiences, but probably not of interest to anyone under 50. Feel free to contact me with questions or for information about my 50+ erotica books. For the past twelve years, I have been on an incredible journey and there is much more to that story. I’ll post here each week with another short chapter of my life as an author of erotica. Might even give tips regarding how to get involved. I encourage you to join my Patreon community.
5/14/23
Murder, He Wrote
From Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5:
She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Why do I kill people in my stories? I know of authors who start off with hundreds of characters just so they will have another one to kill off in the next chapter. Game of Thrones comes to mind. Even when a favorite character was killed off, readers and viewers got to the point of just fast-forwarding past the event and continuing with the story. My instances are relatively few by comparison and I feel each one serves a purpose that shapes the story. But they are still hard to deal with.
Here is a quote from an irate reader of “Living Next Door to Heaven 4,” Deadly Chemistry, who swore to never read any of my work again because I couldn’t be trusted.
Between a writer and a reader, a trust, an expectation is established. I have enjoyed that relationship, until Denise. Violent and cruel death has not been a part of any of your work I have read. … I say, the writer/reader relationship has been broken.
I’m not going to justify myself on this. I will have to say that the kind of relationship this reader described was entered into by the reader without the author’s consent. My only contract with the reader is to write the best work I am capable of at the time. And if you must know, I hated myself for that murder and for the murder that comes in part eight, Becoming the Storm.
Denise’s death was a significant factor in the development of Brian’s character. Brian was the protector of his clan and he failed to protect her. He blames himself for her death. And when he exacts his vengeance, he ends up with an act on his conscience that he can never admit to. It shapes his future relationship with Hannah. It emerges in Becoming the Storm when he responds to a campus shooting and loses another member of the clan. It drives him forward in his television show and campaign to bring an unethical journalist to account for vandalism and libel. I don’t think I could have written Brian standing up to Hannah’s abusive boyfriend in The Rock if he hadn’t gone through that experience.
But how do I determine when a character is to die?
It isn’t easy. By the end of LNDtH1, Guardian Angel, I knew this death was going to occur. I developed the character of Denise specifically to facilitate that act when I introduced her in part two, The Agreement. And then I kept delaying the murder because I wrote a character that I truly liked. At the end of part two, I said to myself, “Not yet. She doesn’t deserve this.” I said the same thing at the end of part three, Foolish Wisdom. But when I wrote the title of part four, Deadly Chemistry, I knew I couldn’t delay this any longer.
And when it happened, I HATED myself!
She didn’t deserve to die. She was funny and loving and lovable and dynamic. I loved her! But the story would have ended in the next chapter if she hadn’t died. Her death shaped Brian’s response and his guilt that continued through the next five parts.
I don’t often have detailed outlines. I normally write so fast that I outrun an outline. I do, however, have a developmental arc for a story that tells me where I’m going. I knew there was going to be a campus shooting in part 8, and one of the clan would die with several others injured. I once again wrote the character that would be kind and loving and not deserving to die. I developed the character specifically for that purpose. But when it came time, I couldn’t kill her. I chose a different character that was less major to the story.
I still hated myself.
Let me tell you about writing that chapter. I was camped on the Oregon Coast. It was already after ‘the season.’ No one else was in the State Park campground. I wrote the chapter while yelling at myself with tears streaming down my face. When I finished the chapter, I kept pounding out 5,000 more words just to get it out of my system. Then I slammed my laptop closed and didn’t open it again for a week. I spent that week wandering the beach, screaming my frustration and anger at the waves.
What’s more, a week after I wrote the scene, just seventy-five miles southeast of where I was camped, a disgruntled student at a community college killed nine and wounded eight more in a shooting rampage. The shooter matched the profile of the shooter I’d described in the story.
So why? Why introduce a horrific incident into a polyamorous erotica story.
There are some things that I write that people accept because they are so over-the-top ridiculous that they laugh and simply go with the rest of the story. Most of the love affairs in my stories are that. They are filled with what we’d love to have happen, rather than what we know reality to be. But the thing that sells that over-the-top romance and sex is the reality of the setting. If the entire rest of the story was a bland backdrop, none of the story would feel plausible.
And violence in our world is such a constant that we refuse to think about it unless it directly affects someone we care about. People offered thoughts and prayers for the blank faces that were killed in the Umpqua Community College incident. It didn’t touch them. But the death of a fictional character in Living Next Door to Heaven enraged them.
Good. It should.
I have often stated that there can be no happily ever after if it has been happily ever before. Or as Queen Elizabeth II (and others) once said, “Grief is the price we pay for love.” I hate to write about it, but I cannot let this issue go unaddressed. Art exposes reality. It doesn’t mimic it or lead it. If you read my stories, you will have to deal with death, depression, anxiety, homelessness, broken hearts, discrimination, and disease. I write over-the-top fantasies in a down-to-earth real world setting.
Next week, if I still have any readers left, I’ll deal with a subject that sounds like more of the same, but in reality is very different: Killing Your Babies.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
