My Future Victims
Monday, July 7, 2008 at 11:00PM in Guest Blogger Back in my sorority days, you could be sure that someone would introduce a new pledge sister with the damning faint praise of "she's really sweet and she makes her own clothes." None of that here, folks. Our guest blogger today is gorgeous ... she's smart ... she's great to party with ... and she writes some of the most exciting thrillers around today. Please welcome guest blogger, Michelle Gagnon.
- Louise Ure
I had a startling realization as I began writing my fourth crime novel last week. Part of the process (and one of my favorite parts, to be honest) is naming the cast of characters who will be subjected to all sorts of terrible trials and tribulations. And I was suddenly struck by a startling fact: I was fresh out of victim names. Yes, just four books into my career, I’ve already managed to disembowel, strangle, stab, shoot, and otherwise maim (in effigy, of course) every single one of the people who tormented me in junior high school, in addition to a number of poorly-behaved former boyfriends. Hard to believe, I know. And trust me, it speaks volumes about the body count in those first three books. Not a short list.
So I’m on the hunt for fresh victims. Fortunately, I seem to encounter a variety of people over the course of my everyday life whose crimes, though generally minor, certainly merit punishment.
Here they are, in no particular order:
• Mandy, the cute twenty-something Kiehl’s store clerk who last week responded to my request for help finding a particular moisturizer with the following gem: “You know, you should really switch to the Abyssine one. It’ll work wonders on those forehead lines.” Oh, Mandy, I have a special punishment reserved for you…I’m thinking flesh-eating virus, but it’s still up in the air.
• Gina, the mother from my baby group who for some reason feels compelled to forward articles with titles like, “Don’t Have a Time Out, Have a Time In!!!” (note the extensive exclamation points, a trademark of Gina’s missives), and “Television, or why allowing your child to watch a single minute of it makes you a bad parent.” This is a petty one, but trust me, the inherently judgmental tone of those emails combined with their frequency have driven me to this point. Mind you, as I write this my daughter is gazing blankly at the “Happy Feet” penguins for hours on end. Kidding. A little. And rest assured, Gina will meet a mercifully quick and relatively painless demise.
• Officer Dunwitty (I’m not making that up,) the meter maid who, although I ran outside to move it AS SHE WAS PULLING UP BEHIND MY CAR, still gave me a $60 ticket. Just doing her job, I know. And I don’t care. This one will be grisly.
• The guy who stole my gym parking spot last week after I waited ten minutes for the previous occupant to make a cell phone call and apply a layer of makeup in her rearview-mirror. I don’t have a name, but the physical description of said forty-something balding male will be scathingly accurate. For him I’m thinking choked, drowned, and stabbed for good measure.
• Martha, the loans collection representative who persists in calling our house at all hours demanding payment for a medical visit to a doctor I’ve never heard of, despite the fact that I’ve offered to take a blood oath swearing that my name is not, and never has been, Foula Vasiligiorus (a made-up name if ever there was one; get a clue, Martha.) While I admire Martha’s dedication to her job, she really needs to work on her interpersonal skills. For that, she will be drawn and quartered. Martha, if you had only listened to me, we could have avoided all this ugliness.
So here’s your chance. Who would you like to kill off? (Fictionally, of course. Please do not name me as an instigator for any real life nefarious doings.) Bonus points (and a signed first edition of Boneyard) for the most innovative manner of death…
And as always, go to www.michellegagnon.com to enter drawings for an Amazon Kindle, iPod Shuffle, Amazon & Starbucks gift cards, copies of my thrillers, and other fabulous prizes.
MG
Michelle is a former modern dancer, bartender, dog walker, model, personal trainer, and Russian supper club performer. Her debut thriller THE TUNNELS involves a series of ritualized murders in the abandoned tunnel system beneath a university. Published in the United States and Australia, it was an IMBA bestseller. Her next book, BONEYARD, depicts a cat and mouse game between dueling serial killers. In her spare time she fights Komodo dragons and broods.
Reader Comments (29)
I often tell people they better be nice to me or they'll end up in a book. But it may not be as a body...it may be as something mortally embarrassing.
I just took great pleasure in killing off a producer I had the misfortune to work with. Beat his brains out with a Golden Globe. One of the most satisfying things I - I mean my character - 've ever done.
I'm sure no one else will weep for him, either.
Thanks for joining us today, Michelle.
I turned a horrid, self-centered and imcompetent boss into a c/y/a, below code business. It was very satisfying.
Dusty, I tell people exactly the same thing you do!
Funny, here I sit in my Careful, or You'll End Up In My Novel T-shirt...
