I want Bad Apple to find its audience so I've been learning about Facebook ads this week. Here's the image I think will run
There was an article about pedophiles in Germany this week. Everything seems to make so much sense when it's theoretical. When it isn't personal, you can have detached involvement. You can mouth all the platitudes and say these people need to be understood and given treatment and then you can go on to the next thing in your life.
Unfortunately, real people have emotions, drives and instincts that are primitive rather than reasoned. Most people can't control themselves. They know they shouldn't reach for the Doritos and then they polish off a whole bag. They know they shouldn't do many things but once that idea is lodged in their minds, it's like they've been hit by a tractor beam and are pulled closer and closer until they act on the idea.
I suppose this issue of pedophilia could have been featured more prominently in the book. Maybe it should have been. Maybe it will someday. It wasn't appropriate for the audience I was writing for at the time. But I did explain it as I saw it then.
When it happened, when the police told me my friend had been murdered, everything was so clear, so comprehensible. He was a victim. Someone had taken his life. Then when I found out the killer had been molested by my friend as a child, suddenly he became a victim and nothing was clear. It still isn't. The killer is in prison doing 45 years. They were both smarter than to end up like this but there were irresistible dark passions working on them.
Sorry about your friend - and his (?) victim. That is so sad - and points out how little we know about people sometimes. And how much of what we know isn't true.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about Doritos (I stay away from the carbs completely or I can't stop eating them). If I could write and eat junk food, I probably would, but I can't. Junk means the next day or so my brain doesn't click on even for a few hours, and I get depressed and scared and frustrated and antsy - so I don't eat the junk if I can avoid it.
I like what you've mentioned about older readers and older characters. I'm on a Boomer Lit group on Goodreads where there is some talk of older readers, and books about moving into the later parts of life.
There are readers out there who are tired of all the heroines being 20 and gorgeous, etc., but still want good books - and books that don't relegate older characters to supporting roles, and are still believable.
It's a fine line.