How to Thrill to a Kill

“Kill a man and you are an assassin, kill millions of men and you are a conqueror, kill everyone and you are a God.” Jean Rostand.

I love that quote but life is not sacred in the telling of a good thriller story!

How many ways can you kill a person? How long is a piece of string, you ask.

One of the most intriguing ways I came across was using an ice stalactite! Believable or not – it was written into a story. Of course as far as working out what the murder weapon was, the police had a hard time for there was simply a pool of water on the floor by the time the body was discovered.

It’s fair enough food for thought though. Thriller writers have to come up with ever more ingenious ways to commit their make believe murders as we’ve all heard it all before.

In a seminar once, we were asked to look around the room and find ways to kill a person. It was just a bit of fun! But it was unsettling and yes, funny, what the imagination of 15 people came up with. Apart from the obvious ones like pushing guy through an upstairs window (we were on the 6^th floor at the time), strangling and bashing someone’s head against the floor, there were some inventive scenarios. One chap suggested grinding up the board rubber and shoving it down someone’s throat. Another wanted to crush a person’s chest by piling all the furniture (which was very heavy) on top of him, whilst someone else suggested using the light fitting to electrocute!

Perhaps those are a bit far-fetched but you get the picture…

So have you any interesting ways a villain could commit a murder?

Murdering Mama's

Murderous Mothers

I have always been fascinated, yet at the same time repelled, by some of the classic narratives about mothers who kill their children. As a mother myself, and possibly because of my child protection background, I have long been interested in exactly why some mothers can murder their own offspring and why writers would want to write about it.

Writers who have used this theme litter the history of narratives and whilst child murder – indeed any murder - is unacceptable to society there is something so shocking about the phenomena that it has always had shock value and therefore been of interest to writers.  In classic literature there is the tale of Medea who murdered her children to exact revenge on their father. In modern literature there is the story of Beloved by Toni Morrison and countless stories which involve some measure of Fabricated Induced Illness (F I I). This can include mothers who smother their babies so making the death seem like natural causes e.g. cot death. These women are generally emotionally unstable or suffering mental illness but their concern for their children is very believable. These women appal people but maternal instinct is sometimes no match for deadened emotions or thwarted personal ambition.

But why are mothers who kill their children, seen as so much more repulsive than fathers who kill? The evolution of mankind has always required a mother or mother substitute and without that connection to a nurturing person during the defenceless time of infancy, the human race would not have survived. Jung says that the mother archetype is an inbuilt ability to recognise and form a certain relationship – that of mothering. The issue of trust and dependency therefore becomes an important one and I believe this is the reason why we are so repelled by women who go against the archetype and kill the very people they are supposed to be protecting.

I believe this theme makes for some of the most compelling drama and story telling I have come across. Modern day writers have used F.I.I. in their plots and there are many books and films depicting this condition although it is still a hotly debated topic.  Crime writer Patricia Cornwell uses it in her book ‘The Body Farm’ The murdered victim is an 11-year-old girl and the suspect is a serial killer but it turns out that she was killed by her own mother. The screenwriter M Night Shyamalan also uses a similar scenario in the 1999 film ‘The Sixth Sense’. Even ‘The X files’, ER and Law and Order have all featured episodes around women who kill their children (FII). These stories reflect today’s society where the awareness of mothers killing their children is both growing and yet controversial.

It makes for challenging drama but also reflects some of the darker corners of our society.

So, could you use controversial issues like this in your writing?

Supernatural or Superbelievable

 Making the Supernatural Natural.

Today I am re-posting a blog article I wrote some time ago! I enjoyed writing this one and thought it deserved another outing...

Turning the supernatural into the superbelievable? That, as I see it, is the challenge to all paranormal thriller writers.

Making supernatural elements fit into a thriller story so seamlessly that the reader accepts them without question, is not easy.

After all the vast majority of readers who enjoy this kind of fiction are perfectly reasonable sane individuals who do not necessarily believe in ghosts, spirits and things that go ‘whooo’ in the night. But just like sci-fi readers, they want to wonder and ponder the unanswerable questions. Just for the time it takes to engage with the story readers will willingly believe if we give them a good reason to.

That’s not to say that once the book is read the reader will believe any of it but just for that book the reader suspends disbelief. This, of course must happen with all stories but it is so much more difficult when dealing with the paranormal.

