skonen_blades (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skonen_blades) wrote2007-10-22 09:19 pm
skonen_blades) wrote2007-10-22 09:19 pm
Author
I learned to trade those days I spent in prison for days in my mind. The stories I came up with to avoid feeling incarcerated got me through six years. That’s a lot of days. That’s a lot of stories.
Hardened con turned author. That’s what it says on the dust jackets of my books. I write murder mystery thrillers, mostly. Variations on a theme. I was put in jail for murder.
I had been arrested, found guilty and sentenced for killing a young woman as she walked home from work. I knew the details of the case intimately. Over and over again, the details had been force-fed to the jury in front of me as my court-appointed attorney looked sideways at me and did nothing.
I remember her mother’s tears, her father’s stony stare as he willed himself not to kill me with his bare hands, and the pictures of her body splayed out on the path under the broken streetlight. She was a pretty woman, even in death.
I suppose I should tell you now about what I look like. I’m very, very tall and naturally strong. I lost an eye when I was a child playing in the schoolyard and I had horrible acne growing up. To say that I was ugly would be charitable. I’m hideous.
Coupled with my size, a lot of people think I’m terrifying. It sells a lot of books.
I’d been in fights before but I really learned to fight in prison. I was in there for killing a young, attractive woman and cons look down on that. I had six knife wounds. One for each year, I thought to myself, as I did up my tie in the bathroom.
I had a press conference to get to downstairs in one of the hotel’s banquet halls. It was for the release of my latest book, Dancing for Death. It was the story of a serial killer that only targeted ballerinas. I wasn’t crazy about the title but my agent always had a nice way of saying that my audience, while lucrative, wasn’t all about the ‘high art’ and would likely shy away from book titled Swan Song.
I offered to call it Swan Song of Blood but my agent just laughed.
I make good money and I’d survived this long so I wasn’t complaining. The writing came easy.
There was a knock at the door.
Must be the breakfast I ordered, I thought, and went to answer the door.
tags
Hardened con turned author. That’s what it says on the dust jackets of my books. I write murder mystery thrillers, mostly. Variations on a theme. I was put in jail for murder.
I had been arrested, found guilty and sentenced for killing a young woman as she walked home from work. I knew the details of the case intimately. Over and over again, the details had been force-fed to the jury in front of me as my court-appointed attorney looked sideways at me and did nothing.
I remember her mother’s tears, her father’s stony stare as he willed himself not to kill me with his bare hands, and the pictures of her body splayed out on the path under the broken streetlight. She was a pretty woman, even in death.
I suppose I should tell you now about what I look like. I’m very, very tall and naturally strong. I lost an eye when I was a child playing in the schoolyard and I had horrible acne growing up. To say that I was ugly would be charitable. I’m hideous.
Coupled with my size, a lot of people think I’m terrifying. It sells a lot of books.
I’d been in fights before but I really learned to fight in prison. I was in there for killing a young, attractive woman and cons look down on that. I had six knife wounds. One for each year, I thought to myself, as I did up my tie in the bathroom.
I had a press conference to get to downstairs in one of the hotel’s banquet halls. It was for the release of my latest book, Dancing for Death. It was the story of a serial killer that only targeted ballerinas. I wasn’t crazy about the title but my agent always had a nice way of saying that my audience, while lucrative, wasn’t all about the ‘high art’ and would likely shy away from book titled Swan Song.
I offered to call it Swan Song of Blood but my agent just laughed.
I make good money and I’d survived this long so I wasn’t complaining. The writing came easy.
There was a knock at the door.
Must be the breakfast I ordered, I thought, and went to answer the door.
tags