Dear readers: I had my second eyeball surgery yesterday (run of the mill cataracts) and can’t see the computer screen quite yet. Well, I can see it if I cover the “new” eye but that’s makes it hard to type with one hand and my head hurts a little. Plus I just want to lay around, feel sorry for myself and watch Project Runway reruns. Actually, I feel pretty good because for the first time in 15 years, I can see without glasses. So considering how squeamish I was about having Dr. Louis slice off my lens and sew on a new one, I am pretty darn happy. If you are facing cataract surgery, buck up and do it.
My sister Kelly is stepping in for me today. She’s working on a project helping a cop-friend write a non-fiction book. The experience has granted her some insights we crime dogs maybe don’t normally think about. Be back soon. — Kris
By Kelly (PJ Parrish)
We write about crime, death, torture, corpses, graveyards and cops and we do it very often with a glass of wine near our keyboards or across from each other at a restaurant table. It’s pretty easy for us to use our purple Post-Its to move one murder from chapter forty to chapter thirty five, because, when you write fiction, you can kill anyone you want whenever you want and then finish off the wine and go to bed.
Sometimes, with enough wine or after a particularly gruesome scene, Kris and I would wonder what kind of people we are to be able to write this stuff, and almost always, the answer is that no matter how graphic we may get, in the end, we know none of it is real.
But I have learned it’s far different when it is real.
I have had both the pleasure and discomfort in recent months of assisting a new author on a true crime novel. He is a police officer and he had a story he wanted to tell but he had no idea where to start. As writer of police procedurals, I needed technical information about his department. Outside a bowling alley one night, we struck a deal. I would do a little editing for him. He would answer my police questions.
I thought it would be easy. Like many authors, we have frequently done light editing and critiquing for charity auctions and occasionally for friends, and I suspected this would be no different. There were things I didn’t anticipate.
First was the author’s passion for his story. His need to tell the story eliminated any of the usual author ego issues and it made the editing more honest and easier. Second, I did not realize how different it would be writing about events and people that were real.
Over the next few months, as the story unfolded on my laptop, I found myself weighed down by the sadness of it. I started to think about the victim at the oddest times. I even found myself playing the “what if” game on the crime, building on the tragedy of a murdered police officer and making the nagging sense of loss for a man I never knew even deeper.
Now driven with a duel passion, we kept on.
But even as the chapters went back and forth over the internet, and the scenes started to come alive with more vivid images, and I began to see the finished project as publishable, the late night haunting continued.
I expected at some point, that the repeated exchanges of the same chapters and scenes would work to dull the emotional impact. But it didn’t. It got to the point where I would postpone sitting down to edit until I knew I had two days to be depressed afterwards.
Then I was allowed access to the crime scene photos. And I looked.
Now everything was real.
The project is nearly completed now. The author’s passion has not waned, and except for his heavy work schedule, I am sure he would prefer to write until dawn, even as he wraps up the final chapters. On my end, I continue to fill his pages with red ink, and the learning process for both of us goes on as a book is nurtured to maturity. And as strange as it sounds, when it is complete, I know I will miss it. I will miss the author’s passion and dedication and I will miss the people in the book, because in a way, telling the story allowed the victim to live once again, if only on pages and if only for a few months. I hope we have done him justice in our efforts.
I have thought recently about what I will ultimately take away from this experience. It is a complicated answer because I know I will reap some sense of satisfaction from helping a new author, and as someone who deeply respects law enforcement, there’s a part of me that is honored to have even penned a single word.
But I suspect that in the end, what I take away from this will be something far different and more meaningful.
Kris, the limbo healing period seems esp. long for those of us to who work onscreen and read a lot. Soon you’ll be wonderfully free (except for readers).
Kelly, thank you for sharing your experience and insights. Real is different and uncomfortable. Kudos to you for helping the cop get his traumatic story out.
Years ago, I started to write a true crime book about a local murder in which two brothers were eventually convicted. I had access to investigation files and attended parts of the trial. Then one day, in the courthouse, I came face to face with the mother of the two boys. Looking into her eyes was like looking straight into hell. I can’t describe the terrifying feeling that overpowered me. Thirty-plus years later, I still remember it.
At that moment, I decided I did not ever want to set one foot into that woman’s world.
Wow, I can’t imagine facing the mother like that. I remember vividly one jury I was on where a young man was charged with assaulting a cop during a routine stop. The evidence against him wasn’t there and we acquitted him. I will never forget the sight of him and his mom sobbing in the courtroom,
As for healing, yeah, you have to go slow. With my first eye surgery, I made mistake of ignoring my doc and working in the garden four days after. I was laid low for 3 full days trying to recover. Stupid. So I am sitting on my ass for a full week this time, doing what Dr. Louis says.
