It seems everybody in the world has a reality show, so here's my idea: writers should get one!
We could put a bunch of writers in a house somewhere...
No, wait. They'd just sit around and complain about the state of publishing, their editors' foibles, and their current WIP. No action, and not a lot of drama.
Okay, so we could put a group of writers on an island, and...
No, they'd each build a hut out of coconut leaves, crawl inside, and start writing a novel set in that spot. Peaceful, but not compelling.
Maybe we could send them all over the world in a race to...
No. Each team would help the others, giving advice and tweeting about their successes. At night they'd all sit around a fire and figure out ways everyone in the group can sell more books.
All right. We could set up cameras and capture the activity in one author's life--the folksy, all-American stuff that seems so popular.
No. The world probably isn't ready to watch hours of someone sitting in a chair, staring at a screen, and mumbling things like, "No, she can't do that now, because she doesn't know he's in the room."
So writers don't get a reality show. We aren't hokey enough, tearful enough, angry enough, or dramatic enough--at least until we get it down on paper.
But if America could see me, an aged, out-of-shape pacifist, acting out both sides of a fight scene alone in my office to try to get each participant's actions right, they'd see something real--kinda.
Step into the minds of this group of talented, twisted, slightly psychotic crime novelists with a penchant for mystery, mayhem and murder. We write crime fiction or true crime that gets the heart pumping and the blood boiling.
