Cody McFadyen

It occurred to me recently that one of the hazards of writing crime novels is the tendency to search for the bad in the benign.

The thing about writing (at least for me) is that you never really stop. As I go throughout my day, doing the usual, some part of me is always watching, noting, filing away.

Example: since I am such a big wimp, I get my dental work done under IV sedation whenever possible. The thing that amazed me from the first about this is how powerful those drugs are. I remember the first time I had it done, the anesthesiologist put the needle in my arm and then attached the heart rate monitor. I was nervous, so my heart was going at about 160 beats a minute. He raised an eyebrow and said: "Hm - let me help you with that." He injected something into the IV and the next thing I knew... sixty beats a minute and pure, unfettered bliss. 'Go ahead,' I thought, 'pull 'em all, no big deal...' Then he gave me the real stuff and the space inside my head exploded into a bright white light. I started making memories again hours later, when I woke up on my couch.

That's all well and good, problem is, I had a moment for one final thought before oblivion and it was 'this would be a hell of a tool for a serial killer...'

Another time I was in a hardware store. It was a Sunday and I needed an extension cord. I was trying to keep my head down, get what I needed and get out. Then, I saw him. He was about six feet five and he hunched forward a little over his shopping cart. His lower jaw jutted forward a bit and he seemed to be wearing a permanent scowl - until he found the garden shears, that is. He held them in his huge hands and scissored them a few times. His eyes lit up, followed by a tremendous, toothy smile of pure pleasure. 'Who's waiting in your basement?' I thought. Then his daughter ran up to him. She looked to be about four, and she giggled as he scooped her up in his arms. 'Stereotypes,' I thought, chastising myself. But then I frowned... after all, BTK was a family man, too...

Anytime I'm driving down the highway and I see a flat-panel van, I have to wonder for a moment what the cops would find if they took a close look with an ultraviolet light.

Heck, even my brother gets in on the act. He was renting a house once and we went down into the basement. He was using it as a music room and I noticed that the walls had been sound-proofed. He'd only been there for a month, so I commented that he'd worked pretty fast to put all that sound-proofing up. 'Oh,' he said, 'that was already here when we rented the place.' I looked at him, he looked at me, and he nodded. 'Yep,' he said, reading my mind, 'I thought the same thing. He probably used it as a kill-room.'

Then we laughed, and took turns playing the guitar. It was a great evening, but before I fell asleep that night, I took a moment to wonder:

Kill-room?

Nah. Probably not.

But not impossible...

The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated...

I have to apologize for such a long and unworthy absence. I do have a good excuse, though: I was buried in wrapping up the revisions of Book 4 - 'Abandoned'. It's all copyedit now, which means that puppy will be out on the shelves in the UK and the US this fall.

In addition, I'm getting ready to move at the end of June to Colorado, and after 26 years in California, there are some serious logistics involved.

AND - I was wrapping up the first 100 pages of my next book...

That's the end of the excuses, promise. In order to make up for it, I hereby promise to do a post a week from now until my move (June 22nd or thereabouts). Once the move is happening, all bets are off until I'm settled again with the basics: Computer, internet, Direct TV, coffee.

So - see ya'll next week - promise!

(The below is a reprint of an article I wrote for a blog last year. I found it while cleaning up my hard drive recently and thought you guys might find it interesting.)

Let's talk about sex and violence.

For example, let's talk about the immediate reactions various people had upon reading that. Some probably perked up, immediately interested. Some have probably already moved on (goodbye!) and some have sighed or crinkled their noses, continuing to read in the hopes that something tasteless and unnecessary isn't about to follow.

Tasteless and unnecessary, are, of course, the watchwords by which sex and violence in books are judged. Many purport to know exactly where those lines should be drawn. They know it with 100% certainty, no doubt allowed. But for every person who thinks one way, someone else thinks another.

