A Change In Seasons

My current obsessions now that Spring is here

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

Light has returned.

This was a long, difficult winter. I know a lot of you felt the same. It was colder than usual, and even though I enjoy the cold (I’m convinced the sun is a vampiric being that sucks all the energy out of me any chance it gets), it was a little much. I started to feel antsy, aimless. I turned to an exercise bike to try to shake things up, but to no avail.

February was particularly bad. I felt low. Low enough that writing fell to the wayside. Were it not for a few prompts and the encouragement of fellow writers in the fiction space of Substack, I probably would have turned up with nothing for the entire month. And then, daylight savings time hit, the days extended, and the sunlight cheered me up. Bam! I suddenly want to do all the things again.

A show you might like.

That newfound energy has been channeled oh so productively into a sudden obsession with true crime. I’m not usually interested in those stories. Well, that’s not true. Let me clarify. I’m terribly interested in them. (Come on. It’s real life horror.) But for me that is some of the problem. I tend towards horror with a supernatural element, because even when it’s scary, there’s always the chance that it’s not real or can’t hurt me because it’s not physical.

Serial killers are real. The fear I feel when diving into their stories is different than the thrill I have when watching a horror movie alone at night or reading a ghost story. It’s unfun. So why the sudden interest?

Follow me down this path. I never quite know where my interests come from, but this one has a somewhat obvious origin story. I read Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door a few months ago. I’m fascinated by the constant intersection of reality and fiction, and in horror, I’ve seen that many stories have at least an element of truth in them. That book is disturbingly accurate.

It marked me. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since, and the pain that it imparted has led me down my current rabbit hole. Recently, I finished Netflix’s series Mindhunter. It covers the start of the FBI’s research and psychological profiling of serial killers, and while not completely true, core parts of the show are completely non-fiction.

It’s only two seasons. As with many other high quality shows, Netflix cancelled before the making of the third (which was going to cover Dennis Rader, the BTK killer for those that don’t know the name). I was crushed. The acting, the cinematography, the storytelling were all phenomenal. But alas, I guess I’ll never know what happens…well, at least not to the fictional character arcs and plot, which of course was one of the main draws for me.

(I mean, is Bill Tench’s fictional son a serial killer in the making?)

Seriously though, for those of you who have watched the series…is he???

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Some non-fiction for you.

Now that I’ve confessed that I’m as obsessed with movies and shows as I am with books (after all story is the point), I’ll get on to the reading. Unsurprisingly, I read my first true crime book, a non-fiction work about the Golden State Killer titled I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, by Michelle McNamara.

The story is part auto-biography, part biography of Michelle herself. Her account is wrapped around the then unsolved murders and rapes committed by the Golden State Killer throughout the seventies and eighties. Michelle was a true crime writer who became obsessed with finding out who was responsible for the hundreds of robberies, rapes and murders that wreaked havoc on the Bay Area and surrounding cities in Northern California during that time.

She started the book after years of writing a true crime blog, collecting notes in folders, meeting with investigators, reading through news reports and victim’s statements. Sadly she never finished it. She died April 21st, 2016, a result of an undiagnosed heart condition, and a lethal cocktail of Adderall, fentanyl, and Xanax. Her husband, the comedian Patton Oswald, made the push for the book to be finished, and entire chapters were written based on detailed outlines and notes she left behind.

The book is incredible. I don’t read non-fiction often these days, but this one is too good to pass up. Part of it is because I am obsessed with obsession at the moment (partly due to a novel I’m working on), and Michelle was by definition obsessed. Parts of her book were researched while she laid her son down for a nap, or after escaping a party with guests left unattended downstairs, to check up on her blog and see what, if anything, had come up in the hours since she last looked at the comments.

She was part online sleuth, part investigative journalist, and her work went unrewarded. She died just two years before the infamous crimes were solved. On April 24, 2018, 72-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo was charged by the State of California with eight counts of first-degree murder, based upon DNA evidence. It was a reality that Michelle never got to know.

Her book ends with a letter to the killer, where she predicts the end of his story.

One day soon, you’ll hear a car pull up to your curb, an engine cut out. You’ll hear footsteps coming up your front walk. Like they did for Edward Wayne Edwards, twenty-nine years after he killed Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew, in Sullivan, Wisconsin. Like they did for Kenneth Lee Hicks, thirty years after he killed Lori Billingsley, in Aloha, Oregon.

The doorbell rings.

No side gates are left open. You’re long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper, gulping breaths. Clench your teeth. Inch timidly toward the insistent bell.

This is how it ends for you.

“You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark,” you threatened a victim once.

Open the door. Show us your face.

-Michelle McNamara, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

My husband is from the East Bay. There was something about reading through the killer’s choice in houses, the ease with which he snuck in, murdered, and snuck away. He ruined so many lives, and then disappeared into obscurity. Many believed he had died. The reality? He got too busy after he married. Go figure. Too busy for rape and murder thanks to the rat race.

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Some Novels.

I’m currently in the middle of Don’t Fear the Reaper, by Stephen Graham Jones. He was my new horror author find last year when I read The Only Good Indians, and quickly followed it up with My Heart is a Chainsaw. The reaper book is the sequel to chainsaw and the second of The Indian Lakes Trilogy, and let me tell you, if you are a horror fan you’ll want to gobble them both down. Jade Daniels is my final girl. (If you know, you know).

Jones has a very unique style. It’s modern and conversational, so some people have a hard time with his work. If you fall in that category, please give the audiobooks a try. Firstly, the narration is incredible, and secondly, Jones’ work was meant to be read out loud. Listen to him read a few stories here to get the gist of what I mean.

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Babies, babies, everywhere.

The important people in my life all had babies in the last seven months, so I’ve been traveling more than usual to meet them all. That has led to some amazing book purchases, because as I detailed a couple of weeks ago, I only buy books in airports.

Denver airport finds.

I went a little overboard yesterday and bought three. My backpack was already stuffed to the brim, so I was carrying all three around for a few hours during a layover. I stopped at Einstein Bagels for some breakfast and cashier took the time to ask me about them.

“Are you reading all of them at once?”

“Well, no. I guess it’s just wishful thinking.”

Cue awkward laugh.

“What are they?”

I then proceed to hold up the line explaining briefly why I chose each one. I started with Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon. I watched the line of impatient people swoon at my intellect. Then I showed Octavia Butler’s Kindred.

“Oh, I’ve read her before. She’s good!” the lady replied, probably regretting asking me about them at all.

And then I pulled out The Exorcist.

The cashier ripped my receipt and rapidly shook her head.

“Oh no. Uh uh.”

She pushed it into my hand and sent me on my way. And that dear friends, is what it’s like being a horror fan. You’re basically walking around showing people your porno mags all day. Trying to reason with them that Playboy really does publish good writing. If they would just look past the naked girls and understand the underlying social commentary. There’s only a few dead bodies you have to step over to understand this character! Gore isn’t the point of the book!

What are you all reading/watching/listening to this weekend? Leave a note and let me know!