Luck
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I'm back home, a little jet-lagged. En route most of yesterday, I didn't spend much time on the Internet. Up at 6:30 today, I find that things got a little, um, heated, in the comments section on the previous post. Even so, it ended with an apology from the anonymous poster, which I thought spoke well of the vibe here, one created by a small core of generally lovely people.
The thing that bothers me is that someone read the previous post and inferred that I was complacent or smug. It's sort of the opposite. In fact, those who have heard me on various book tours know that I am adamant about the role of luck in our lives. The problem is, once you admit you're lucky, you admit to the possibility of being unlucky.
Most of the stand-alone novels I write turn on luck, bad breaks, tiny mistakes that become unfathomably huge. I believe that such stories have a greater chance of disturbing readers, making them think about crime in a different way. A serial killer roaming the landscape can make for a wonderful, exciting read. But it doesn't really challenge the reader to think about how he (or she) reacts to the average, unlucky people in our lives. The death of a baby in Every Secret Thing, the deaths in To the Power of Three, the incidents in What the Dead Know -- the hope was that people might see that crime can happen to anyone at any time, and it's not a moral judgment or a punishment. We live in a world where bad things happen. Interestingly, crime novels -- with their sense of order and resolution -- help us cope with that. But if you think too much about what can happen to any one, on any given day, it's so terrifying that you may never leave the house again.
I woke up laughing because I know my luck can run out any day, so why not laugh now, while things are fun? Also, I wanted people to know that I am, in fact, a pretty good loser. I wasn't always, although to tell those memories in full would involve embarrassing someone else in my life, so I won't.
I guess this will go down as a memory about tone issues on the Internet, and how much can be inferred in a single, innocuous (I thought) post.
The thing that bothers me is that someone read the previous post and inferred that I was complacent or smug. It's sort of the opposite. In fact, those who have heard me on various book tours know that I am adamant about the role of luck in our lives. The problem is, once you admit you're lucky, you admit to the possibility of being unlucky.
Most of the stand-alone novels I write turn on luck, bad breaks, tiny mistakes that become unfathomably huge. I believe that such stories have a greater chance of disturbing readers, making them think about crime in a different way. A serial killer roaming the landscape can make for a wonderful, exciting read. But it doesn't really challenge the reader to think about how he (or she) reacts to the average, unlucky people in our lives. The death of a baby in Every Secret Thing, the deaths in To the Power of Three, the incidents in What the Dead Know -- the hope was that people might see that crime can happen to anyone at any time, and it's not a moral judgment or a punishment. We live in a world where bad things happen. Interestingly, crime novels -- with their sense of order and resolution -- help us cope with that. But if you think too much about what can happen to any one, on any given day, it's so terrifying that you may never leave the house again.
I woke up laughing because I know my luck can run out any day, so why not laugh now, while things are fun? Also, I wanted people to know that I am, in fact, a pretty good loser. I wasn't always, although to tell those memories in full would involve embarrassing someone else in my life, so I won't.
I guess this will go down as a memory about tone issues on the Internet, and how much can be inferred in a single, innocuous (I thought) post.
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