I write a tiny bit of sex in my books, but quite a bit of violence. I figure I'm writing about serial killers, and I'm not writing dark comedies, so some violence is due. In the real world, people are hunted down by the kinds of men (and women) I write about. They die horribly and violently, and the reality is far, far, far worse than anything I've ever written.

Even so, opinion is always polarized. I've gotten hate mail about the violence in my books. I had a woman, one time, come up to me and tell me she knew (knew!) I was personally getting off writing in the first person about a female protagonist who'd been assaulted. These are always going to be passionate subjects for people.

So where does that leave us as writers?

Well, I guess every writer has to answer that question for themselves, and I imagine it's a mutable answer.

First and foremost, the work should stand on its own, irrespective of who wrote it. There's the old debate about men vs women when it comes to writing violence, which I think should be a null issue. David Herbert Lawrence said "Never trust the artist. Trust the tale." When I write a book, I'm not running for office. I'm not an actor. Who I am or how I look isn't relevant to the work. The book is the book. So, in my opinion, don't ever start down the road of thinking: 'I wonder what they'll think about my writing this, being that I'm a man... or a woman...' It either belongs in the book or it doesn't, end of story.

Next, I'm of the opinion that you let it all hang out in your first draft. You can always carve off the fat. Some of the violence I've written in first drafts will (thankfully) never see the light of day. If it did, there would probably be people building bonfires with those books. Writing is a visceral act for me, and your first instinct is usually your most honest. So put it down there, uncensored, horrific and all, in that first draft. Then, go back, and get rid of what doesn't belong. You'll likely be left with something powerful.

Next, trust your editor. I guess there's bad editing out there, but I've been lucky enough not to have experienced it. We all develop blind spots, or fall in love with things in our books that need to be cut away, and it's the editor that helps us to see what those are. Editors are like... you know how you sometimes wish you had four arms, or eyes in the back of your head? That's what editors are for a book. More eyes and arms. Remember, you've lived with the book, and that uber-violent scene that makes you yawn now is going to be new to them. If they say 'dear God, that has to go or no one will ever read another book you write', well, I'm not saying you have to take the advice, but you should probably consider it.

As for sex, well, if you never want controversy about sex, then never write about it. That's the only sure way. Because the moment the clothes come off, someone somewhere isn't going to like it, guaranteed.

In the final analysis, though, I'm afraid it all comes down to you. No one else's name is going to end up on that novel. I've found that the hardest part of writing isn't writing, but writing after being published. Going from a bell jar to a madding crowd of opinions. People telling you they love it, people telling you they hate it, people telling you 'if you just tweak that' or 'a little less of this...' you're going to have to learn how to create the bell jar again, and in the end, write what you know is right. For the book, I mean. We'll leave the morality up to the priests and politicians and our private lives.

Because that's the real bottom line, isn't it? I mean, I have definite views on right and wrong, and to some degree those views will inform my books. But I'm not writing philosophical treatises. I'm writing thrillers. I don't want to tell you how to live your life-I just want to entertain you.

Happy New Year!

Yes, I know it's late... I got caught up in the holiday madness, too. I'm back at work now. Book 4 of the Smoky Barrett Series - currently titled 'Abandoned' is with my editor, and due to be published in the UK around July and in the US in October. Now I'm eyeing book 5.

On the way back from Colorado, where I spent Christmas, I picked up The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I started reading it while we were waiting for our plane, and finished it before we landed. I was completely blown away. It's a bleak story, but it is also evocative, beautiful, involving and some of the best writing I've ever come across.

I left the book on the plane, in hopes that someone else would find it and read it. I'm generally a hoarder when it comes to books(and I'll certainly re-buy myself a hardcover copy) but in this case I felt good about gifting such a fine work of literature to a stranger.

I'm looking forward to what this year will bring. These are hard times, but the cliche' is true, cliche' or no - so long as you have good health and family, you're never poor.

(Sorry for the long absence. Writing, writing, writing! The below is a reprint of a guest-posting I did. It sort of sank without a sound, but I personally liked it, so here it is for you to judge.)

