Saturday 30 March 2013

A Character's Evil can Surprise even the Author - A Guest Post by Author Randy Attwood

Hi folks, on this strange little thing called Facebook, have you heard of it, I put the question out there asking other writer friends what they thought made a really good bad guy.  In my opinion the best ones are those average joe's who could be your neighbor, your kids soccer coach, your husband.  All the while they are talking to you about the weather they are thinking about the best way to dispose of your body.
 
Author Randy Attwood wrote a little something to give me his oppinion.  I will warn you that a little bit of it is for adult audiences.  Got you curious, doesn't it.
 
 
 
I am a pantser writer. I don't outline. Scenes come to me. Write by the seat of my pants. In "Blow Up the Roses" I really didn't know what an awful person Mr. Brown was and what was going on in his basement. Is there a worst kind of serial killer? That's Mr. Brown. He has a brown mustache and a lisp. After he has enjoyed himself, he takes a shower and mutters to himself: "Mother loveth me, Mother loveth me" and washes the blood from his penis.

 
Mr. Brown rents the other half of the duplex owned by the Keenes and when Mr. Keene disappears and abandons Mrs. Keene, she realizes she could kick Mr. Brown out divide that half of the duplex into two more units. Mr. Brown says he'll pay her more rent to keep things as they are. He doesn't want to have to remove all the sound proofing he's installed.

 
Mr. Brown likes young girls and they get younger and younger. He photographs what he does because he has found a distributor for his "art." Makes him money because there are other sickoes out there, too, who will buy such photos. And then he has an idea for a grand project.

 
Here is an excerpt about his inspiration:
 
 
"Mr. Brown found himself going more and more to look at Melissa in the downstairs freezer. He had left her eyes open and they were covered with ice crystals but still the blue sparkled at him. Her hair looked as if it would crackle and snap off if he touched it. He knew he shouldn't have killed her. He had had a perfect opportunity and hadn't realized it. He could have kept her with him forever. Watched her mature. Videotaped her maturing. What a collection of films that would provide! A product worthy dedicating your life to. Mr. Brown felt a grand purpose enter into his life. He closed the lid on the freezer.
"I'll have to find another little girl, he decided, and went to his van to start looking at school yards."

 
A writer can create a monster and I did that, but the best monster is one you can sort of not relate to, but understand. Mr. Brown did not have a normal mother:

 
"...he remembered how his mother used to use bags of crushed ice on his balls and penis and alternate them with warm moist towels. He remembered how she told him it would make him a man. That it was a secret treatment he should tell no one about. He would be a true man among men, not like his daddy who had deserted them, who was just a wimp anyway. Sometimes when she tended to him his little penis would harden, like a small stick and she would praise him and reward him by kissing it. She had taught him not to trust other people. To have no friends. The only friend he would need would be his mother."

 
Blow Up the Roses has been called by some reviewers a book you want to stop reading, but can't.
 
Published by Curiosity Quills, a small press in the D.C. area.:Blow Up the Roses on Amazon
 

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