The SHU WPF January 2012 Commencement Speech: "The Women of Popular Fiction"

Greetings and good afternoon. On behalf of the Writing Popular Fiction Class of January 2012, I’d like to welcome you to Seton Hill University, and to thank you for taking the time to be with us today as we prepare to respectively cross this stage and accept our degrees. I know that many of you came a long way to witness this important ceremony, to support this graduating class as we revel in this moment.

As a class, we’ve also come a long way. We’ve travelled a great distance in pursuit of this Master in Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction. I think I can safely assume I’m not alone when I say it’s been a dynamic and life changing experience.

Speaking as a woman and a mother, after you give birth they tell you your memory of labor and delivery will fade with time. I think the logic is otherwise no one would ever go through the process more than once, and we’d have a world populated by only children. I’m not sure if this is true or not, though in the interest of full disclosure I’m the parent of an only child, but I know what won’t fade: my memories of the time I’ve spent in this program, and the invaluable knowledge I’ve gained from it.

As “ones”, we entered this program, each of us at varying points in our writing careers, with varying levels of proficiency. Somewhere along the line, somebody – whether it was a parent, a teacher or a friend – told us “You ought to be a writer” and we believed their pretty words. What they didn’t tell us was it isn’t as easy as it looks at first glance. It’s all very well and good to have the desire to write, it’s another entirely to do it.

As an aside, what I’d like to tell the “ones” is this piece of advice. See the gentleman in the front row in the jeans and the zombie tee shirt? His name’s Scott Johnson. Get to know him. Take his modules, enroll in his genre readings courses and – if you’re truly fearless – request him as a mentor. Cultivate a relationship with this man, buy him a drink in the Marriott lobby. Whatever else you do, hope against hope he likes you enough to write you into one of his books. You’ll doubtless die a slow, lingering death in the pages of one of his horror novels, but it’s NOTHING compared to the torment you’ll suffer at the hands of Dr. Arnzen in the purgatory that is his Teaching of Writing course. Talk about medieval torture.

Moving on. By the time we arrived at our second residency, we’d accepted a vital fact of life. If we wanted this degree we’re about to receive, we were going to have to write a full length novel. And while it seemed like no less a daunting process than it did when we were “ones”, we’d begun assembling the tools we’d need. We’d learned from our mentors, from our fellow students, and from our own experiences about the importance of time management, of making time to write regularly. We’d started drafting outlines and penning synopses. We’d created and fleshed out character descriptions.

As “threes” we’d been at this process of writing and editing long enough that we’d begun feeling a little superior. After all we’d discovered the secret only “pros” knew, that a plus b equals c or – as it pertains to writers – rear plus chair plus fingers on keyboard equals page count. We knew that no one was going to publish the book we didn’t write. By that point, we’d all made adjustments and in some cases terrific sacrifices to ensure the sanctity of our creative time and space. We’d stressed the importance of the same to our friends and lovers, our spouses and children. We’d all had “that conversation”. You know the one, when we strongly cautioned them not to bother us when we were immersed in our fictional worlds. We warned them not to interrupt us when we were spending time with the characters we’d created and grown to love, lest they too ended up with an ice pick in their skull. (Maybe that was just me?) Finally, our loved ones had learned this business of writing was just that, it was a business. It was our life’s work, an overwhelming, all consuming passion that was to be valued and respected.

As “fours”, we felt like full-fledged club initiates, made men and women who’d paid our dues and earned our stripes. See how I just mixed up my metaphors there, not to mention resorted to cliché? Yeah, don’t do that. That’s in the manual right after Tim Esaias’s oft repeated gem: “Never use the word ‘grimace’ unless one is referring to a gargoyle. And Tim thought all I got out of his modules was malted milk balls! (I’ll miss the malteds, as I’m certain my fellow graduates will as well, but I’ll always treasure the sentiment behind their distribution: If you want people to pay attention? Make them an offer they can’t refuse. See, I just did it again!) But seriously folks, all kidding aside, by our fourth residency we’d learned much about our writing and how to improve it. We now felt qualified to judge the work of others, to advise our fellow wordsmiths. We’d heard the phrase “show, don’t tell” so often we thought we’d punch the next person who said it square in the kisser. Still, having said that, that doesn’t make it less true!