Of course making the world the characters inhabit detailed and colourful and having the characters themselves rich in human traits and emotions (even if they are spirits or whatever) helps. If the people in the story believe in the other-worldly elements and do so right from the beginning as a matter of course, then the reader will too. Events follow in a normal and accepted way and lo! - the supernatural becomes the natural for that story.

For me the furthest I will go into using the supernatural is to introduce elements of ‘what if’ into a story. What if someone’s soul/spirit does not die with them but carries on in someone else’s body? What if a spirit wilfully inhabits someone else’s body and makes them do things they would never normally do? What if someone has the power to read certain people’s minds? What if this power is hereditary and a child is unaware they have it? What if someone believes that if they preserve a person’s body after death they will gain power over life and death and eventually become immortal themselves? What if a person really does have a double and the double/doppelganger bends the person’s will to make them murder their own child?

I know, I know. All of these have been done before but not by me and my imagination. I had fun with these stories and will continue to use similar scenarios in my writing. But apart from the paranormal additions my plots have conflict, suspense and follow normal storytelling rules and my imagination, with the help of my muse, adds width, depth and a sprinkling of magic – at least I hope it does…

Happy Writing!

So what do you think? Do you have a favourite genre? Do you read paranormal thrillers?

Killer Thrillers

 Killer Thrillers

Murder, the TV and film industry would have us believe, is common and frequented by dastardly criminal types and . The truth, happily, is that in real life, it is not as frequent as it might seem. As we all know, murderers inhabit the pages of whodunits and mystery novels like the opening night of a big screen blockbuster! The best example in English TV is the small quiet leafy village of Midsommer where murders – usually more than one - happen every week! The focus of these plots is the hero/heroine (usually a clever detective) who solves the murder and catches the killer.

In thrillers, unlike mystery and ‘whodunit’s’, a murder is often not the main plot line. But a killing will often serve to raise the stakes for the hero/heroine i.e. a woman desperate to save her child (and the rest of the world maybe) has to accept the kidnappers mean business when another child is found murdered. In a race against time, Killings along the way may be viewed as acceptable losses. Some murders are even inconsequential – strange though it may seem. For instance the multitude of deaths in war stories, blockbuster disasters and action movies.

The best thrillers, though, often have a murder somewhere in them, even if it is only a bit player (e.g. The Da Vinci Code and other search/quest thrillers). A murder lifts the story from ‘so so’ to an elevated level where more important characters are under threat. The tension and anxiety for the reader thus ratchets up a level. This, of course, is where thrillers come into their own for they are all about rising tension and cliff hangers at a mile a minute speed.

In one of my books (The Witcheye Gene) the killing actually starts in the prologue - another familiar way to show the true nature of what the hero is up against.

So do you need to show the actual murder in graphic detail or not? Depends is my answer – if we want the reader to feel worried or scared for the hero then yes. But maybe a few choice details will suffice rather than a blow by blow account. I also think it is more about showing what kind of person the protagonist is (and how his character connects to the story) than the actual deed.  However no one is truly all evil – except maybe the devil himself - so a fully rounded villain also needs some redeeming qualities. Many of the best known villains murder ruthlessly and without compunction yet they love their mother/animals/children! In fact, I believe it is these very human traits mixed with the very worst traits that fascinate us so much. And that is why the best known fictional villains/murderers stay with us for a long time. They could so easily have been just like us!

Murder for murder’s sake should never be introduced into a story just to spice it up but a well placed, well developed villain/protagonist who murders,horrifies us and that can certainly rev a tale up into top gear!

Who is your favourite murderer/villain in the most well known fiction?



                                                            

The Afterlife of Darkmares

Hip hip hooray! My new novel  "The Afterlife of Darkmares" is now out!

Today I'm going to ski-p my A-Z posts in favour of telling you about my latest publication. So I am officially anouncing my new thriller here...

The novel is available on http://www.lulu.com/ at present ( at a reduced price) but will soon be out on amazon too ( full price).

For anyone who is interested here is the back cover blurb:

When single mum Kate Linden’s disabled daughter dies unexpectedly she is stunned to find she is under suspicion of harming her. But Kate still has a 12year old son, Grif, who refuses to speak and is grappling with issues of his own – not least of which is his attachment to a supposedly imaginary friend. Kate’s relationship with her son is fraught as she struggles to make some kind of connection with him and also deal with her own intense grief.

