When Mosters Walk Among Us

WARNING: Scarlet is going on a rant today and is in a very, very foul mood. So beware reader. You enter at your own risk.

As a writer, when I work on my antagonist (the bad guy), I try to make him as evil as I can. If he is a thief, he not only robs the bank, but he takes the money, all the free pens, and the entire fish tank with him. He needs to be REALLY evil to make my book.

Let’s face it, if my bad guy is saving kitties from trees, eating pink cotton candy as he skips down the sidewalk with his school uniform on, he isn’t going to seem like much of a bad guy.

In writing, your bad guy can do and be anything. He can stomp on all the new spring daffodils, eat the heads of cute gummy bears, or grow fifty feet and roar at oncoming traffic.

But in real life, such situations are disturbing. A close friend’s daughter has just left her husband, running away with her two small children. Not because her husband didn’t make enough money or because he squeezed the toothpaste in the middle of the tube, but because he was hurting her and her children. The details are horrifying, which I dare not pass on. This week he has taken the children hostage in his own home. There is nothing the mother or the police can do…yet. It breaks my heart to see any child placed in such danger and sit helplessly by.

This is one of the reasons I am so pleased that Linda & Brandilyn’s book is coming out to help people in certain abusive situations. They deserve a medal! They are heroes.

So, as I sit here writing out of frustration, because in real life - retaliation is not a good thing, I can’t help contemplating what I can do to him with my pen and paper. I can make him the next victim in my book; run him over with a steamroller, place him in Hell with flaming pokers coming out of his eyes, or make him eat one of Mrs. Linthall’s casserole dishes with the buttery corn flaked topping. That’s sure to do him in.