By Linda Lovely
Near death?
Near death?
Knock on wood! I’ve never come face to
face with writing “THE END” to this life—though in Kindle terms I imagine my
autobiography is at least 74% complete (excluding any epilogue).
Yet my overactive imagination has no
problem dreaming up all manner of ways in which I might meet my maker. That’s
probably why I write romantic suspense and thrillers. If I can figure out ways
for my heroines (and heroes) to elude what appears to be certain death, maybe I
can do the same when I meet a crazed killer who:
- hires a gnarly biker to run me down and beat me senseless with a tire iron
- plans to use his outboard motor to turn me into chum while I’m swimming
- intends to blow me sky high with the blocks of C-4 gathering dust in his garage
- tinkers with a Ferris wheel gondola to splatter my body three stories down
- dynamites a Jamaican cave to bury me inside.
Well, you get the idea. My bad guys have
many ways to kill my heroines (and me). So I’ve mentally visited “death’s door”
hundreds of times with my characters.
Perhaps my lovable Aunt Kate’s to blame. When she babysat my sister and me, my great aunt acted out Macbeth as a bedtime story. So, naturally, if a flu bug kept me home from school, I imagined the creaking floors in our old house were caused by a knife-wielding madman ready to yell "Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!" shortly after he plunged his dagger in me.
My phobias are a great help to my villains. They seem quite keen on using my fear of heights, snakes, large spiders, small dark spaces and rabid dogs.Yet my heroines always survive.
That’s the great thing about romantic suspense. The heroine gets to live AND she gets the guy. Her brush with death makes the HEA (happy ever after) all the more sweet.
Perhaps my lovable Aunt Kate’s to blame. When she babysat my sister and me, my great aunt acted out Macbeth as a bedtime story. So, naturally, if a flu bug kept me home from school, I imagined the creaking floors in our old house were caused by a knife-wielding madman ready to yell "Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!" shortly after he plunged his dagger in me.
My phobias are a great help to my villains. They seem quite keen on using my fear of heights, snakes, large spiders, small dark spaces and rabid dogs.Yet my heroines always survive.
That’s the great thing about romantic suspense. The heroine gets to live AND she gets the guy. Her brush with death makes the HEA (happy ever after) all the more sweet.
Don’t you agree?
4 comments:
Yes, I DO agree, Linda! LOL! Beating death deserves a big reward, like the love of your life.
The joys of life are always sweeter after surviving or slogging through a sour spell - at least to me. So it makes sense that the harder the hero and heroine work for their HEA, the happier they will be.
Read your list, Linda, and realized we've more in common than I knew. However, I've overcome my fear of heights and at least I'm no longer reduced to a quivering sobbing blob on the floor around snakes. So how large is a "large spider" (where in the northwest maybe an inch or so body and legs). Smart to be fearful of rapid dogs - me too. I don't know that I've ever gone into a small, dark space so not sure how phobic I am to that experience.
Linda, Before I started writing my fears would get the better of me. Now I put all those fears and bad things into events that happen to my characters and I live a much happier, fear-free life! Great post!
Sorry I was out of town (and away from a computer and internet) when this blog was posted. So I didn't have an opportunity to respond to comments. But, yes, putting these fears in writing helps you figure out strategies to live with your fears.
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