I went to Colorado recently to visit my parents, with my girlfriend. While there, we took a drive up to the top of a mountain. We passed through valleys of pine and aspen. The aspen was starting to turn, and the leaves seemed to sparkle when the wind hit them. If you're not familiar with that, it's a real phenomenon. My mother says it's because the aspen trees are what the elves became. We stopped in a mountain town on the way up, to use the restroom. The restroom was in a gift shop, and while I was waiting for my girlfriend, I talked to the proprietor. He was from Chicago, as it turns out. He'd been visiting Colorado thirty years ago, found this mountain town, and never left. His wife at the time had come and gone, but he was still there. He told me he planned to die in that beautiful place.

'Top of the mountain' is a misnomer. You wind your way up by car to the visitors center, park, and then walk up the last five hundred feet or so to get to the summit. It took us a little while. We were above 12,000 feet by then, and were missing our normal sea-level surplus of oxygen. People coming down would smile and tell us 'don't worry, it's worth it.' We took them at their word and continued on, panting and gasping, until we reached the top.

What did we see there?

Why, everything, of course.

We saw all the places that we had passed from the valley to the peak. We saw where the tree line started, that place where barren grass turns back into towering life - or vice-versa depending on your viewpoint. I looked down and noticed a lone ant clambering around the rock. I saw no other ants, which made me wonder about that one. Was he was an old ant, who'd always dreamed of looking down on it all instead of up at it all? Had he decided to make that dream come true before he died? If so, how long would it take for an ant to climb a mountain? In my fantasy world, that was one heroic ant.

My parents had remained in the parking lot. Dad had a triple bypass a few years back, and Mom had broken her hip and never regained full mobility. A sudden realization, a bolt of unexpected grief: that was that. Finito. Mom and dad would never climb up to this summit again. My mother and father would never again look down on the valleys we were seeing. Age had closed certain doors, forever. Someday, I thought, that'll be us. We'll have to wait in the parking lot and watch someone younger climb to the top. I comforted myself with the truth that they'd seen a lot of mountaintops in their times, probably more than most.

I told my girlfriend, who had struggled so gamely to get to the top with me: "See, they were right. It was worth it. You'll never forget being here." She agreed. We kissed at the summit. The aspen leaves hummed in the valleys below us. The wind made my inner ears ache. The sun lit up the patchwork of snow to a blinding white. Yeah. The kiss was memorable. I said goodbye to the ant, and wondered for a moment if my parents had once kissed here, too.

We drove back down the mountain in a comfortable silence, me, my girlfriend, my dad, my mom. The car was filled with cigarette smoke. My parents are two of the last surviving smokers on earth. Mom would break the silence now and again, because, well, my mother loves to talk, but mostly, we watched the trees go by, searched the valleys below, took it all in.

I thought a lot about writing on that trip down the mountain. Writing is a kind of alchemy, see? You mix elements together to come up with books or stories or poetry. I considered the elements of my own alchemy in that smoke filled car and I decided there were, primarily, three: reading, dreaming, and remembering.

I grew up reading because of my mother. Her home life was less than ideal, when she was a child, and so she was always looking for reasons to stay away. In the summertime, her favorite reason was the library. She'd hang out there all day long at times. The librarian would give her a reading list, and she'd work through it, reading there in the library, or in various other places in summertime Kentucky. Books were her most constant companions. They were loyal friends, certainly more reliable than family.

When I was old enough to get a library card, mom made sure I got one. Good thing, too, because in those early years, we didn't have much money for books. I remember how startled I was to find out that they were going to let a kid like me walk out the door with a stack of books. I wasn't sure if they were saints or suckers, but I was thankful either way.

I read everything I could get my hands on. I read and read and read. I was big into fantasy and science fiction, but I enjoyed a number of the classics, too. I loved Mark Twain. My cousins and I would spend time together in the summer, pretending to be characters from Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Reading transported me. I was never bored if I had a book.

