C.E. Lawrence was born in Nurnberg, Germany to American parents. She says her early childhood experience left her with a taste for Goethe and sausages. Shortly after moving to New York she joined the legendary improvisational company First Amendment and toured Chicago City Limits before joining the New York cast. She has written award-winning plays and musicals which have been produced around the world.

She has eight published novels, six novellas and a dozen or so short stories and poems.

‘Silent Victim’ is her latest thriller and her novel ‘Silent Kills’ is due out later this year.

She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about German literature and surveillance.

What influence has German literature had on your writing?

I double majored in German at school so I read a lot of German authors and playwrights, some in English and some in German.  Though influences are hard to gauge, as they may be subtle, there’s no doubt that Durrenmatt’s amazing crime novel The Judge and His Hangman stayed with me.  I was so struck by his use of a detective who was dying of cancer – it was a striking, memorable book.  Maybe that was in the back of my mind when I gave my detective Lee Campbell the affliction of major clinical depression, also a debilitating disease. (Durrenmatt was Swiss, but he wrote in German, so he was part of our curriculum.)

In school I read the deeply romantic writers I think of as the German heroic poets – Goethe, Schiller, Heine.  I think that sense of romantic heroism and love of nature is part of my psyche, which may explain my attraction to some German writers (as well my weakness for sneaking into the music room late at night to play Schubert Lieder with my cousin.)

I just adore Thomas Mann, especially Buddenbrooks, which is one of the great novels of Western literature, surely.  And Vicki Baum’s classic The Grand Hotel as well – another favorite.  I love the late 19th century, early 20th century decadence that both Mann and Baum manage to capture, as the grant Reich era of barons and princes declines and morphs into the horror of authoritarian facism.  Both Mann and Baum have a keen eye for the little man crushed under the heel of society’s relentless pressures.

And I also love the prewar and postwar dry wit and irony of Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich Boll, and the murky mysticism of Herman Hesse.   Brecht’s unforgiving socialism and sense of social justice, Boll’s iron wit and unflinching observation of postwar excesses – these all feel essential and part of my inner template, if that’s not too vague.  I even studied the German mystic Jacob Boehme, who made a rather deep impression on me.

So maybe it’s that “staying power” as much as any one thing that creates the bond I feel with writers I’ve read.  I have this romantic notion that all the things we’ve read and seen and heard, and all the people we’ve met, become part of us somehow, so that by the end of our lives we’re not just one individual, but a walking repository of ideas, feelings, stories, and souls.  I know it’s rather far-fetched and mystical, but then, I too have German blood.

Durrenmatt in his play ‘Die Panne’, which means the breakdown, portrays a character called Traps being manipulated by a menacing game concerning guilt and culpability. He is forced to confront himself. Crime fiction contans much guilt thematically be it in legal terms or psychological ones. How effective do you think Durrenmatt’s play is and to what extent do you think it relates to crime fiction?

Omg, I listened to the radio version of that play in college, in German!  It ROCKED.  I remember it so well, even now.  He creates this amazing feeling of menace – as he does in his most famous play, Der Besuch der alten Dame (usually translated as The Visit.)

In both plays, there’s a trap and there’s guilt on the part of the person or persons being trapped.  No one is entirely innocent, and no one’s motives are pure.  I think there’s great relevance for the crime writer, dealing as we do with the darker side of human nature.

And Durrenmatt was, after all, dealing with one of the greatest crimes humans had perpetrated against each other in all of our dark history: the Holocaust and the rise of the Nazi war machine.  It’s ironic, because being Swiss, he was theoretically “neutral,” but in his writing he’s anything but.  The notion of guilt and the devil’s bargain is a theme throughout his work – as it was for so many postwar writers in Europe.

I think the best crime writers delve into the darkness within us all, so that it’s not only the criminals who are tarnished. In The Judge and His Hangman, for example, you could even see Commissar Bärlach’s cancer as a metaphor for something “eating him from within.”  If you read postwar German writers, you get the feeling of universal guilt, though some of them (Heinrich Boll, for example) lighten their prose with irony and wit.

Do you think Dostoyevsky wrote the first great whydunnit it in ‘Crime And Punishment’?

Ah, Fyodor!  I love the Russians because they’re so soulful. I think what Dostoevski did in Crime and Punishment is monumental.  How to express it?  I’ll try.

Like all great works of art, Crime and Punishment works on many levels.  It is a portrayal of a tormented, unwell mind – Raskolnikov’s seizures indicate he may indeed have a brain disorder of some kind.  And in many ways he’s a prototype of a romantic Bohemian soul gone bad.  As a psychological portrayal of a man (as we would say today) “acting out” his aggression toward his own controlling, manipulative mother, it is unparalleled.  He kills the pawn broker (so he thinks) to rid society of her evil presence, but of course he is killing his own mother by proxy.