But, by the end of the day we stood as equals. We’ve all accomplished what so many people spend the whole of their lives striving to achieve: We’ve written a book, and whether it was our first book or our 40th, we set a goal – to write 60, 80, even 100 thousand words – and we did it. We overcame self doubt and told self loathing to take a hike. Mostly importantly, as one of my personal heroes writer and blogger Chuck Wendig would say? We made the words.

Fellow graduates? Give yourself a round of applause. You’ve done a remarkable thing. You’ve shifted from the camp of people who say “I’d like to write a book someday” or “I’ve got a great idea for a novel” to the community of writers who’ve penned that most eloquent of phrases: “The End.”

Yet even in our similarities there are differences, just as there are distinctions among all the writers here today. Gathered together today, part of this very special program, are romance authors, mystery writers, science fiction and fantasy writers, horror novelists, even chroniclers of historical “fiction”.

There are differences not just in what we write, but in why we write, even in how we write.

Some writers are organizational wizards, able to plot out to the most minute detail the story they plan to tell, to pinpoint precisely when they’ll tell it, even who they think might publish it and what type of reader will be interested in it. Other writers, myself included? Not so much. While I envy those of my fellow writers their ability to create according to a schedule, and I certainly admire their work ethic and their convictions, I’m one of those writers who writes in bursts like I’ve got a gun to my head, like if I don’t write X amount of words by X time, the earth will cease to rotate around the sun. What drives me, what compels me to put my derriere in the chair and produce, is PRESSURE. And I think this is true of many, many writers.

While one method may seem preferable to the other, and I’ll let you all be the judge of which is which, the most effective method for completing a novel is the one that works for the individual writer.

Aside from the differences which set one writer apart from another, our class of wordsmiths is unique in that we are all female. While that’s not unusual for the graduating class of what began as an all girls college, it is no less an honor to say I’m part of this distinctive group.

My fellow graduates are an eclectic bunch. We can count among our number a wide gamut of talents. We’ve got writers of fiction and non-fiction, editors, a veteran and best-selling romance novelist, a life coach, an expert on international terrorism, a nuclear physicist and couple of teachers. And then there’s me, the authority on dead hookers. We are the newest members of an unofficial society. We are the women of popular fiction.

Popular fiction or rather the writing of it has always been a fairly inclusive field. Still, it’s traditionally been a male dominated profession. Even today, only five of the top 20 selling novelists of all time are women, though it’s notable that the books penned by Agatha Christie, who is third on this list, have been outsold only by the Holy Bible and the collective works of William Shakespeare. Not too shabby for Ms. Christie or the so-called fairer sex.

In recent years, more and more women are successfully writing and publishing, and not necessarily in the genres you might expect. Genres that were once the literary equivalent of the Old Boys Network are evolving and expanding to include more female authors. Notably, the science fiction and fantasy sections of the local bookstores are home to a plethora of titles written by women. The same is true of the shelves populated by horror novels.

A professor, mentor and friend I had during my undergraduate studies had a saying he often repeated that I’m in total agreement with: “Good writers borrow. Great writers steal.” He trumpeted this advice so frequently it’s permanently lodged in my psyche, and I think it’s particularly apt of the women of popular fiction.

That’s right ladies, we steal. Not only do we pilfer from our literary predecessors, we pillage our personal lives for stories worth telling. We steal hours away from our children to give birth to our novels. Our affection for our spouses and significant others is oft displaced – nay, eclipsed! – by our passion for our characters. We form relationships with people for no other reason than to strip mine their very existences for literary gold.

But it’s not just us gals in the den of thieves the greatest writers of our generation have called home. Nor does our gender preclude us from borrowing from our male counterparts, or keep our brother writers from emulating our individual voices and the voices of our sister writers.

And there’s no shame in borrowing first before you buy or, in this case, steal. What else do we do each month in this program, when we ask our critique partners and mentors for their objective response to our work, but borrow? We borrow their knowledge of the mechanics of our language. If writing is the process of finding verbs, and I believe that it is, then editing is discerning whether we’ve used the right verb with the right noun, followed up by the proper object, modified by the best adjective. We lean on them for the expertise they can provide. We ask for their insight as to whether our stories – though fictional – ring true.