I respect and admire you for helping this author. Too many published books cast the anonymous victim as a necessary starting point, a set up a puzzle for the detective to solve. The best policemen and policewomen that I have worked with are struggling with getting the criiminal who killed a person. The burden of suffering is so large that it is hard for them to stay personally remote, but they must.
Thank you for your generosity and courage.
Her partnership is going really well. Will keep you posted about his progress. Kelly’s biggest issue with him was getting him to trust himself and open his emotions.
Most people don’t realize how gut-wrenching writing can be. Thank you for sharing your experience.
True. I have seen many crime scene photos, mainly via medical examiners who’ve been contacts. I am not squeamish. But it’s different if you have an emotional connection of course.
It is regrettable that I have been close to true crime and to people who have died violent deaths. It does effect people. Fictional death can hit close to the heart, but it is not the same.
I have lost two friends to suicide but never anyone to violence otherwise. Just distantly, like a family member who lost a kid to murder. I can’t imagine the emotional torture one endures.
Glad you’re healing from the cataract surgery, Kris. Seeing clearly is a wonderful thing. I hope to be there soon.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Kelly. Please pass along to the police officer our appreciation for his work and his telling the story. Let us know when the book is released. I’d like to buy a copy.
Will do! Thanks.
Kris – Just had one eye “done” last month… the most interesting thing (to me) is that the right eye sees white as WHITE whereas the left eye sees it as a kind of nicotine-ish buff color – which is understandable since the old lens grew up with my parents smoking until I was 11… 😋 It’s kinda like wearing those old-school red and blue 3-D glasses without the pictures to look at… the Docs say it’ll “go away” as the brain integrates the two images… not too disconcerting…
Kelly – Thanks for leaning in for your sis… This is a topic I’ve often wondered about for both the IRL first responders, and don’t really ever see handled more than ham-fistedly in books or movies… what IS the real cost to the day-to-day of the “characters” – real-life or imagined – let alone the authors/scriptwriters – especially in a series if the MC sees death ALL the time… How can they NOT be impacted and have their outlooks changed from one book to the next? Too much backstory or sidetracking might slow the pace… and how does one “show” that without too much telling it? I guess that’s what makes it a “WORK in progress…” Be interesting to hear (and see), what this does for y’all going forward…
Speedy recoveries…
That is creepy weird about your “beige” eye. But it makes sense consdiering what my doc told me about recovery. It takes up to 8 wks for your eyes to settle down and heal. My left eye (which I had done 2 weeks ago) will never be perfect cuz I have too many floaters so they were limited on the kind of lens they could use. I now have 2025 vision and she said, Dr. Louis that is, that I should correct to full 2020. Modern medicine is miraculous. I am grateful.
Happy to hear you are healing from your cataract surgery, Kris. At some point I’ll be having the same thing done and it’s encouraging to learn that things have gone well for you!
Kelly, thanks so much for stepping in this morning for your sister. Real life can be so much more searing and rough than fiction, which usually gives us either order restored or a new order to replace the old. In real life, especially with murder, it can be so senseless and chaotic.
When you get it done, don’t push yourself into activity too soon. You feel sorta great right after and YOU CAN SEE! So you want toget all feisty and stuff. Nope…be a slug for a full week. 🙂
So glad about your eyes, Kris. I had mine done a couple of years ago and it was so amazing. I can actually see where my golf ball goes (usually into the water).
The scariest book I ever read was Helter Skelter by Vince Bugliosi, about the Manson family murders. Had nightmares. They lived about eight miles from my home. Quentin Tarantino perfectly captured that vibe in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
When there are traumatic deaths in the family, it makes it difficult to write mainstream fiction with the full panoply of human life events – so I’ve chosen to do it very carefully, instead, using the reality to illuminate the fiction – and not attempting to replicate anything real exactly.
There is a change in your life when these events happen – there is no way to avoid having to deal with the aftermath. The writer of fiction gets to do a LOT more thinking about the events, something not possible when Life deals you a tough one. And you get to think/say/do what you would have liked to do in the real case – if that is appropriate to the story – whereas the real case gives you only the option of reacting in the moment.
Judgment calls, every one: what can you use, what do you owe your real-life sources, what do you owe your readers, is there a place for owing something to the truth?
Whatever you do it allows a reader to have the experience without the true trauma – have empathy – and THINK. It is a gift.