When I was nine and ten, for example, we lived in upstate New York. Dad had gotten a job with IBM in Kingston, and we ended up renting a house on the top of a mountain. We had fourteen acres, ten cats, chickens, and a spring fed pond. The owner of the house had left behind bookshelves crammed with science fiction novels. When the snow hit up there, it stayed for about five months. I had a space heater that I'd plug in and I'd curl up with a book and read till I was done. Then I'd read another. That's how I passed the winters, reading in front of that space heater, or in a steaming hot bathtub, with only my hands and head showing. My memories of that time, those winters, are more intense these days than ever before. They make my heart hurt a little, though I'm not sure why.

I have always read, and will always read. I don't think you can write anything worthwhile if those statements are not true.

I dreamed, too, wherever I was. Reading and dreaming fit well together. I was a small, skinny, shrimpy kid, a little on the shy side with my contemporaries. Books let me imagine myself in other places, other times, doing much bigger things than I was capable of. Escapism wasn't the most important aspect. The dreaming was done because dreaming is fun. It was done because I was allowed to dream. My mother encouraged it. She pummeled me early with the dictate that a free mind was not only acceptable, but vital.

The reading and the dreaming all happened through and around what would become the remembering. When I was a kid, mom and dad used vacation time to take us to far-away places. We'd load up in the car, and drive. Like, thousands of miles. We almost never stayed in a hotel during those trips. We camped. We saw so many places that way. The Rocky mountains, Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore. On and on and on. We watched thousands and thousands of bats fly up into the night from a cave in California. We drove through a wildlife preserve in Wyoming. I saw the sun rise and set while we camped next to the Grand Canyon. We drove through torrential rains and sweltering heat and freezing snow. My brother and I fought in that car, sometimes bitterly. My mother and father sang songs and made us sing along, and they always did this with enthusiasm, day or night. Sometimes they'd even harmonize. There was the smell of coffee poured from a thermos in that car, as well as the scents of cigarette tobacco and campfire smoke. We counted the miles, and were counted by them.

Everywhere we travelled, I read, and I dreamed. Books were a staple when taking a trip. We stuffed books into the suitcases, crammed them in the trunk, hid them under the seats. The radio never worked, but that was okay. We had books and each other and all the things we were seeing.

Nostalgia is idyllic, of course. The truth is that there were times we all dreaded climbing back in that car for another eight hours on the road together. There were times mom would blow a gasket about having to squat in the woods and not being able to shower. My brother and I could make life a living hell for each other and our parents. The hardest truth? I didn't appreciate any of it enough at the time.

I appreciate it now, though. Those memories have a keen, sweet edge.

We drove back down the mountain on that recent Colorado trip, and I closed my eyes to dream for a moment, but instead, I found myself remembering. I saw a flash of images, good and bad, right and wrong. I saw my first kiss in those woods on the top of that mountain where we lived in New York. I was ten, Christa was her name, and it was a good kiss. Full of promise. I saw myself watching her change through the key hole in the bathroom after we had gone for a swim in the pond in the summer, mystified not just by what I was seeing, but about why I felt compelled to look at all. I saw myself reading Lord of the Rings by flashlight while rain pounded my tent in Rocky Mountain National Park, and I remember how isolated that felt, and how wonderful. I remembered getting a sunburn at twelve thousand feet, and I remembered hitting my brother and making him cry when my parents weren't looking. My smug satisfaction at his tears. I remember my own impatience, sometimes, the strength of it, the sense of frustration at waiting for something special to happen while the beauty of the world passed me by.

I'm sorry if all of this is not what you came here for. I know, I write thrillers, about serial killers, about things that take place in the cities, not the mountains. What does blood on the asphalt have to do with aspens and dreaming?

