When I’m not writing or tweeting I’m out drinking coffee at my local garden centre with writer friends, sharing ideas, helping and supporting each other. It always intrigues me where other authors get their ideas from and what has inspired them – particularly if they write about blood, guts and gore. There’s no doubt that sensation sells. Crime dominates the bestseller lists––the gorier the better for lots of readers. But why do people write about sickening stuff?
I asked my friend Regine Demuynck, a newly-published crime writer, with three books published on Amazon (author name Andree Roby) what inspires her to write about child murders.
Regine said, “It interested me to watch tv documentaries on Britain’s deadliest kids. I kept asking myself the question, what makes a killer, especially a child killer? What made them flip? They presumably knew right from wrong. In my book, Failed Vision https://www.amazon.co.uk/FAILED-VISION-killer-born-made-ebook/dp/B08LT1D7XT/ I put across the premise that we are all born with the killer gene and in some of us it’s activated. There have been some killers who have had everything in life and still been driven to kill. After writing my first book, Double Vision https://www.amazon.co.uk/DOUBLE-VISION-Creative-Crime-Drama-ebook/dp/B07ND2C8BV/I started looking at certain cases. I modelled my protagonist on Aaron Campbell, killer of a 4 year old girl. The character is based on him and what happened to him. He watched videos his mother brought him and his cannabis abuse was portrayed in the book. Aaron’s mother thought she could prove his innocence. He tortured and killed a young girl in a disused hotel.
‘Do you not get emotional or feel disgusted?’ I asked Regine.
“Domestic rape does, but it doesn’t make me feel particularly emotional. To me it’s just writing, just words on a page. I detach myself. I get emotional when I see dogs mistreated. That breaks my heart. I feel sad, it’s not right and brings me to tears. With dogs they trust you implicitly they’ve not done anything wrong. The way animals are mistreated is an outrage. I don’t deny it though, there have been times when I’ve become depressed writing about murder and violence, particularly when I think about the detail.
I was interested in Trevor McDonald’s interview on death row and how an action carried out on impulse can completely change the course of one’s life and how that person is defined. An action by a 12-year-old defines who they are for the rest of their life. A chilling thought. And to spend the rest of their life in prison for that one action.
Women rarely kill those they don’t know. The majority of women in jail have killed a close one. I’m interested in triggers and patterns of behaviour. Given a situation, could I kill if I was abused? Women get to the point where they explode if provoked, but murder by women is very rarely premeditated .
I felt compassion for my killer while I was writing. He’s a product of poor parenting. There is a vulnerable side to Sam. I hope it shows to the reader and how this can happen. Expose a child to horror and it has a psychological effect on them and if your victim is a stranger you have no connection. In Failed Vision there are little glimpses of his vulnerability. He isn’t valued. Feels rejected. It was important to show the complexity of his psyche. That’s part of my job as a writer.
My next book will be Deadly Vision about a woman killer.”