Wow!  Without knowing how conscious Dostoevski was of his own brilliant insights, I can only say that he manages to make the book a novel of ideas as well as intrigue.  Raskolnikov’s confused notions of being a “superior being” later turn into remorse and guilt, and the sly detective Porfiry Petrovich plays mind games with the confused young man until he confesses.  He’s somewhat reminscient of Hugo’s brilliant Inspector Javert in Les Miserables, except that, unlike Jean Valjean, Raskolnikov really is a criminal.

The saintly Sonya reminds me of similar characters in Chekhov and Tolstoy – the quiet, self-sacrificing young girl who represent total goodness – and her influence also leads to the confession.  As a study of the inner workings of a very flawed but sympathetic criminal, Crime and Punishment is masterful.

Unfortunately, many criminals in real life do not experience the guilt and torment of a Raskolnikov – police files are full of cases of men and women who murdered their whole family and would have been perfectly happy to get away with it, if they could.  And I think most crime fiction these days is not as concerned with portrayal of the offender’s inner life as it is in showing how he/she is captured.

But Crime and Punishment stands alone – as a portrayal of the less romantic aspects of the Bohemian life in mid-century Russia, it is fascinating, and as a crime novel, it is unparalleled.

My learned mother reminded me

The only thing you omit is the religious fervor, which, of course, is the essence of Sonya, and the salvation of Roskolnikov.  It is such an integral part of the Russian during this period that you must not ignore it, and it only adds to the brilliance of his novel.

Do you think as surveillance has become more prevalent in Western society crime has changed?

I think that all of the advances in forensics have led to more cunning, savvy criminals.  For example, take the serial killer at large in Long Island right now.  He has used disposable cell phones to call the families of his victims, stayed on the phone less than three minutes (making the calls harder to trace), and called from crowded locations such as Times Square, which also makes the calls hard to pinpoint.

So right there we have a present day example of someone who understands that no matter how sophisticated crime solving gets, there is always a chance you can stay one step ahead of the law.

Serial rapists often have victims bathe to get rid of DNA, wear latex gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints, and employ other methods to avoid leaving DNA evidence – even going so far as wearing hair nets and paper booties, in one case I saw recently.

Unfortunately, the more organized the offender, the more likely it is they will employ these kinds of techniques to avoid capture.  But the flip side is that psychopaths suffer from arrogance, which often leads to their capture.  I just saw a story on 48 Hours about a highly decorated air force colonel who didn’t bother to erase his tire tracks or boot impressions from his victim’s property.  He didn’t even throw out his boots, so they had a mountain of forensic evidence against him.  His fatal flaw in getting caught was his arrogance – he thought he was above suspicion, apparently.  Sadly, he was able to rape two women and rape and murder two others before the law caught up with him.

I think the X-files mantra is a good one for law enforcement to follow in cases like those: Trust No One.

Do you think paranoia is at the root of much mental illness and many crimes?

What I think is that the emotion of fear (of which paranoia is an extreme and pathological variation) is behind a lot of aggressive behavior, both among humans and other members of the animal kingdom.  The term can be taken as a diagnosis or a description, depending on the context.  Certain when combined with the condition of schizophrenia or other character disorders, it can be deadly for the sufferer and his/her victims.  In any context, it is fear run amok – and the result can well be a crime of some kind, or self-injury, in some cases.

However, it’s worth noting that psychopaths and sociopaths experience less of a biological fear response than normal people.  Confronted with danger, they tend not to exhibit the symptoms of fear – elevated heart rate, rapid breathing, increased adrenaline.  Instead, they exhibit an eerie calm; they seem to have a biologically lower threshold for panic and fear than other people.   Criminal psychologists have theorized that this is one of the mechanisms that allows them to commit their crimes – and that it even may play a part in their behavior.  Unable to have “normal” responses to events, their craving for stimulation may lead them to indulge in acts that the rest of us would find unthinkable.

Strictly speaking, sociopaths suffer from mental illness – the most severe kind, actually – but legally they are rarely, if ever, insane.  Bernie Madoff, for example, a classic sociopath, knew exactly what he was doing every step of the way.  It’s possible that he felt only truly alive when he was bilking other people out of millions – that his real kicks in life came from the potential of being discovered.  But, like most sociopaths, he also was extraordinarily arrogant, and felt he was smarter than everyone else.  In the end, he was wrong – but sadly, not before the damage was done.

Tell us about ‘Silent Kills’.