Well... writing is about the whole banana. It's about it all, everything, a big ball of reading, dreaming, and remembering that you reach into with creativity. The goal is gold. Sometimes, you succeed, sometimes you don't. But success or not, the point is, writing about a serial killer is tied to that first kiss in the woods just as writing about my main character falling in love is tied to hitting my brother and making him cry. The quality of everything, of who you are, the life you've lived, the books you've read, the dreams you've dreamed, it all filters down into what you write, in big and small ways. Most of the time, it's just background music. Dust motes. Sometimes it's direct light.

I am not a great writer, in the sense of a Hemingway or a Tolkien. I stand behind what I write, but I don't write at that level, and probably never will. I thought about that as we drove down the mountain. How much reading, dreaming, and remembering would you have to do to write like that? I saw the aspens again and let it go. I don't know how to be 'great' as a writer, and in the end, that's not really my goal.

I just want to write the book someone reads in front of a space heater.

We got to the bottom of the mountain, and then we got home. The next day, my girlfriend and I hopped on a plane and flew back to California. I read on the way, of course, as did many of my fellow passengers. I fell asleep on the last leg of the trip and was woken by my girlfriend shaking me.

"What?" I said.

"The woman in front of us. She's reading one of your books!"

I was back, with that, at the top of the mountain again. I could see it all, the broad expanse of everywhere I'd been on my trip to 'here.' 'Here' was a place where a dream about reading had just become a reality to remember. I felt odd and exhilarated, like I was running the mile on a moebius strip.

I wanted to explain all of that to her. I tried to figure out how to boil it all down to a couple of brilliant, perfect sentences.

"Wow, that's cool," is what I managed to came up with.

What can I say? I'm no Hemingway. But my books are travelling.

That's good enough for me.

(This is a reprint from a posting I did for another blog. It got quite a bit of favorable response, so I am re-posting it here.)

My first sale came after a long and what I like to think of (with writer's melodrama) as bloody series of events. Events that involved violence, soul searching and screaming at the moon. Events that tested friendships and nearly broke a marriage only to truly break it later.

What events?

Why, money-troubles of course. I'm flip about it as I write this now… but maybe not really. There's still a kind of haunting-uncomfortable-sickly feeling that comes over me when I really remember what that was like.

We'd had our own business, my wife and I, and it had been successful for some time. Unfortunately, we hadn't read the winds of change very well. Less and less people were in need of, or demanding, our services. We started to hemorrhage money and what began as bailing out the boat with a pail turned into bailing out the boat with a shot-glass. The long slide started leading to harder and harder decisions. We had to sell our home for one, which decimated us emotionally.

We bootstrapped it, though. Neither of us had grown up in the money, so we figured we could roll with the punches. We took a deep breath and moved into a rental house, which allowed our two large and destructive dogs (thank god!) and our roommate. We were in a three bedroom home with three adults, a teenager, 2 labs, and a cat. Everybody fit. Things could be worse.

The problem was, we still hadn't solved our financial quandaries. We were working eight to ten hours a day to keep that business going (it still produced our primary income, what there was of it) and another three or four starting a new business. We'd looked into other avenues - of course we had - but neither of us had gone the college route. We could temp or bag groceries or sell cars. We decided to keep that as the 'in case of/break glass' option.

I remember one of the worst moments for me in all of this. I had my office set up out in the garage. Not like it gets cold in California the way it does in, say, New York, but on this day it was cold enough to put some ice on the sidewalks. I could see my breath in the air as I worked. I had a space heater under the desk, and I would type on the computer until my fingers went numb. When I couldn't feel them enough to type, I'd stick them in front of the space heater to thaw out!

None of it did much for self-esteem. It's all well and good and even a little exciting to fight the 'keep the electricity on' war when you're twenty. When you're in your mid-thirties, you just feel like a loser. You're the 'path less travelled' guy who proved the establishment right. ("Should have gotten that college degree, young man, now you'll learn the truth of things!") Throw being a parent into this mix and 'loser' takes on whole new meaning. My best friend and I used to joke with each other about it, singing the refrain from the Beck song: "I'm a loser, baby... so why don't you kill me." Gallows humor at its finest.

