Last night I finished watching Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, a 4-part series, created and directed by Joe Berlinger. Most writers who've ever written a police procedural know this story well, but the series is both enlightening and disturbing due to the extensive amount of archival footage and interviews with surviving victims, friends, and family members. The Bundy case chronicles a period in time before modern technology changed law enforcement. The psychopath's horrific rampage took place across several states and the series documents the pressures brought to bear on police departments ill-equipped to fight such a ruthless killer. The FBI eventually responded to Bundy and his kind, by creating a system of psychological profiling and coining the term serial killer. Thomas Harris, who wrote The Silence of the Lambs, drew many elements in his story from the catalog of shocking behavior and feral cunning that characterized Ted Bundy's modus operandi. Bundy is not an easy topic. He represents the darkest, most repulsive aspect of humanity. He was a murderer, … [Read more...] about Ted Bundy: Wolf Among the Sheep
Write Like You Mean it.
Writing is a calling. People write for different reasons and there is no better time in history to be a writer. Sure, the publishing world has been shaken by technology and the old system is slowly dying. Yes, the midlist is nonexistent. Of course, the gatekeepers continue to do what gatekeepers do, create exclusivity and a system where they maintain control. But the upshot is power and freedom to the writer. First of all, if you write fiction and you keep doing it, you're a special breed. As the columnist, Red Smith once said when asked whether writing a daily column was difficult, “Why no, you simply sit down at your typewriter, open a vein and bleed.” Writing has always been difficult, since the first moment a chisel was placed on a stone. Storytelling is as old as language. Stories are told, retold, and transformed into other stories; Cupid and Psyche became Beauty and the Beast became Twilight. Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John are the same story from different points of view. Socrates warned that writing stories down would lead to memory loss and a lack of wisdom. Little did … [Read more...] about Write Like You Mean it.
May you walk in the Light: Merry Christmas vs Pagan Solstice
"I do not consider either the just, or the wicked, to be in a supreme state, but to be, every one of them, states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil when it leaves Paradise following the Serpent." ~ William Blake Christmas falls at that dividing point in the year where light is most oppressed by darkness. After the longest night of the year, the Midwinter Solstice, the unconquered sun returns on December 25th in the Sol Invictus. The birth of Christ was symbolically placed at this point, overlaying two ancient pagan holidays, Roman Saturnalia and Germanic Yule. The choice was poetic. What more dramatic day could a divine being enter a world ruled by a fallen angel, in order to preach love and forgiveness? After all, the pagan roots of Sol Invictus are drenched in drunkenness, slavery and sacrificial blood. This cosmic battle between good and evil has inspired writers and poets since the very first stories were told. The visionary artist and poet William Blake was fascinated by the conflict between darkness and light and embodied it in … [Read more...] about May you walk in the Light: Merry Christmas vs Pagan Solstice