Unbeknown to Kate, in 1665, a disastrous event - the plague - in a small Derbyshire village - has consequences that stretch into the 21^st Century and Kate is blind to the fact that her son (feeling estranged from all around him) has unwittingly allowed an evil entity to awaken and threaten them all.

 Kate must now fight her own demons and accept help from unlikely sources if she is to save her son from a fate worse than death. The help finally comes from a sleep therapist, an elderly bereaved lady and Jeremiah, an old man who hovers between life and death on a life support machine…

So, does the cover say 'spooky' to you or not?

All opinions very welcome...

ABC of Thriller Writing...

 INCY WINCY SPIDER...

A - ARACHNID

I thought it might be fun, this year, to organise my blog around an alphabetised compendium of thriller writing-related subjects.

So, today’s word topic is Arachnid.

You might feel that this is a strange word topic for a thriller writer but the word popped into my head and on thinking it through I realised there are many occasions when spiders are used in thrillers. Not least the fact that many people are afraid of spiders so in terms of engendering basic fear they can and do make people shudder and do all manner of crazy things.

Ordinary household spiders, for me, are totally creepy and scary – especially when they scuttle so fast that you can rarely see where they go to. It is that fear of not knowing where they are that adds to the fear dimension even when they have disappeared.

Then of course, spiders and spider webs are such an iconic part of ghostly, paranormal stories too. What would a haunted house be without the spider webs lurking in every corner? And even walking into a web in the pitch dark can be scary – especially when it sticks to your face!

Many a story and horror film have featured spiders much more prominently – as the main focus of the tale. Witness ‘Arachnophobia’ and similar stories.

Spiders are such strange creatures, that the idea of large and deadly versions of them is anathema to most of us. Although, we do have spiders that have the ability to kill…  May be a Modus Operandi for a murder mystery thriller or has that been done to death – so to speak…

So are you scared of spiders? Do you think fear of spiders could be the basis of a psychological thriller?

Disposing of victims!

Disposal of a body

As a thriller writer this topic so intrigued me and fertilised my imagination (no pun intended!) that I thought I would investigate a further. In much the same way that there are numerous ways to commit murder (see previous posts), so there are many (sometimes ingenious) ways that murders try to dispose of their victims. I say ‘try’ because hopefully, a murder in fiction is eventually discovered. The popularity of forensic anthropology as in TV programmes like ‘Bones’ and ‘C.S.I – type’ programmes show it is a fascinating field for many of us.

Of course disposing of a human body in normal circumstances generally involves some kind of a funeral followed by burial or cremation and these have been the main means employed by many cultures for centuries. However there are still lot’s of variations in practise across cultures with exceptions due to religious beliefs about what happens after death. Mummification and taxidermy have also figured in some cultures and cryogenic (freezing) preservation is on the rise. Burial at sea, mass graves at times of plague and genocide, and even cannibalism all have been used too.  

From a writer’s point of view these all give great food for thought when constructing plots but I suppose the most useful category of disposal is the way that an antagonist in a story might go about concealing his wicked deeds.

Amongst ways of clandestine disposal there could be burial in a shallow grave (used most often in crime stories), amateur cremation (which may not be complete) dissolving in Lye or acid (used by the acid bath murderer, John Haig in the 20th century!) Burial in cement or concrete under a building is also favoured by murderers (and, I believe, often used by the mafia!). Crushing, dismemberment and bodies stored in strange places like freezers have figured in many murder stories.

The old saying, that you can’t prove a murder without a body - not actually true, but difficult to pursue - means that murderers will continue to come up with ever ingenious ways of disposing of their victims.

Now to be different I should come up with something else?? Mmmm….Maybe the new thing could be Alkaline Hydrolysis… Reducing the body (in a special chamber) to a sludge which can be poured down the drain! Wonder how CSI would solve that one?

Have you any ingenious ideas for disposal of victims of crimes?

Mothering and Murder Most Foul!

Mothers who kill



Nurturing is Natural?

I have always been fascinated yet repelled by some of the classic narratives of mothers who kill their children. As a mother myself and possibly because of my child protection background I have always been interested in why some mothers murder their own offspring and why writers would want to write about it.

Writers who have used this theme litter the history of narratives and whilst child murder – indeed any murder - is unacceptable to society there is something so shocking about the phenomena that it has always had shock value and therefore been of interest to writers.  In classic literature there is the tale of Medea who murdered her children to exact revenge on their father. In modern literature there is the story of Beloved by Toni Morrison and countless stories which involve some measure of Fabricated Induced Illness (F I I). This can include mothers who smother their babies so making the death seem like natural causes e.g. cot death. These women are generally emotionally unstable or suffering mental illness but their concern for their children is very believable. These women appal people but maternal instinct is sometimes no match for deadened emotions or thwarted personal ambition.