I grew up poor till I was about ten, but I was well out of practice. Besides, I wasn't a father and a husband then. Being a screwup when you're single is much easier on the soul.

About a year and half before that moment in the garage, or almost two years, I had written a book called Shadow Man. Someone had been showing it around to agents on my behalf. We'd been through about five agents, I believe. Most had given me good comments, and one had even given me three major critiques, and was willing to look at the manuscript again three separate times before finally rejecting me (not 'it', 'me'. That's how we writers think, whatever else we say). I'd been hopeful, but everything had started crashing down not long after. A few more rejections had driven me into a semi-apathy about the book. I'd decided I was never going to get published, and that putting my attention and effort on that was just more irresponsible dreaming. The responsible thing to do would be to buckle down and figure a way out of this mess. I could get back to the fairy-tales later. It was a very grown-up moment for me. I was very proud of myself, and explained away the empty feeling inside as the last gasp of immaturity.

In December of 2004, the long fight had gotten to a point where we were considering either the temp/bag groceries/sell cars option or packing things up and moving in with my parents while we went back to college. My parents happen to be incredible, long suffering people who would have backed this play, so I had pretty much decided to slink on home with my family and dogs in tow unless something miraculous happened.

Since I was back in the dreaming business, and hoping for a miracle, I did two things: I bought a lottery ticket, and I emailed the person who had been submitting the manuscript to agents for me. I asked if she'd give it another try. She said she would. She sent the manuscript to Liza Dawson. Lottery day rolled by with no winning numbers, but that was okay. It was more a symbolic gesture than anything else.

And then... I got a phone call from Liza. She said she really enjoyed the book and that it needed to be fixed up a little. I kind of sighed inside, having been down that road before. I was appreciative, of course, and planned to take her notes to heart. But that last hail Mary had come up short. Then she said "and I'll send you an agreement, too, nothing major." "An agreement?" I asked her. "Yes,between us. I'm going to be your agent." I was momentarily speechless. I recovered and said something suave like: "You are?"

She was very nice about it all. I imagine she'd been down that road before. We hung up. I was sitting in the garage and it was freezing. I didn't notice. No winning numbers yet, but I was willing to be hopeful. I hoped we could sell the book. I hope we could maybe sell it for enough to finance the move to my parents and maybe pay for community college. No, I thought, warming my fingers in front of the space heater. That's jinx-talk. Knock on wood. Where's the salt shaker? I sent her the following email, carefully phrased so as not to anger the luck-gods.

"Liza,

I just wanted to drop you a quick note. The concept of someone liking my work enough to want to represent it is akin to winning the lottery on the scale of things for me. It was a bit overwhelming, and I hope I didn't lack enthusiasm in our phone call.

I am an optimist in all things except my own dreams. There, I tend to be a pessimistic realist. Better not to hope, etc. So I am approaching excitement about this with a lot of care.

That reservation has nothing to do with you, so if it came across - that's the genus of it. :)

I know it's a long road ahead, and one that doesn't necessarily end with a book deal. But - I am very thankful for how fast you got through the book, and your very kind words. They won't go to my head, trust me. I'll get to work on your great critique, and we'll see where it goes from there."

I fixed the manuscript as she'd asked, and got it back to her. She acknowledged receipt of it 28 January 2005. The first sale was to my wonderful publishers in Holland. They were there in New York and snatched it up. Liza called me with the news. Hallelujah! I thought. It's enough for the move to my parents AND community college! Then she told me we were just getting started. By the end of the month my life had changed completely.

I know this is supposed to be about my first sale, and technically that's a single thing. But for me, it was a lump thing. In a space of about ten days, the book sold to various publishers around the world. I cried. My wife cried. Hell, my parents cried. The dogs watched it all, mystified. Poverty had never touched their kibbles.