I've never killed off or maimed someone I've met or dated. Sounds like I'm the only one. : ) I just make them up as I go. That's not to say I haven't met people I'd LIKE to kill or maim, but I have a tendency to forgive and FORGET THEM! That's the worst punishment I can mete out, to be forever banished from my world, revisited with a shake of the head every once in a while. And trust me, there's a few of those.
I think the person I'd "take care of" is this guy Ray who owns a print center. He hired me, then halfway through my first shift, he decided that I wasn't "working out." So he fired me. No explanation. He felt that he didn't owe me one. And the whole time I was there, he was standing over my shoulder, telling me I'm doing everything wrong.
So one day, Ray is trying to laminate a poster in the large roller laminating machine. Uh oh, he gets his tie caught between the two rollers!! It pulls him in, choking the life out of him, making his beady little eyes bulge in fear. Not very creative, I know, but very fitting.
Dusty and Pari -- You guys are nice. I usually wouldn't give a heads up >:)
I would also kill off the customer service people at Best Buy, one of whom was supposed to be holding a movie that I had been searching high and low for. She made me wait for 15 minutes while she checked her counter for the movie and then told me she didn't have it. I found it on the shelf. The other looked at me with a blank, far-away look when I asked if they had The Ring in stock. Then he said, "Lord of the Rings?"
I really shouldn't blame them for being dumb. I should just limit my shopping to on-line.
I think my preferred method of {fictional} killing would be to rip out a person's femur, sharpen it, and then stab them with it. I used to promise such grisly demise on kids in my drama class who wouldn't learn their lines (it worked, too), but now I think the honor belongs to the kid who kept kicking my seat at Wall-E last week. :)
Or possibly serial texters. "I can talk to you and text at the same time!" -shank-
DEFINITELY the slower-than-molasses postal workers at the Brooklyn post office, who insist that you stand in the LONG line, even though you are clearly holding a pink slip that means you just need to pick up a package, which will take two seconds.
I'm envisioning a slow dip into a vat of boiling oil...
I would have to off my husband's ex-wife and I think it would have to be in the manner of a couple of the 7 deadly sins. She fits all of them. :)
Hey, I'm just saying...
Cone snails are fun, too, but J.A. Konrath has already used that one.
As far as potential victims go, the party at the other end of the 9-months-long (and counting) custody battle we've been fighting for the daughter we plan to adopt tops my list. On the other hand, poison might be too bloodless for her...
I like to say he's my 23-59 guy. That is, If murder was made legal for a day, I wouldn't have a laundry list of people. I'd just have him. And I'd kidnap him early the day before, get his blood type from the Red Cross and stock up, so I could keep him alive for 23 hours and 59 minutes of the 24 hour day. I'd want my money's worth.
I was thinking of carving pieces off of him to feed the squirrels and raccoons around my house all day, while he watched...maybe run over a foot or two with the lawnmower, until he had about 20 minutes left. Then duct tape the old college beer funnel to his mouth and pour in drano til it came out his nose. If he's still alive when time runs out, I'd hide him in my septic tank til the authorities came to make sure I was strictly adhering to the 24 hr. timeline. By the time they found him he'd either be dead, or the rest of his life would suck so much I'd be okay with him living.
Then again, I've met his wife. Just leaving him alive and in that marriage might be punishment enough.
But of course I would never REALLY do anything like this, only in fiction...[evil chuckle]
What do you say?
Dave
A writer friend of mine who shall remain nameless (although I'm pretty sure she reads this blog) was once apprached by a friend of hers who asked "can you kill my ex-husband?" Of course, she meant fictionally, at least that's how my friend took it.
So her next book had the odious ex, in all his skeezy, slimy glory, coming to a well-deserved bad end.
He read the book.
He had NO IDEA the character was supposed to be him.
He even told my friend how much he liked the book, especially the villain.
But no. Not one of those would be in any danger at all. Just this guy. And like I said, with a wife like his, leaving him alive in his marriage (gulp) "bliss" may be torture enough.
I've killed off some antiques dealers I've known - and an auctioneer or two. I've got a new list (non-antiques people), but you know what? They're not worth the ink.
Best wishes with the new book. THE TUNNELLS was terrific - am looking forward to THE BONEYARD.
So that I will never have to hear them scream at any of the kids again, I would immobilize them on their backs (in the hockey rink), cut out their tongues and have them drown in their own blood.
BTW, my kids don't play any team sports any more, or I might have been tempted to crib some of the other posts to use on rabid coaches & parents.
But you can't kill of the guy who fired a friend of mine for being the wrong form of Christian (she's Methodist, he's Baptist), and then had everyone in his office come and pray over her desk to cleanse it of evil spirits. No, he's mine to kill. On paper, anyway.
See you at the end of the month!(!!!)
Anyway, turns out when I left the military and started to write he became the inspiration for a character who needed to die a miserable death. Very satisfying.
JJ
This is a great blog entry, Michelle!