Ah, good one.  I’m tempted to give you the jacket-blurb style summary of the book.  But I think it would be more fun to give a brief account of the genesis of it.  Last summer in my cabin in Woodstock my friend Tony Moore and I were listening to Pandora and Last FM online, and he found some Steampunk bands.  I really liked some of the music, and started doing research into what Steampunk was all about – the aesthetics, the costumes, the literary origins, etc.  It was all great fun – sort of Goth meets Jules Verne meets Terry Gilliam.  I really like the blend of science, adventure and Gothic horror.  And I started listening to bands like Abney Park and Clockwork Quartet.  I’ve always been attracted to Victoriana and elements of Gothic horror (my theatre production company is Gothic Productions.)  And some of my favorite writers are the guys I call the American Gothics – Hawthorne, Poe and Melville.  (I’ve actually written a musical adaptation of House of the Seven Gables.)

Then, when I was thinking about the next Lee Campbell thriller, it occurred to me that a Steampunk killer might be an interesting hook.  So I created a serial murderer who was into the more Gothic aspects of Steampunk.  Specifically, he drains the blood from his victims (you’ll have to read the book to find out why.)  I gave him a backstory that makes this somewhat logical, and also tied him into the great horror writing or Poe, Hawthorne and Melville (I know Melville isn’t thought of as a horror writer, but Bartleby? Come on! That’s horror at its purest, imho.)

So I have scenes at Woodlawn Cemetary, in Steampunk clubs, and a chase scene in a graveyard in Troy, New York.  And my climactic scene is in a crematorium.  If that isn’t the ultimate in Goth horror, I don’t know what is!  But you’ll have to read the book to find out who the killer is, and why he does what he does.

Do you think control of the body be it from the pathological perspective of an individual over their own body or the state over a citizen is allied to the motivations a killer has in seeking to control the body of the victim be it by murder or cannibalism?

Interesting question – certainly control in all its aspects is part of the psychological makeup of many (if not most) criminals.  Domination, power and control are the ugly triad of the serial killer.  My research into the subject shows that their obsession with control stems not so much from their political situation as from their childhood home environment.

I have yet to read of a serial offender, for example, who did not have some form of chronic abuse as a child which removed all sense of control from his life at the time.  The traditional interpretation is that these people can go on to inflict the helplessness they felt as a child on their victims.  Robert Ressler and others have done pioneering studies on the lives of these (mostly) men, and what drives them to kill over and over.  The enforced helplessness they felt as children then becomes part of their pathology, and they replay their childhood trauma, playing the part of their abusers, in a way, with their victims as stand-ins for themselves.

I say “in a way” because it’s often not an exact match to the childhood experience.  What is a match, though, is the emotional experience of terror, helplessness and victimization.  With serial offenders it’s just a more extreme version of the old saw that “the abused becomes the abuser.”

With cannibalism, as in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, for example, it’s even more complicated.  Dahmer readily admits he killed and consumed his victims because he didn’t want them to abandon him. So he turned his fears of abandonment into a frightening metaphor – by consuming his victims, he “kept” them forever.  Creepy, but it makes grim sense in a literary way.

Do you think the same criteria can be applied to a different individual and they would not become a killer and if so why?

There’s a real mystery at the bottom of why some people with terribly abusive childhoods become criminals and some don’t.  Some studies indicate that as long as there’s one person in the child’s life who functions as a true caregiver, or who gives them unconditional love at some early stage, the child may turn out all right.  This person doesn’t have to be a parent or relative; just so long as it’s someone who loves and respects the child.

Some people feel genetics plays a role; my personal opinion is that it plays less of a role than nurture, and that the “bad seed” theory is just a myth.  Given the right environment, I believe any child can thrive.

What made you write crime fiction?

But the answer to this one is that when I first started writing mysteries, I had been a Conan Doyle fan since I was a teen.  So when editor Marvin Kaye asked me to write a story on commission for his Holmes anthology, The Game Is Afoot, I jumped at the chance.  Since it was only my second published story, I was delighted when Kirkus singled out my story “The Strange Case of the Tongue-Tied Tenor” as “a particular standout.”  I guess that gave me the courage to think I could write mysteries.

So when Keith Kahla, the St. Martins editor of that anthology approached me and said he’d probably buy a Holmes novel if I wrote it, my only response was “Define ‘probably.'”  When he said 70-80% likely, I wrote The Star of India (which has just been repurchased by Titan Press in England for world rights reprint.)

So that’s how my career in crime started.  I also wanted to write something that would sell, and to my mind good writing is irrespective of genre.  Soon after I was signed on bu Berkley for an original mystery series, Who Killed Blance Dubois? and its sequels.

Then I got very interested in criminal psychology and forensics, and after a couple of years to study, started writing thrillers under the C.E. Lawrence pen name.  I took a class in criminal psychology at John Jay College from Dr. Lewis Schlesinger, a great teacher and profiler, and I continue to collect all kinds of books on crime and crime solving.  I’ve even made friends with a wonderful former FBI profiler, Gregg McCrary, who is a terrific person as well as a highly respected expert in his field.  He took time out to advise me on my first thriller, Silent Screams.