About five days into that ten day span, when I knew it was all real, and all really going to happen, I took a drive over to the house we'd had to sell. It was during the day, and no one was home. I stood on the sidewalk and looked at it, and I took a minute to curse myself up and down.

You see, I had decided to be a mature human being, and to put aside the dream of writing so I could save that house. If I'd hung onto the dreamer in me, and had persisted in finding that next agent, we would have been fine, and the house would still have been ours. I promised myself never to make the same mistake again.

I write almost every day now. I am thankful for it every time I sit down with my laptop and easy chair. If a day comes when no one wants to pay me to write, and I have to consider the temp/bag groceries/sell cars option again, I'll be much more at peace with it. I got one dream to come true. Why not another? It's not that the universe is stacked against you, see? It's just waiting for you to get it right.

That's what my first sale taught me, after all: dreams are always willing to come true as long as you're willing to keep chasing them.

(This is a posting I did for another blog about 'Writing the Bad Guys')

I get asked a lot about the process of writing about 'the bad guys' in my books. It's a fair question, as they're such a big part of what I do.

Coming up with the villain of the piece is, really, one of my favorite things. In the Smoky Barrett series, I've intentionally chosen to write about bad guys that are a cut above the norm. In other words, they're not just the bagger at the supermarket that's taken a shine to making women scream. They generally have long term plans driven by long term motives.

The first question, for me, is always 'what do they do?' What's their twist? What floats their boat, when it comes to killing? Serial murder is almost always a form of sexual substitution. It's a sexual act, in other words. I take a look at it from that perspective first. The next question becomes: why are they doing it? Do they come from an abusive childhood? If so, is there something specific in their history of abuse that drives them to perform murder in the way they do?

I approach the psychology of it from two directions. One is general. By that I mean, there are traits almost all serial killers have in common, a kind of 'mental bedrock.' For example, if you want to get a feeling for what a serial killer is like, you need to understand how a sociopath thinks. You need to understand that to a sociopath, you or I have as much spiritual significance as a hammer or a deck chair. We're things, not people. You really have to get a grip on the hugeness of that concept. On first blush, that seems obvious. 'Yeah, okay. Sure.' But give yourself time to really get your mind around it, and you start to see just how alien such a mindset is. The Sociopath Next Door, by Dr. Martha Stout, is an excellent reference. I also read 'Mind Hunter' by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker.

Along this same line, I acquired the textbook 'Practical Homicide Investigtion', which is really invaluable from a forensic standpoint for any crime or thriller writer, but is also absolutely horrifying to read. It's filled with graphic photographs and representations of actual homicides, and, again, it serves to demonstrate the gulf between most of us and those who kill for pleasure. I remember reading that book the first time and being filled with this incredible, visceral revulsion. Then I thought, 'wow, the guys I write about, a lot of them, are sexually aroused by this stuff.' It was a thought that literally gave me a sleepless night.

The next thing I look at as I'm crafting a killer is more specific. He likes to kill people, fine. But why? Really, why? What happened to him or her? Did anything happen? Was he just 'born bad?' This is a person, however twisted, and he has to be three-dimensional. One of things that's disturbing and fascinating when you research guys like Dahmer or Bundy is that you find out about the normal parts of their lives and not just the twisted sides. In many ways, it's more comfortable to keep them simple and black and white...

How does it all affect me? Writing about this kind of thing? Well, sometimes it gets to me. I'm human, and (yes it's true) I am not a serial killer! This stuff can be really disturbing, and I've certainly had my moments. But... it's fiction. I'm thankful I don't have to deal with this in reality. However many interviews I read, or photographs I see, I've never had to walk in on a crime scene, or deliver news to a grieving family, or listen to a cannibalistic serial killer (as I saw on a documentary, once) tell me that I'd taste good with some salt.

Anytime I'm feeling a little bit shook up, I remember that and I'm thankful.