14,000
people are murdered each year in the United States. How many of them involve bestselling authors
or struggling writers?
The
popular new movie, American Sniper, is based on a bestselling book by Chris
Kyle, who was shot dead at a shooting range by an Iraq War veteran two years
ago. Such a tragedy may seem rare, but
there are numerous cases of homicidal authors or writers as victims of murder.
A 2011
piece on funlinksdaily identified 10 writers who killed their nearest and
dearest. Maybe I should have written
about this for Valentine’s Day.
Alice
Bradley Sheldon, who wrote under the pen name James Triptree, Jr., killed her
husband in a suicide pact. This
science-fiction writer died as well.
Richard
Home, known as Harry Horse, stabbed his wife to death, needing 30 stabs to get
the job done. He killed himself
afterward.
William
S. Burroughs, a prominent poet and novelist from the Beat Generation, shot and killed Joan Vollmer, his wife,
allegedly by accident. He was convicted
of manslaughter.
Michael
Peterson’s A Time of War and A Bitter Piece achieved acclaim but he made bigger
headlines for killing his wife.
Louis
Althusser strangled his wife while giving her a massage. The influential author and political theorist
suffered from mental illness.
How many
authors have written books about murderers?
How many novels are actually based on real murders? How many writers have killed but were never
discovered to be the killers?
I’m not
sure what my macabre fascination is with writers and murder but I can see why
the two are linked. Writers are
emotional, spirited people. They can get
involved with the wrong people and find themselves in violent situations. They are highly imaginative people, and the
power to dream and scheme could be used not only to pen a potboiler but to
commit the real deal. Writers are often
imbalanced individuals, alternating their addictions and use of writing to
escape from a world that needs a re-write.
They are unstable enough to be in a situation where they kill.
The next
time you read a story that seems so good but twisted, question whether the
author is capable of committing murder.
Perhaps he or she has already killed and the book is a mere
confessional?
Anyone
could be a writer and people with diverse backgrounds and unusual stories tend
to become writers. So perhaps the field of
writing books draws in people, who by nature or experience, are damaged in some
way. They are ripe for becoming candidates
for murder.
Maybe
I’ve read one too many crime dramas. So
now it’s beware of the author as criminal mastermind? Yes, authors can be filled with wisdom and
provoke powerful, positive thoughts and movements, and many would never hurt
anyone. But there are some writers
amongst us who are plotting a murder – and it’s not for a novel.
Talk
about bringing authenticism to one’s writing!
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