Because – whatever your politics, it seems appropriate in a speech related to women to quote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – it really does take a village to write and sell a novel. Particularly a first novel, which is what many of us graduating today have written. It takes the guidance of the early reader to help us focus our story and find our voice. It takes the honesty we come to demand of our mentors and critique partners. It takes the wisdom of the writing instructor to encourage us to craft prose that is clear and concise, to phrase our words so our readers will understand and appreciate them, even be inspired by them.

Finally, the process of writing and publishing a novel takes readers, for without them our words lack meaning. And, well, I don’t know about any of you, but I didn’t just spend two plus years writing a book for it never to see the light of day.

And for that reason, I am so glad to be part of this village, this community of writers, for I know as I move forward with my professional career, I am far from alone.

I am also so proud to be one of the women of this graduating class. Each of us is dear to someone, perhaps even to someone in this very auditorium. We are wives, we are sisters, we are girlfriends, we are mothers. We are also dear to each other. We met as strangers at our first or second residency and forged bonds of friendship. We promised to support each other on this journey, even when we weren’t entirely sure where we were going ourselves. When it was called for, in workshops or as critique partners, we lent each an objective eye or an encouraging word. In the online classes, we learned from each other as surely as we learned from our teachers. Outside of the program, we traded Facebook posts and responded to each other’s Tweets. We shared writing tips, passed along news about conferences and contests, asked for insights on agents and publisher. Finally, we formed friendships I feel confident will stand the test of time.

Apart from each other, we relied on other women in this program, on the women of popular fiction who came before us. We looked to teachers like Dr. Lee McClain and Dr. Nicole Peeler for their guidance and considered them examples to emulate. We patterned ourselves after mentors like Anne Harris, Barbara Miller, Lucy Snyder. When they pointed out the flaws in our work and suggested changes, we listened to them and, in the process, we became better writers ourselves. And, of course I would be remiss if I didn’t pay tribute to the woman of popular fiction we’ve ALL come to love, lean on, and even at times to frustrate and outright harass, Wendy Lynn.

In closing, I’d like to address those we’re leaving behind, those of you who will someday cross this stage as we’re about to. Learn from the matriarchs of popular fiction, those I’ve had the privilege of mentioning and those I have not. Respect those who’ve given birth to this notion of genre fiction, to those who’ve nurtured fellow writers just as surely as they would their own children. Take heed of their knowledge and treasure their wisdom. They did not come by it easily, and it’s a great gift they’re giving you. Appreciate it. When they tell you that, as a writer, you must learn to crawl before you can walk, know this: Some day in the not too distant future, they’ll cheer you on as you run and, above all, they’ll always believe in your ability to fly.

Thank you.

From/for the October 2011 "California Focus" on the Ripper Conference

Area resident Carla E. Anderton was recently selected to present a paper at an international conference on Jack the Ripper at Drexel University in Philadelphia in late October. The conference, dubbed “Jack the Ripper: Through a Wider Lens”, will examine the myth and mystery surrounding one of history’s most infamous serial killers. Anderton’s paper is on “Our Continued Fascination with the Ripper” and her presentation will center on why society is still so intrigued by a series of unsolved murders in London that took place the late 19th century.

About the conference, Anderton said, “Being asked to present alongside such notable names in the field of Ripperology – that’s what we call the study of Jack’s crimes – is an honor, and one of my greatest achievements to date. It’s exciting to realize so many others have an interest in this riveting case and that in addition to having a chance to share my knowledge with them, I’ll have the opportunity to hear their presentations.”

Anderton first “fell in love with Jack” while on a “Jack the Ripper Walking Tour” she took as part of a high school trip to London in 1995. Tour guide and leading authority on the case Donald Rumbelow used her as a “model” for where the Ripper slashed his victims, which she called “creepy” but admits it left her hungering to learn more about the mysterious person responsible for murdering at least five prostitutes in the Whitechapel section of London in 1888.