Though I admire crime writers, my real heroes are the men and women who catch the bad guys.  As I told Gregg, I only write about what they actually go out and do every day.

What are you working on right now?

I’m currently writing the fourth thriller in my Lee Campbell series, Silent Slaughter. The serial killer he’s chasing this time is a nasty piece of work, a man so embittered and scarred by life (literally and metaphorically) that he has become a dark, twisted creature.  Up until now I’ve given my killers a touch of sympathy, but Jack is the worst kind of lust killer – a sexual sadist.  And he’s smart – he’s a math professor at an Ivy League school.  I’m a bit rattled about it, actually, because these guys are very scary in real life, and I’m apprehensive about spending much time in his head.  But I’m looking forward to creating an interesting puzzle in the solution of the crimes; as a mathematician, Jack will be dropping clues in the form of mathematical codes that Lee and his team will have to figure out.  I hope to make it an intriguing puzzle as well as a dark journey.

Thank you Carole for an insightful and memorable interview.

Find everything C.E. Lawrence here.

Erin Cole is a widely published writer of horror and mystery fiction.

In 2009 she was shortlisted in the Tom Howard/John H. Reid SS Contest and won honourable mention in the Williamette Writers Kay Snow Contest.

What Erin does particularly well is layer a narrative with a professional knowledge of mental states that subvert reality and threaten our sense of what we know. In her novel ‘Grave Echoes’ Kate Waters suffers from narcoleptic hallucinations.

She is currently working on her second novel in the Kate Waters Mysteries and a short horror anthology collection due fall of 2011.

She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about fugue states and the Corn God.

Charles Brockden Brown wrote American Gothic in the eighteenth century. In ‘Edgar Huntley’ the character Clithero commits murders while sleepwalking. It shares some interesting territory with your novel ‘Grave Echoes’, in which Kate Waters has narcoleptic hallucinations. As an author and a psychologist do you think the uncharted parts of the human psyche contain the material for horror and that fugue states exist?

Absolutely, on both.  My studies in psychology (note I am not a licensed psychologist) favored neuropsychological behavior and perception.  I think when you begin to understand how the brain processes information, you uncover the true mechanisms of motivation, whether it be fear or hunger, as well as the psychological underpinnings of horror.

H.P. Lovecraft said, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown,” which he had right, but why?  The homo sapien brain has this incredible ability to “consciously” dig up memories and to “invent.” These two abilities working simultaneously together can create ideas and fears so grotesquely far from what one should really be afraid of.  Our ability to imagine makes fear of the unknown the worst fear.

Furthermore, in the process of recollection, the mind surfaces millions of years of evolutionary emotional responses, and these come into play every time we consciously recollect or strive to comprehend a frightening encounter.  When our hearts quicken in the shadows, are we not really enacting on innate reactions, which developed from near-death attacks by saber tooth tigers?  Joseph LeDoux’s Synaptic Self and The Emotional Brain are fantastic books on this subject that even the layperson would comprehend and enjoy.

Fugue states are real; however, most of them are either drug or trauma related, or are precursors to brain disorders and diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Do you think that some people create the thing they fear the most?

I do think some people create what they fear the most, some sort of demented self-fulfilling prophecy, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing—overcoming and facing fear can be a powerful tool to growth and success.  But, I also think many of us might not have a clue as to what it is we fear the most, and that upon discovering it, is when our worst nightmare unfurls.

Who are your main literary influences?

Some of my favorite authors as of lately are John Hart, Neil Gaiman, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Joe Hill, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Nevada Barr, Paulo Coelho, Michael Crichton, Caleb Carr, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and earlier influences included Anne Rice, Kathleen and Michael Gear, Jean M. Auel, Max Ehrlich, George Orwell, Harper Lee, Robert James Waller, Shel Silverstein, and Carolyn Keene.

In Haiti Zombification is achieved by the use of herbs. Do you believe much fear and the political use of fear can be allayed by the understanding of brain chemistry?

Haitian Zombification is the belief that through a drug called tetradotoxin (TTX), people can steal the soul of a perfectly, healthy, and independent thinking person.  TTX is a toxin that is 500 times stronger than cyanide and is found in the ovaries of puffer fish.  When ingested, the nervous system shuts down, though brain activity is fairly normal, yet the person is still living. This has resulted in some being buried alive, hence the resurrection of the individual as a zombie.

