We are delighted to welcome back author Sheila Lowe to Omnimystery News today.
Earlier this week we spoke with Sheila about her new forensic handwriting mystery Written Off (Suspense Publishing; November 2017 trade paperback and ebook formats) and yesterday she generously provided us with an excerpt from it to share with our readers. Today she writes about (gulp!) committing murder…
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Photo provided courtesy of
Sheila Lowe
November 9 just happens to be my birthday. How should I celebrate turning 68?
Committing murder…
When well-meaning instructors tell us mystery writers to “write what you know,” I doubt they intend for us to go on a killing spree. But what we write about is murder and mayhem, and judging by the lovely people I’ve met at meetings and conferences, I would be surprised if they had first-hand experience in that area. Well, a couple of them, maybe…
Some of the villainous acts my fictional bad guys have perpetrated include killing by drowning, strangulation, anaphylactic shock, skiing into a tree. I’ve written shootings, a taser attack, hand-to-hand violence. In What She Saw, a massive 6'4 thug roughs up a young woman half his size. And in Inkslingers Ball, someone is firebombed in a tattoo shop. There’s a mailbox bombing in Outside the Lines. That all sounds pretty mayhemmy to me.
I confess, as a generally non-violent person (unless you hide my favorite book or take the last oatmeal raisin cookie I had my eye on), these are not the easiest scenes for me to write. True-life murder has come far too close to me and affects how I approach them. I’ve often written about my daughter, who was shot to death in 2000 by her boyfriend, a special agent of the U.S. federal government. For a long time after this personal horror, hearing gunshots in my mind, or visualizing looking down the barrel of a gun—things one must do in order to write a realistic scene—were difficult, to say the least. Yet, while time does not really heal all wounds, it does blunt them.
Even before my daughter’s death, as a handwriting analyst I was always interested in the psychology of violence, from both the victim’s and the perpetrator’s points of view. When writing a violent scene, I put myself in the shoes of each party to the action and try to comprehend what it would be like to be that killer, or come face-to-face with one. I ask myself, what is each actor’s motivation?
Every villain, whether in the real world or in the one created on the page, is an individual with his or her own specific set of motivations and needs: the need for love and belonging, the need for safety and security, the need for power and respect. Many factors go into the choice to kill, but usually one or more of these underlying needs was neglected early in life and becomes a prime motivating factor in the crime.
In my books, the killer is usually an ordinary person who, because of a situation he or she has created or has landed in, and finds him/herself under extraordinary stress. Pushed to the point of no return, this person may feel pushed to extreme lengths to resolve the issue. It might be the desperate need of a jilted lover grasping for control, fighting to hang on to the last wisps of the relationship, refusing to let the other person go. It might be a serial killer who, horribly abused as a young child, felt utterly powerless over his own life, and a need to dominate and control drives him to murder. It’s like a drug—the look of terror in the eyes of his victims gives him a rush of adrenalin that he feels compelled to recreate, over and over. Or perhaps the killer is a charismatic leader whose religious zeal leads his followers down a dangerous path. Or maybe it’s someone bent on revenge for a real or imagined slight. The possibilities are endless.
In order to create memorable characters, whether villains or heroes, what’s most important is that there is some motivation behind what they do, and that, whether it’s revealed in the story or not, the author knows what that motivation is. Mystery writers have the enviable task of creating whatever kind of mayhem appeals to our imagination, and then untangling it in a way that pleases us. That’s so much better than real-life, where writing only what we know, in most cases would be so boring. Instead, writing what we don’t know gives us an opportunity to stretch and grow, research and imagine. After all, isn’t that what fiction is all about?
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Sheila Lowe is a British-born award-winning novelist and handwriting examiner who, after writing numerous non-fiction books, monographs, handwriting analyzer software and a self-study course, began a second career as a mystery writer. Sheila has lived in the United States since she was a young teen. She resides in Southern California with Lexie, the Very Bad (sometimes Evil) Cat.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at ClaudiaRoseSeries.com and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Written Off by Sheila Lowe
A Forensic Handwriting Mystery
Publisher: Suspense Publishing
In the dead of winter, handwriting expert Claudia Rose journeys to Maine to retrieve a manuscript about convicted female serial killer, Roxanne Becker. The manuscript, written by Professor Madeleine Maynard, who was, herself, brutally murdered, exposes a shocking secret: explosive research about a group of mentally unstable grad students selected for a special project and dubbed “Maynard’s Maniacs.” Was Madeleine conducting research that was at best, unprofessional—and at worst, downright harmful, and potentially dangerous? Could that unorthodox research have turned deadly?
Claudia finds herself swept up in the mystery of Madeleine’s life—and death. But she soon realizes that Madeleine left behind more questions than answers, and no shortage of suspects. The professor’s personal life yields a number of persons who might have wanted her dead—and her academic success and personal fortune clearly made her the envy of fellow faculty members. The University anticipates being the beneficiary of Madeline’s estate—but that seems in question when a charming stranger, claiming to be Madeleine’s nephew, turns up brandishing a new will.
The local police chief prevails upon Claudia to travel into town to examine the newly produced, handwritten will. Rushing back to Madeleine’s isolated house to escape an impending storm, Claudia becomes trapped in a blizzard. With a killer.
— Written Off by Sheila Lowe
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