5/25/25
I Lied
This is number 112 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I THOUGHT it would be quite clever to follow up May 11th’s post about lying to my editors with one about lying to my readers. The problem is I couldn’t think up an example of lying to my readers, except this one of saying I would talk about lying to my readers and then not doing it.
So, I guess I did.
Then last Sunday came and I realized I didn’t have this blog post ready for you! I guess I lied again. Is there any end to it?
Of course these were both rather accidental lies. I meant to write the blog. I meant to post it last week. I really didn’t mean to lie. I find, however, that I sympathize with some of my characters, and as a result with some people in real life, who think the lie is their only recourse.
The following section contains spoilers.
Sometimes, my own deep-seated anger and impotence leads me to transfer an irrational mindset to my characters. They act in ways that are not legal, ethical, or moral. Such was the case when Denise was murdered in Deadly Chemistry, the fourth book of the ten-volume Living Next Door to Heaven saga.
I was extremely angry about the loss of this sweet and loving character. I knew that the story and the development of the entire clan depended on the murder and Brian’s reaction to it. But did he have to kill the murderer?
People don’t realize that it was Brian’s action that actually was the point of the story, not Denise’s death. When he found out who the perpetrator was, he cold-bloodedly mixed the chemicals that would at least render the man unconscious, and then used his martial arts ability to dispatch him in a gruesome way.
It was an act that Brian could never admit to, and which would haunt him all his life. He lied about it to everyone. He lied directly to Hannah’s face when she confronted him. He feared the truth had come out when the next clan death occurred in Becoming the Storm (volume 8). He was haunted by both his action and his lie for the rest of his life.
What really got to me, though, was that everyone in the clan knew or suspected the truth. And they all became complicit in his lie.
Just like we do when we hear a lie, know it’s a lie, and agree to the lie anyway, because it is what we want to believe.
Deadly Chemistry and the entire Living Next Door to Heaven eBook saga are available at ZBookStore.
I started this post thinking that I would be talking about my well-known tagline that “I lie for a living.” I write fiction. There are all kinds of comments we can make about fiction and truth. Steven King is purported to have said “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
I saw a performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet last week. A cast that did a very credible job with the bard’s most famous work, putting their own stamp on it with a setting in a southern trailer park. The performance was in a huge tent and I was impressed with the way Hamlet’s two most famous soliloquys were accompanied by wind effects flapping the tent as if it would blow over. I later realized it was actually a wind storm that tore through Las Vegas that night. Good timing.
Hamlet, however, lays a trap for the king in a scene to be portrayed by a passing troupe of players.
I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have, by the very cunning of the scene,
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.
In the fiction of the play, he plans to catch the conscience of the king. If you try this today, you might find the king has no conscience.
So, perhaps in the fiction I write, I might possibly expose some aspect of life or society that catches our consciences. Not that we are guilty of murder. Not really. We can turn a blind eye and accept that if we don’t see it, it never happened.
What gets me is that when the lie is exposed, we as often blame the one who revealed it rather than the perpetrator. I’m amazed at what vigorous opposition arose to fact checkers over the past few years. The fact checkers became the villains and the general public expended more energy attempting to discredit them than to investigate the truth or the lie.
I’ve been accused of a bias in my writing and I freely admit to it. I don’t know of an author whose opinions and life philosophy don’t creep into his work, even when he tries to be unbiased. The venom that has been spewed at me for this bias—which I even get in response to some of these blog posts—has prompted me to put a disclaimer at the beginning of each of my stories.
This book contains content of an adult nature. This includes explicit sexual content and characters whose beliefs may be contrary to your religious, political, or world view. The content is inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal for readers under the age of 18.
I consider it a mark of being an adult to be able to read material of opposing views and philosophies without becoming unhinged. I have to do it every day.
A scene I recently wrote for my work in progress talks about a pastor of a megachurch who has been preaching against the AI my hero is developing. Henry, in looking at the evidence before him, says,
This isn’t about God. It’s all about an egotistical sermonizer who whips people into a frenzy over things and then professes ignorance of why they would ever act like they do. Next thing you know, he’ll want to run for president.
Well, I couldn’t resist a little snide comment in his remarks. The thing is there will be as many people on all sides of this statement who come after me. It won’t make a difference whether they are religious or non-religious, left or right, rich or poor. They will all assume I am attacking their side of the very ill-defined issue.
Is it a lie? Well, it is certainly fiction. But the sad side-effect of our growing ability to accept lies that agree with what we want to believe is that we gradually lose the ability to recognize they are lies at all.
When I started my journey as a vagabond twelve years ago, I was planning to pull a trailer behind a pickup truck. I looked at all the available models and evaluated their pluses and minuses.
In the end, I determined that since I was going to be pulling a trailer on roads of unknown condition, I needed something that was built tough. Like a Ford.
I was on the road for over a year before I realized that I’d fallen for the company’s advertising slogan! By then, I had to defend it as being the truth, whether it was or not. I fell for the lie.
I can’t possibly predict what the next blog post will be about, or even if it will be in one week or two or more. I’m working hard, but sometimes the chaos is overwhelming. Until next time…
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