“I’ve always been interested in British history, so it wasn’t a hard sell,” Anderton admits. “But, my fascination with the Ripper really took hold during my undergraduate studies at Cal U. I was in an Advanced Writing course with Professor Alan Natali, who I’ll always consider both mentor and friend, and I chose as my semester project a series of sketches on what might have transpired if the ‘Ripper’ had been in love with his last victim, whose murder was so much more horrific in comparison to his earlier victims. Professor Natali really encouraged me to keep going with the project, and by the next semester, when I was a student in his Creative Writing of Fiction course, I’d begun writing a full fledged novel based on the concept.”

Anderton took a hiatus from the project after graduation from Cal U while she served as Editor-in-Chief of California Focus from 2005-2009, but she returned to it with a vengeance after enrolling in a Master of Fine Arts program at Seton Hill University in Greensburg. She will graduate in January 2012, and finally completed the novel, titled The Heart Absent, in September of this year. She hopes her participation in the upcoming Ripper conference will help her land a publisher for the novel.

She realizes many may consider her fascination with the Ripper crimes macabre, and said, “I know it seems like an awfully gruesome subject to be interested in, but what I find most compelling about the case is that it elevated these women whose names we’d never have known – after all, they were basically indigent streetwalkers – to a place in history that I think it’s important to preserve. These were real people whose murderer was never caught and whose deaths were never avenged. I’m also intrigued by the role of the media in publicizing and immortalizing these crimes. The case transformed journalism as we know it today.”

Currently, Anderton serves as President of the Board of Directors at Jozart Center for the Arts. In addition to writing fiction, she has also written and published poetry, plays, articles and essays. She lives in California with her 13-year old son, pre-professional ballet dancer Allen Free, who – in addition to his many other accomplishments – regularly dances, strums the guitar and serves coffee at Jozart’s weekly open mics.

Good news (again) and a(nother) plea for help...

So, I got a bit of good news last week, which I am just now getting around to posting here in Ye Olde Blogge Space: I am going to be a presenter at an international conference at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA, at the end of October on my boy Jack the Ripper.

Yessir. Notable names in Ripperology: Drew Gray, Martin Fido, Richard Walter and… Yours Truly? You heard it here last. Seriously, I was all over Facebook with this already; this is old news but nonetheless great news. But, in the interest of personal marketing via blog, wanted to share here too.

I’m a little nervous but mostly just excited. This is sink or swim territory for me but I’m fairly adept at treading water. My topic is “Our Continued Fascination with the Ripper”, and I’ll be presenting alongside Christopher George of Ripperologist Magazine and John Curra, professor of Sociology at Eastern Kentucky University.

I’ve got roughly two months to put together a top notch presentation and to prepare for questions from the conference participants.

In the meantime, I’ve got to put the final finishing touches on my thesis novel, The Heart Absent, the premise of which is somewhere between “Pygmalion gone horribly wrong”, “Jack the Ripper in love”, and (of course) “Take any bird and put it in a cage”. Simply put, it’s the story of Jack’s evolution from boy to man to monster who demands Mary Kelly’s heart by any means necessary. I’m looking forward to submitting it to publishers soon, as the last day of revisions on the work is close at hand, but I’m a little sad to think this means saying goodbye to my best pal Jack. For now.

But, back to the conference. So many of you wrote in and commented here and elsewhere on FB on four “facts” or “myths” you’d heard about the Jack the Ripper crimes. Thank you! Now, get ready to roll up your sleeves again, for I need your help once more.

Riddle me this, ladies and gents: What do YOU find fascinating about Jack the Ripper? (Again, let’s stick to the hit the high notes formula.) And, if you don’t personally find the Ripper narrative compelling but you do like stories about serial killers, or are a horror/true crime/historical fiction fan, what is it about stories about unsolved (and often grisly) murders that piques YOUR interest?

Looking forward to your responses!

I need your help!

There is a good chance I'm going to be presenting at an international conference on Jack the Ripper. (Cross your fingers, guys. They're interested in me, now I just have to prove I'm actually interesting.)

You guys can help. In four sentences or less, without using Google etc., tell me what YOU know about Jack the Ripper. If you know more than four sentences worth of info, I applaud you, but please just hit the high notes.

