But Enough About Book Promotion...

I've been distracted the last couple of days, and the few times I stopped to think about "business", I questioned why I should care. Yes, I dutifully pulled up my Amazon ad manager and took a quick glance, but the fact that I've gotten so few clicks didn't depress me or even truly register.

The reason I write in the genre that I do, whatever that genre is, is that I'm fascinated by human behavior. Maybe that's genetic or maybe it's because of the circumstances in which I grew up, but I constantly look past people's words to find their true intentions. 

I think that's why the events of the last few days have sort of numbed me. I've seen glorious intent behind some people's words, but I've also seen a whole lot of...ghoulishness. And I keep trying to figure out why people are the way they are. I haven't solved it yet.

Even my husband doesn't recognize my depressed state, because I'm quite adept at masking my feelings (again, due to the way I grew up). I find that most people are much easier to read; and maybe the ghouls are simply devoid of feelings. I can't watch someone be murdered, no matter who it is, and not be horrified, much less celebratory. I can't not think of that person's children, who don't and can't understand, and feel merciless toward them. Feel "righteous". 

How did a whole swath of people get this way? It has to be nurture, not nature, because nature abhors violence. Did they never in their lives experience grace? Were their maturing years comprised of a step-by-step guide to adulthood, like an invisible flow chart, devoid of human interaction and emotion? I don't know. I suspect that's part of it. Maybe their parents were so self-involved that the kids were an afterthought. Left to figure life out on one's own, it's probably easy to become feral. Dog-eat-dog and all that. Lord of the Flies.

Too, I think the lack of empathy points to a comfortable life, where nothing truly bad ever happened, aside from the disregard they experienced growing up, which they still haven't explored, much less acknowledged. But in physical terms, nothing catastrophic ever happened to them, so real life evil is like watching a movie--kind of interesting for a couple of hours--but now they've got other things to do. Or if they're truly depraved, they'll watch the video of the killing over and over and thrust their arms in the air in triumph every time.

A lot of people see good guys and bad guys, no in-between guys. You're either all bad or impossibly good. I, too, enjoy spending time with people who agree with me, but I don't have the urge to kill those who don't. Or cheer if they die in a car accident. There was only one person in the course of my life who really f'd me up; it was many years ago, and every time she crossed my mind since, my eyes would narrow in anger. She's still around (yes, I have looked her up), but you know what? I don't wish for anything catastrophic to happen to her. I don't want her to get cancer or suffer a tragic boating accident. She can go her way and I can go mine, and that's that.

My fiction leans heavily on emotion, not the self-pitying kind, but the true-to-life feelings my characters experience. I would be the worst thriller writer in history, because for me, big events are only the backdrop for a character's reactions. I write the gamut of human emotions--except for evil. These are my worlds, and there's no room for depravity in my worlds. I refuse to dwell on that, even to "work things out" for myself. I don't know if I'll ever figure out what drives real-life evil, but as much as I try to understand human behavior, it's better for me to not make it my life's work.

Tomorrow I'll get on with things; get back to bemoaning my publishing failures. When I think about it, that's what the kids call my "safe space". It's predictable, which makes it almost comforting.

I need all the comforting I can get.