I’ve been rereading a favorite book about writing, Stephen King’s On Writing, and it’s even better twenty years after the first read. Because when I began penning fiction, I learned for myself how the characters really do take over once the writing begins. With minds of their own and definitive ideas about what happens next.
A trait desirable in humans or fictional characters, unless the entity is one with a selfish, devious mind devoid of conscience or self-awareness. You know the type, the clown who thinks he’s making a fool out of everyone else but is revealing his egoist, hellbent quest for evil.
Like too many members of Congress these days. Driven by maintaining power instead of performing their jobs, which isn’t supposed to be about them. In my mind’s eye I picture a couple of not-so-democratic dudes from Kentucky and West Virginia. And Texas. And Wisconsin. And Florida. And Utah. And Arkansas. And South Carolina. And the list goes on.
It’s a three-ring, mostly one-party circus, and it’s not fun at all. Like a sword-swallower, we’re expected to down a litany of lies, with no cotton-candy to sweeten the deal. A whole lot of hotdogging, slight-of-hand taking from the till.
Our democracy, just another balloon to be popped by a knife-wielding carnie with a cruel streak.
It’s sickeningly frightful to watch those who seek egomaniacal control, who bask in the center ring solely to upstage and usurp, shape-shifting to further their own diabolical aims. Scarier clowns than the It guy might conjure from pages of a horror story.
Stephen King is all too talented at describing this insidious evil, so gifted that I can’t read his scary stuff because it terrifies me. Other folks might be able to read horror or watch movies and say, “This isn’t real. It would never happen to me.” Not this gal. I absorb and obsess, all too aware of the danger lurking in every sewer—and swamp.
Because I find the right-wing, so-called conservative mindset to be nothing short of monstrous these days. So when I write about it, I seek to show some humor from their hubris, because it’s scary enough watching the news. Not that racism, misogyny, or any form of hate are humorous subjects to clown around about.
In my Other Worldly series, however, aliens aren’t always the bad guys that many books, movies, and human minds imagine them to be. No, the gun-toting, bigoted buffoons are all too human, at least initially.
When I do introduce a distasteful extraterrestrial in Aliens Abound, with more to come in Being Alien later this year, they still aren’t the maniacal, take-over-the-world control freaks of fictional fame. But they are dangerously petty, moronic misogynists who fit in far too well with what’s parading around, preening and scheming in the halls of our Capitol. Here in the not-so-greatest show on Earth, where guns are valued more than life itself.
Reality really is scarier than fiction. Too bad we can’t kick a few congressional clowns off the planet, but that wouldn’t be fair to aliens.