How does this fit in with politics?  Think Heaven’s Gate and the Manson family, or dare I bring up certain government and religious sects?  Zombification (people, usually those in high power, who steal another’s free-thinking behavior) has existed since the beginning of civilization because fear is the ultimate tool in motivation and transformation.  Individuals that use fear to persuade and control other people know this well: If you are starving, cold, and are being chased by a bear, you will not search for food or clothing at that particular moment; you will try to escape the bear. Fear always takes first priority.

Once the emotion center of the brain is triggered, it is increasingly difficult for higher processing areas to function, and much of our survival depends on this arrangement—if we had to think of how to respond to immediate danger, we likely would not survive.  But drugs and “induced-fear” can certainly have a similar effect in impairing frontal lobe processing, causing individuals to become callous and nasty (as was studied in the famous Milgram Experiment in 1963 on obedience to authority figures, or the looting and rapes during Katrina, and all the other atrocities inflicted during war).  Although these zombies don’t climb out of graves, without adequate frontal lobe processing at some point, they will eventually be climbing into them.

Papa Doc used Voodoo and the TonTon Macoute to coerce his citizens in precisely the manner you describe. The family has been seen by social commentators as the basic building block of the body politic. Given your comments in the last answer and considering the family as the reception point of political and religious influence to what extent do you think that marriage is a form of mind control, and how far have we moved from its patriarchal roots?

You know, I’ve always suspected that my husband was up to something.  I think it really depends on who you ask or where you live.  I believe everything has a cyclic nature-that is the order of the universe: create and destroy, create and destroy.  Marriage, and the culture that embraces it, are also cyclic.  What is considered the “norm” in America is not the norm in India, Peru, or Indonesia.  Each society is at a different stage in the cyclic nature of marriage and everything else, what it means to be married, the drive behind it (power, union, love), and how it evolves through generations.  I think many cultures have steered away from its patriarchal roots (Hello 1970’s in America!!) and at the same time, others are headed back into it.

My grandmother would never get away with half the things I tell my husband today.  Imagine rule of thumb, derived from common law that a man was never to beat his wife with anything thicker than his thumb.  But who wears the pants now?  Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, Erin Cole?  Nope.  I believe in give and take.  Marriage is a form of control—it is a bonding, a continuous dedication and promise to another person, not one that can’t be broken, but if instilled and nurtured with the right mindset by both persons, it can be freeing too.

What do you think has happened to the Corn God?

He’s in my backyard, waiting to fillet me.

In Aztec, Peru, 1020, we know priests performed sacrificial rites for the worship of gods and goddesses—one of them was for the Corn God, Xipe Totec (pronounced zhē pā tō ték), the God of vegetation and renewal.  At the Spring Equinox, a special Aztec priest would fillet a human, literally peeling the entire skin off in one piece, which they then wore for days to celebrate life, rather than death, for the sake of crop.  The skin resembled the cornhusk, the priest the seed of life beneath the husk, like kernels.

Fast-forward a thousand years to Carl Jung.  His archetypes are modern day gods and goddesses derived from ancient cultures.  I do believe in this idea of archetypical thinking, that deities represent specific powers and wonders that people can tap into.  The collective unconscious is the current societal pattern, energy, and movement of which we are all a part of, in varying degrees, and it is through tradition that the Corn God still lives.  However, instead of peeling off the skin from an unfortunate victim, civilizations practice the celebration of life and renewal by other, more civilized means.  Wiccans bring offerings (mostly organics) to the Gods and Goddesses at Sabbats and hold symbolic rites, Burning Man is a festival in the Black Rock Desert, in which people spend a year crafting something, maybe from wood, a painting, etc. that they burn at the festival.  It is a sacrifice of effort, a devotion to spirituality, and a regeneration of growth in letting go, or letting things die off, as is the natural order.  I think every culture and religion practices the same symbolic ideas as the Aztec Corn God rites, though substantially different in details.  The Corn God is in all of us.  Or should be.

We have seen many examples of authoritarianism since the Second World War’. Wilhelm Reich wrote in ‘The Mass Psychology Of Fascism’  ‘Always ready to accommodate himself to authority, the lower middle-class man develops a cleavage between his economic situation and his ideology.’ Do you think he was right? And if so to what extent do you think that the deferral by the insecure of their authority to those they see as powerful and the sacrifice of or the submission to ideology is behind many of the problems we face today?

There is no doubt that money is power and power is corrupt.  I do think that Wilhelm Reich was right in his statement regarding the dissonance in the middle-class, especially then, and even true today.  The path to success and happiness (or survival 1930 Germany) often encroaches on our ideals—in order to achieve it requires sacrifice, always; but, are we able to discern when those sacrifices tear at the seems of our dogma?  When you throw in violence and sexual tension, it is only that much harder to defect or resist.  The studies from the Milgrim experiment were shocking, and for a good reason.  Most of us are animals.  I say the rest must be aliens.

