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4.
AOTW: Do your subjects ever haunt you? Have you ever abandoned a project because you were simply too disturbed by the crime?
Susan Kelly: Oh, yes, my subjects haunt me. There's a murder case I'd love to write about --- I have to, because the victim appears in my dreams and gets annoyed at me for not, literally, being on the case.
I've never started to research something and then abandoned it because it was too horrific.
Gretchen Brinck: One of the victims in The Boy Next Door was on my eleven-year-old son’s soccer team. I had spent a season watching this beautiful, happy boy charge up and down the field. His murder broke my heart, still does all these years later, but it also motivated me to write the book.
It was rewarding to work on The Boy Next Door because a number of the principles were courageous, heroic people. I have considered and rejected several crime stories since then because no one involved was a sympathetic character.
I dropped one nonfiction project, the story of a homeless paraplegic veteran, because our in-depth interviews reawakened his post-traumatic stress so greatly that I feared endangering his mental health.
Michael Fleeman: Not yet. I'd abandon a project for a more practical reason: there just isn't enough to write about. Even the most sensational crimes often don't warrant book-length treatment. There has to be a cast of interesting characters, subplots, a sense of place, time and suspense.
Brian J. Karem: Honestly, the only thing that's ever haunted me was Bruce Willis in Hudson Hawk. Why didn't they make a sequel to that movie?
I was deeply touched by the crime committed by Sam Manzie. He was a 15-year-old child who murdered 11-year-old Eddie Werner when Eddie was selling wrapping paper door to door for school. This happened in suburban New Jersey. It was very disturbing. More disturbing was the fact that Sam himself was a victim of bad advice from doctors and lawyers when he committed the crime and his closest friend was a 43-year-old pedophile who was later charged with abusing him. My oldest son at the time was 11 and it was very difficult to write the book.
Burl Barer: The crime scene photos of the victims haunt me.
I [have] abandoned a project because of a clear and blatant threat. The threat, sadly, was from a law enforcement officer who feared allegations of corruption against him as an individual. The idea that he was corrupt had not seriously occurred to me until he brought it up. Once he brought it to my attention, coupled with his threat, I wisely set the project aside and did not pursue it any further.
Don Lasseter: I'm not really haunted by my subjects, but I do think about them after the books are completed. Yes, I stepped away from one project because everyone in it, killer and victims alike were simply too repulsive.
Irene Pence: When I write a story, I am deeply emerged with the crime and the perpetrator, but they do not haunt me nor invade my dreams. However, I will admit to being worried about one murderer who will someday get out of prison and has my home address. I spoke with the investigators of this case and they said not to worry --- the perp has several people to kill before he gets to me. I admit my family is more concerned about murderers than I am.
Sue Russell: You switch into professional and analytical mode to work. But it can hit you when your back is turned. The blues; a sense of pervasive hopelessness sometimes. The world does look different when you're really submerged in darkness. People close to me sometimes notice a change in my mood more than I do. I've never abandoned a project…yet.
Robert Scott: I have been haunted by some of the victims. Especially the children. The "Laura Syndrome" is not just among cops. It goes for true-crime writer's as well. I still wish that fourteen-year-old Kellie Poppleton hadn't accepted a ride from a stranger on December 2, 1983. Or that eleven-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard had somehow escaped her abductor. There's a desire for these and other victims to somehow escape their terrible fates. The one thing I do feel, by telling the worthiness of their lives and how people around them loved them, they get to live once again, if only in print.
Carlton Smith: I try to make it a practice to see the crimes I write about en toto; that means seeing them in the context of circumstance, which tends to make them more understandable if still unforgivable. There are some subjects which, while commercially viable, I find myself uncomfortable dealing with, particularly the murder of small children.
Dina Temple-Raston: I have a recurring nightmare that Bill King is released from prison under my supervision and I lose him in the Walmart in Jasper. In the dream I keep running up and down the aisles looking for him and am panicked. If I had realized how much this would all have affected me, I'm not sure I would have done it. I have nightmares about driving down Huff Creek Road, where the dragging took place, and having the headlights of my car suddenly go out. The whole process of writing a book is so consuming it's impossible not to let the story eat away at you and change you.
Carlton Stowers: I've never abandoned a project after starting for the simple reason that I carefully consider the prospect of spending 18 months to two years on the subject. There have been cases I've not considered simply because the subject matter didn't particularly interest me. One of my chief rules of thumb: Is there someone in the story the reader will like and root for as the tale unfolds?
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