But why are mothers who kill their children, seen as so much more repulsive than fathers who kill? The evolution of mankind has always required a mother or mother substitute and without that connection to a nurturing person during the defenceless time of infancy, the human race would not have survived. Jung says that the mother archetype is an inbuilt ability to recognise and form a certain relationship – that of mothering. The issue of trust and dependency therefore becomes an important one and I believe this is the reason why we are so repelled by women who go against the archetype and kill the very people they are supposed to be protecting.

I believe this theme makes for some of the most compelling drama and story telling I have come across. Modern day writers have used F.I.I. in their plots and there are many books and films depicting this condition although it is still a hotly debated topic.  Crime writer Patricia Cornwell uses it in her book ‘The Body Farm’ The murdered victim is an 11-year-old girl and the suspect is a serial killer but it turns out that she was killed by her own mother. The screenwriter M Night Shyamalan also uses a similar scenario in the 1999 film ‘The Sixth Sense’. Even ‘The X files’, ER and Law and Order have all featured episodes around women who kill their children (FII). These stories reflect today’s society where the awareness of mothers killing their children is both growing and yet controversial.

It makes for challenging drama but also reflects some of the darker corners of our society.

So, could you use controversial issues like this in your writing?

Ta Da! My re-vamped blog launches!

TA DA!! *Trumpet fanfare - Ryanair style*... My newly renovated, re-vamped and refurbished blog launches today!

After reading Kristen Lamb's blog and her social media books, I decided to take her advice and totally re-focus my blog to reflect who I am and what I do.  Hence the emphasis on me and my genre. 
I intend to blog at least three times a week and although it will be mostly about thrillers, I will talk about other related topics too. (*Muse whispers in ear*, well, that little rider gives you carte blanche if you get stuck!  Ignores muse and shakes head - onwards and upwards...)

So, to coninue - my Monday posts will be about some of the darker edges of thrillers such as murder, evil and what makes bad characters tick.

My posts on Wednesdays will be a little tongue in cheek as I intend to explore the paranormal, supernatural and some other whacky bits and peices (but NO vampires!). Mainly because my books do feature some elements of the supernatural - although fairly lightly done.

Fridays will be about the whole genre of thrillers from suspense, horror, and murder mystery to epic armageddon type tales. The story is the main thing and in common with many thriller writers I do try to make my stories fast-paced and edgy.

So there you go - new blog launched! I just hope it will fly!

What do you think? Is re-branding oneself a good thing?

Samples of my books and writing are on my website: http://www.patricianewcombe.webnode.com/

Fruitcake author?

Does slotting your book into a genre still mean as much in today's publishing world?
I seem to come across many novels that cross the genre boundaries and, yes, I think they are more gripping as a result.
In fact my own books have a little of the kitchen sink syndrome about them. I mean, to make them lively, interesting and readable I do find myself wanting to mix mystery, romance and even a dose of pshychological suspense. Sometimes I think I might be confusing making a fruit cake with developing a plot - all ingredients go into the mixing bowl! Or there again maybe I AM a fruitcake!
The problem, they tell me, is not about what makes a book exciting and readable but about how a publisher can categorise a book.
But there again, readers choose what to buy based on their own tastes for certain genres, or so I am told. I think most of us have a bent for our particular genre but personally, I also read as much as possible oustide my usual choices to broaden my reading experience. And I am sometimes quite pleasantly surprised to find I enjoy a particular book that I initally was not so sure about.
I suppose it's also about expectation - if you pick a book from the horror section you certainly would not expect it to be a cosy romance!
However, every book/story should have the basics of conflict, surprise, struggle and resolution - and if that story includes the odd murder, romance, scifi and even a cowboy, well so be it.
The issue then is for the author to decide what genre their work falls into.
But, I do think crossover books are gaining ground and a big, plotline-packed multi-tiered novel is going to be hard to categorise anyway.
I guess it comes down to what you want to write about...

So are you a genre writer? Do you stick faithfully to your chosen genre?

To read samples of my books visit http://www.patricianewcombe.webnode.com/
'The Witcheye Gene' is also available to buy on amazon.co.uk