A world free of authoritarianism?  Could it ever really exist?  What would we have to do to get there, as a whole, and then wouldn’t that just bring about another form of fascism?  See what I mean by cyclic.  Really, we’re just rats on the wheel.

Do you believe that DNA will discover there is such a thing as innate evil or do you think that belongs to religion?

I don’t believe that nature is evil.  Animals kill each other for food, territory, and protection of young or procreation.  It is not evil to want to survive; in fact, it is unnatural to not want to survive.  I believe evil is strictly a perspective on “cause.”  We must explain our universe and the things that we fear or that pain us, and those are often perceived as “evil” or “bad” in doing so.  W.H. Auden, “Herman Melville,” once said, “Evil is unspectacular and always human.  And shares our bed and eats at our own table.”  Since religions give order and safety to thoughts and emotions, evil and good, right and wrong are definitely pillars of its structure.  Labeling actions, things, and people give us a sense of control, though incorrect they may be.

Still, the term evil is quite powerful when trying to understand genocide, war, or violent shootings across the world.  People who kill, seemingly senselessly (aka = evil), I believe are actually exhibiting animalistic behaviors—the fear that something or someone is trying to take over their freedom, their means to survival, protection of kindred, etcetera.  No matter how removed those underlying fears seem to be in that given situation, those innate, wild emotions are there, and they become the motivation for heinous acts of violence.  Because our species has evolved significantly in comparison to other animals on the plant, I think it’s assumed that we should have control over our actions / emotions.  Unfortunately, not everyone’s brain is equal.

I do love the idea of “evil,” especially being a writer.  It has a place in almost every story.  With roots in a number of emotions, evil is moving; it is the heartbeat in fear, and many times truth.  Evil is its own entity…within the mind.  It instills a bit of paranoia, uneasiness, and vigor—a feeling of aliveness.  On occasion, it brings out the good in others!

Denis Saurat in ‘Death And The Dreamer’ writes ‘God takes his pleasure in creatures that suffer and sin and are ignorant of him’. If this is not different to what Gloucester says in ‘King Lear’  ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport’, what does this reveal about the psychology of religious need and the dependency on an ideal?

What is blind faith?

Religion should put flowers in your potholes, but there are some religions—and cults—who don’t hand out the seeds, unless one sacrifices, and the greater the sacrifice, the more honorable he or she becomes, right?  Cain and Abel—need I say more?  It is this type of “sacrificial” thinking, this belief that one must impress the Gods (for they are jealous and merciless!) that I believe connects with the quotes of Denis Saurat and Gloucester.  And the more one sins, the greater their sacrifice must be.  That should be pleasing to any God.

Psychology thrives in religion—why people have faith, what they use it for, how they use it, and why it is still the utmost, on-going issue (if you can call war an issue) of every civilization since its creation.  For this reason alone, it cannot be ignored.  Huston Smith’s book, Why Religion Matters, combines traditional and progressive views about the human spirit, and why religion is important.  He states, “…the modern world seems set on preventing us from getting in touch with it by covering it with an unending phantasmagoria of entertainments, obsessions, addictions, and distractions of every sort.  But the longing is there…”

I’m not sure how much I can agree with the modern world interfering with religion (sometimes it feels like the other way around), but I do think that for some, religion is vital to their spirit, and if it does make one a better person, it is a good thing.  Too often though, religion becomes a dependency, a blindfold—a sidewalk strewn with the wings of flies.

What brought you into writing?

Mystery and horror have always been my greatest interests, whether it was movies or books, and so it was inevitable that my writing would also steer that direction.  I have been inspired by several books along the way, Salem’s Lot, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, 1984, The Relic, Women Who Run with the Wolves, and Black Water, to name a few, but I enjoy reading cross genre, and think it is important for every writer to extend beyond their usual tastes.  I feel it brings more balance to one’s craft and helps them hone in on voice and style.

I see that most writers have an early experience with writing, whether it is short stories, poems, or lyrics.  I have always taken a liking to writing, and so when life opened the door for me to do so, on a more serious level, I became immersed in it.  Once I put fingers to keyboard, hours would fly by.  I knew then that writing was going to be more than just a hobby—it’s a vital passion now.  Writing has connected me to something deeper in myself and others, and in turn, provides a creative and rewarding outlet.  I believe that if you are meant to write, you will, no matter what path in life you take.

Thank you Erin for a profound and great interview.

Bio

Erin Cole writes mystery, horror, paranormal, and speculative fiction.  She has been published in various print anthologies and online magazines, and is the author of Grave Echoes.  She is currently working on her second novel, Wicked Tempest, and her first horror collection due fall of 2011.

