I am just flattened by the flu and my own stupidity right now, but I was driving home, listening to the radio, and I heard this:
<shootings in Paris 2 weeks ago…>
I nodded sadly. Yes.
<attacks at Planned Parenthood>
WTF? OMG. Well, it’s happened before, and we don’t know the details yet, don’t panic.
<9 y.o. killed in some sort of mistaken gang bullshit, in such a terrible way that police officers were traumatized>
I started crying. Again. And I don’t cry easily, or hardly ever, but this flu is killing me, plus…
<normally, Aboriginal remains have not been found, so Casey Wolf’s family was grateful…>
I waited for them to say that they found the girl alive. And then I recognized the name, and realized it had been in the news for some time, as a belated attempt to pay attention to murdered women who are Aboriginal and not just white Canadian.
They didn’t say they found her alive. I’m sorry if I got her name wrong. I’m still sick, and Google’s not helping.
I finally realized that Casey Wolf was dead.
I shook my head, mouthed, “No,” and cried and cried.
Meanwhile, part of me lectured myself, But Mel, you’re part of the problem! You’re glamourizing violence! Stockholm Syndrome comes out December first, and it’s about a hostage-taking on an obstetrics ward! Don’t you come fucking crying to me when you’re writing about shit like that!
So I felt like I had to write to you guys, even though my head is spinning and I hardly know what I’m saying, to tell you that a) I have finally managed to stop crying, and b) Stockholm Syndrome is not an 100% evil book.
It’s a book about fighting evil.
Dr. Hope Sze–and I–and every brave doctor who steps into the fray.
I wanted you to know that even though I put Trigger Warning on the poster, this book is safe. Thanks.
Hope you feel better soon Melissa!
Thanks, Sharon Cleary-Leclair! This is a perfect time for me to thank the nurses who helped look after me and my patients that day: Pam Mcdonald, Bonnie, Sara Renwick and another Sarah, Lianne Aline, and I’m sure many others that I was just too addled to remember. However, I do remember Rebecca Prieur kindly giving me some herbal remedy, but I was so tired, when she asked for feedback, all I could say was, “I feel good. It’s smelly.” She nodded kindly. And her student, Bells (?) suggested tumeric, so I gave that a try today. I ain’t proud.
Hope you’re feeling better Melissa!
<3
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Take a nice warm bath, clear that head cold, read quotes from Dr Wayne Dyer and sleep. All will be fine in the morning. Xxx Courage chere Melissa.
Suzanne Larocque, I do feel slightly better. I’ve been too cold to enjoy baths (lots of chills), but I think I’m on the road up. Thank you for the advice and courage.
I sense that ALL authors get the jitters and mixed emotions before the big day. You are an excellent writer (and doctor).
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Thanks, babe. You know that, but maybe other people would think I was. Anyway, thanks for the upvote!
Lynn McSweeney sent me a private message and gave me permission to share here:
I read your cri de cœur and just wanted you to know you are not alone as a writer horrified by how reality trumps fictional violence, and worried about its intersection. A friend of mine, Garrett Cook, who is also a writer, just posted this on his FaceBook page: “If anyone ever wonders why it’s so hard and taking me so long to write a Murderland sequel, shit like this should explain it. You have to hit hard to capture this kind of ugly and it makes me feel powerless sometimes. I’ve been trying not to comment on the Planned Parenthood killings but this shit makes me angry.” He linked his comments to this article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/11/28/pro-lifers-take-to-twitter-to-praise-planned-parenthood-shooter/
Garrett’s trilogy “Murderland” takes place in the near future, where serial killers are celebrities with groupies; the narrator is unreliable, evidently a killer himself, but one who believes he only takes lives to distribute justice. His premise is far from yours, but no writer can take the blame for our crazy culture’s outbreaks of violence. Writers have been treating such subjects since stories began; consider “Beowulf”. Or Arjuna’s dilemma in the Mahabharata: will he kill to defend his kingdom as he is honor-bound to, even when it means he will kill his own kin, a competing sin and obligation?
As a species, we dream and worry about being chased by monsters, we ponder if and when violence might ever be justified, we entertain ourselves with camp-fire tales of ghost and murder – possibly to prepare ourselves to think about justice and peacemaking. I’ve read the first three chapters of your book (and how generous of you to share them). Your story will never be the catalyst for imitators; such an intelligent protagonist will never inspire readers to become her nemesis.
But even were we to consider first-person shooter video games, I don’t think the violence in our culture arises from fiction in any media, no matter how low-brow, no matter how tasteless. Sadly, the zeitgeist is turning dark. Larger cultural forces are at work, from economics to alienation; toss in city-living anonymity, the breakdown of once-strong social networks such as the extended family and generational neighborhoods, and reactionary impulses not comfortable with historical change, etc., and we wind up with a recipe for disaster, evidently. I cry for our culture too.
Please keep writing. At the very least, it’s entertaining, a welcome distraction in our “vale of tears”; at best, it invokes a moral compass from each reader, the compass that accumulates from reading any novel and entering its inherently empathetic space.
And I hope I’m not being presumptuous and hectoring, given our brief acquaintance. (We met at the “Jewish Noir” reading earlier this month in Boston, at Brookline Booksmith.) It’s meant to be more pep-talk than lecture.
Well said — both of you.
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