Dragging the Lake

I've been a little hesitant lately. I'm nine pages into a re-write of thirty or so pages, and I'm now at Thursday when I should have finished on Tuesday.

I haven't been filing my nails as in Elvis' fine song at left. I have however been dragging the lake.

I've churned up a few bodies in the next couple of stories I'm going to re-write. I don't have a killer in sight in either of them. The murder is a vehicle but it isn't the story. They're not mysteries.

How about that? A dead person is just a sidelight. I've gotten pretty jaded to get that far. I guess it started that way.

I went to Nemechek's trial when I was young. (here). I'd run all over Castle Rocks where he dumped one of the bodies. When I was there, it was just fun.

 It was my first murder trial. The prosecution covered the state and condition of the murders while I was there. It was very enlightening which is to say in junior high I was rather detached from the whole affair.

I was always taken that he let the three year-old freeze to death. I guess the kid didn't mean anything to him. That facet was how I could be detached: this guy had reasons for his actions and they weren't reasons I was going to understand.

I've tried to apply that to despots I've seen. It didn't work at all. I understood exactly what they were doing. I'm going to take a couple of these overlords, shine them up, and make them sympathetic characters. Wish me luck.

After you feed a couple political rivals to crocodiles kept in the big fountain behind the Presidential Palace, it's a bit of work for me to put enough shine on you to make you a sympathetic character. I'm up for the challenge.

I'm dragging the lake looking for bodies. What sort of fellow does Idi Amin have to kill for you to think he might be on your side once and a while? Pedophile? Madman? Serial Rapist? Crooked Judge? A relative?  What if the fellow was a district director for an NGO and siphoned off supplies on the black market to pay bribes for protection of his child-smuggling ring?  Surely, we could have him eaten by hyenas. Well, as long as he was ugly. Wouldn't be nice to feed a handsome Swede to anything.

Ah - perspective.

You can kill anybody and make the killer sympathetic. Michael Corleone was a great protagonist. He just had to kill a crooked Police Captain.

I'm taking next week off blogging altogether.

When I return I'll do three days a week: Su, Tu, R.

This little column has done its job. It won't however do anything for the marketing platform. I'll go three days a week until August and then close shop here. It'll be time to recast and rename and focus on the non-observational bits that could be seen as promotional. It's a bit like getting a new skin.

It's all marketing. Just like Wonderbread. Everybody smile. (People....wonderbread is made from people!)