Links

Author Website: www.erincolewrites.com
Blog: www.erincolelive.blogspot.com
Grave Echoes :
(AuthorHouse) http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000380877
(Ebook) http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000408137
(Kindle) http://www.amazon.com/Grave-Echoes-ebook/dp/B0040JHU4G/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304358433&sr=1-6

Julia Madeleine writes real, tough Noir with great style and menace. Check out ‘Skin And Bones’ on Pulp Metal Magazine for an introduction to her work.

Her novel ‘No One To Hear You Scream’ is coming out in June 2011. It is inspired by her experience of buying a country house in foreclosure and being stalked by the previous owner. The antagonist is a former Irish gang member in exile who gets busted in a drug raid on his house and loses his property when he doesn’t make bail. He gets out and goes on a drug-induced rampage to get even with everyone who wronged him, including the family who bought his new house.

Julia is also a tattoo artist. She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about murder and tattooing.

Do you think it is possible to commit the perfect murder?

 

What a great question. Of course as a thriller writer I’ve often thought of this; getting away with murder. I definitely think it’s possible and I’m sure many people have committed the perfect murder. There was a recent case here in Ontario where two teenaged sisters, dubbed the “bathtub girls”, drown their alcoholic mother in the bathtub and it was ruled an accident. Unfortunatly for them, the “perfect” in their crime ended when they started bragging to friends how they’d gotten away with it. They were later convicted of first degree murder. I actually based a short story on this case called “Stick A Needle In My Eye” which was nominated for a Derringer award this year.

I think it’s a rare person who would be able to devise the perfect murder and then if they did get away with it, be able to keep it to themselves for the rest of their lives. You would think the fear of prison would be enough motivation to keep ones mouth shut. I guess it’s either guilt or stupidity that gets them in the end. Killers are not always the smartest people, certainly not the ones ruled by their emotions. Maybe the psychopaths have an easier time of it.

Do you think murder has a primarily sexual motivation?

You ask the most fascinating questions, Richard. I don’t necessarily think the act of killing and sex are related, at least not in all cases. For instance, I can’t see how poisoning Grannie with Drano for the inheritance money could have sexual undertones. I guess if Junior got excited and ejaculated in his knickers, watching her flop around on the kitchen floor, then that’s sexual isn’t it?

They say murder committed with a knife is sexual in nature. I suppose because of the penetration aspect. Perhaps the dominance aspect as well. But just the same way rape is not about sex as much as it is about somebody’s need to feel powerful through domination, I suspect the motivation for killing has more to do with power and control, or lack there of. The motivation for such crimes is probably as varied as the people who commit them.

Do you think tattooing is tribal and are some people addicted to it?

 

Tattooing is traditionally tribal within certain groups of people. These days with the huge growth in popularity it’s become more mainstream, even fashionable. We go through entire families; parents, kids, grandkids. When I was a teenager, kids would skip school and sneak down to the tattoo shop as an act of rebellion. Now the parents are bringing them in and paying for it.

It is most definitely addictive, thanks to the narcotics we put in the ink (that’s a joke).

A lot of people assume they’re coming in for just one tattoo and then later they start looking at everything thinking how it would make a great tattoo. Pretty soon they’re working on a sleeve. We like to tell people that when they start phoning us just to hear the sound of the tattoo machine in the back ground, that’s when they’ll know they’re addicted.

Tell us about ‘No One To Hear You Scream’.

The best way I can describe my novel is like Stuart Neville’s The Ghosts Of Belfast meeting the classic noir thriller Cape Fear. The bad guy in the story, Rory Madden, is a former Belfast Loyalist gang member living in exile in America. Rory gets busted in a drug raid at his house–a custom home he build himself on a 20 acre wooded property. When he doesn’t make bail and can’t make his mortgage payments, the bank forecloses and sells his property. After the charges against him are dropped, Rory gets out, buys some guns and goes on a drug induced rampage to get even with everyone who wronged him, including the nice family who’s bought his house.

Do you think that women kill in different ways to men and what do the differences say about their psychology?

Women tend to think differently then men generally speaking, so it would make sense women kill in different ways to men. The victims of women tend to be more intimately known to them. Whereas men, especially serial killers, don’t always know their victim. I believe women killers are more cunning then men, plotting the details of their murders in advance and historically their weapon of choice has been poison. In fact in the mid 1800s in the UK arsenic poisoning by women was so prevalent the government tried to implement “The Sale of Arsenic Act” which would ban women from purchasing arsenic. It was rumoured there was a secret society of women who exchanged recipes for poisoning their inconvenient relatives. So what does this say about our psychology? We are better long range planners perhaps. I’m not sure.

I did read a fascinating book on the subject of women killers and it explores the psychology behind it. Peter Vronsky’s “Female Serial Killers, How and Why Women Become Monsters”.

Do you think that the best detectives have strong criminal shadows?

I suspect some have a similar mentality, or develop it, after years of working in that field. I’ve heard people who are drawn to study psychology do so because they’re trying to unravel their own psychiatric issues. So maybe it’s like that for some people in law enforcement. But I imagine the best detectives are that way because of a combination of years of experience, a passion, even obsession, for solving crimes, and their ability to get inside the minds of the perps they are after. In a way they have to become their job, not just shake off that role at the end of the day. At least that’s how they’re portrayed in the movies.

Who are your literary influences?

My influences are quite varied and probably not whom you would expect for a thriller writer. In the past I never sought out books specifically in the genre that I write in. It’s only recently that I’m reading more thrillers/crime fiction and I’ve since found some fantastic writers. I’ve just discovered Andrew Vachss and I absolutely love his style. Chuck Hogan is another author whose books I’m particularly enjoying. As a teenage my influences, like a lot of us, were Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Edgar Allan Poe. I also loved Charles Dickens, James M. Cain.

More than a good story or a particular genre, I enjoy good writing above everything. Writing that moves me, that gets deep inside me and stays there, characters that I think about long after I’ve met them inside the pages of a book. My greatest influences are probably more on the literary side of the writing realm: Margaret Laurence, Mary Gaitskill, Evelyn Lau, Janet Fitch, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Do you think that paranoia is at the root of extreme power complexes?

Ahh, you ask the craziest questions, Richard. Actually, they’re really very thought provoking. I do think paranoia constitutes a sense of powerlessness and inferiority in those who suffer from it. So it would make sense that to compensate for this, a person would seek a sense of power, or really the illusion of power, through control of their environment or other people. But I don’t believe domination of others is true power, it’s a misuse of power and the one perpetrating that misuse is often a prisoner of their own erroneous thinking. People who feel empowered within their own being don’t seek to have power over others, they often seek to help others feel empowerd as they do themselves. It’s like bullies when you were a kid is school. They’re only as big as their victims fear. And bullies are always little wimps on the inside who don’t feel empowered. It’s pretty basic when you break it down to the school yard. And isn’t life just like one big school yard sometimes?

Have you ever thought of writing a novel about a tattooist killer and if so how would they commit their killings?

I’ve got a novel in the works about a female tattoo artist whose client ends up murdered and all the evidence points to directly to her. Then when more people around her start dropping dead and the police are closing in on her, she has to go after the real killer to prove her innocence.

I wouldn’t want to make the tattooist the villian just because, in spite of tattooing becoming more mainstream and reality shows allowing the public to see that we are just regular people like everyone else, not deviants or criminals (and neither are the customers), there is still a stigma, to a certain degree, attached to this profession. I think that attitude is primarily with the baby-boomer and older generations simply because when they grew up tattooing was more under ground and was associated with bikers, criminals and sailors. And with people being slow to change their long held judgements, that attitude is maintained even though it’s completely false.

I can understand it though, we instinctively judge a book by it’s cover. I’m guilty of it too. But I think when we don’t challenge our attitudes and hold on to illusions out of fear of being wrong, then we become stagnant…crotchety and decrepit too. Just like technology, tattooing has evolved light years in the last twenty-odd years. What was unheard of two decades ago is now common. For anyone who’s interested in seeing just how far tattooing has come, Google these names: Guy Aitchsion, Nick Baxter, Jeff Gogue, Victor Portugal. These are only some of the artists who are changing the industry.

So in defense of my profession, portraying a tattooist in a less than flattering light by making them a killer is not something I could do and feel good about. I’d be more inclined to make them the hero and all those judgemental pretentious, small-minded people out there can be the villains.

Do people you know show up as characters in your writing, or have you ever made a real person you didn’t like a victim and kill them off in your books?

Yes! I think it’s true with most writers that we take traits of family members and friends and use them in our characters. I have one relative in fact that is an endless source of material for me. She’s such a unique person, I think she should have her own TV show.

As for killing off a real person in my writing, I’ve done that. In my first novel there’s a scene where the main character, Scarlet Rose, (a real hateful, murderous bitch) kills another woman with a straight razor. It’s a gruesome scene in a bathroom. The victim was a character I created based on someone who intentionally did something really cruel to me so I indulged my anger and murderous fantasies about them in my writing. It was cathartic.

However,  I do think anger is a force that can be powerfully destructive and you’ve got to be careful when indulging in it. Allowing it to stay with you for extended periods of time is unhealthy. You’ve got to make peace with it inside yourself and then let it go. Channeling that emotion does make for some good writing though.

Thank you Julia for a brilliant and engaging interview.

More links:

Julia Madeleine’s website

Malefic Tattoos website