Why do I want to know this? My presentation topic, should they officially invite me, is going to be something along the lines of "The Enduring Appeal of Jack the Ripper" and it will be very useful for me to know what exactly the general public (that's you guys) knows about the Ripper murders. Since I know some of you are very well versed in the case, I'm asking responses be limited to four sentences. Just tell me what stands out most vividly in your mind about my boy Jack.

There's several ways to play. You can either leave your response in the comments here, on my Facebook page (I'm Carla E. Anderton. Add me. I can't promise I'll always be highly entertaining but I do promise to try), or you can email me your response to carla@jozart.com.

I'm not offering any prizes, just the good feeling of knowing you helped your fellow (wo)man, but I do appreciate any and all responses. I do promise that whatever misinformation you may have about the Ripper will be clarified in a future blog entry once this experiment is complete.

Batman: The Killing Joke

Allow me to preface this week’s post by saying this is the last blog entry about horror fiction I will ever pen (for a grade), assuming of course our Evil Overlord doesn’t have some nefarious trick up his sleeve. After one and a half years of reading mostly horror fiction, I will now get to read books of MY choosing! This is, no offense, a happy day indeed.

And how appropriate that I go out with a post on Batman: The Killing Joke. I think somewhere in the manual for People Who Want to Become Horror Writers, there is a rule that all of us who love dark fiction must also love the Dark Knight. To be honest, I’m not much of a comic book fan, and the only other graphic novel I’ve read was also penned by Mr. Alan Moore, From Hell. (Surprise, surprise.) Therefore, it wasn’t exactly a hard sell for me to like The Killing Joke. Aside from my reverence for Moore’s work, my love for the Batman universe knows no bounds. (See large Catwoman tattoo on upper right shoulder for more proof.)

What is it about the Batman that we as horror writers and fans find so alluring? I think it’s the combination of the dark, near noir setting, and the personalities of the Batman, his adversaries and his accomplices.

Let’s begin with the Batman. Here’s a guy you can’t help but love, even if you do think he has, well, bats in his belfry. After witnessing the tragic murder of his parents, Bruce Wayne dons a cap and a mask and seeks to avenge their deaths by becoming a one man arbiter of justice. Here is a best case scenario reaction to tragedy if I ever heard one. And yet, we like Batman not just because he collars the bad guys but because his psyche is so scarred and irretrievably twisted.

Twisted, but not as twisted as the psyches of most of the villains in the Batman universe, most notably The Joker. The depiction of the Joker in The Killing Joke is so intriguing and effective because he embodies the classic psycho, dashing and mysterious in spite of his evil deeds. Further, we can all sympathize with the Joker’s plight, and as has been posited so often in this course: Where is the line between sanity and insanity, between normality and psychosis, and how closely do any of us skirt it? I think it’s safe to assume we’ve all experienced at least “one bad day” in our lives, though most of us have managed to avoid disfigurement via vat of acid. The Joker’s reaction to the string of tragedies that unfolds in this novel is understandable. No, it is more than understandable, it is human. We are all flawed creatures with villainesque tendencies we (mostly) keep under wraps. Who among us wouldn’t welcome the freedom to be the evil that touches so many of our lives?

What is inhuman, if anything in this novel can be described as such, is Commissioner Gordon’s stoicism, his unswerving dedication to the job that is the root cause of his own difficulties. And yet, for everyone unrepressed Joker in our midst, there are a hundred Gordons, desperate men finding solace in the tedium of workaholism.

Aside from being a damned good story with a cast of sympathetic characters, The Killing Joke is beautifully rendered. Brian Bolland’s illustrations perfectly capture the dark universe that is Gotham City.

I’d close with my usual statement about the books I’ve loved, that I’ll be passing this one on to my son, but on this occasion I can’t claim that. I can’t pass it on to him, he’s already stolen it from me and is deeply engrossed.

Joyride

Buckle up, guys, because we’re able to take a wild ride on the Bipolar Express. Yes, I am out of my tree, and I’m about to confound every statement I’ve made in weeks past when I say I loved Jack Ketchum’s Joyride. While it had its share of the ole torture porn and definitely lent credence to the argument that women are subjugated in horror fiction, two of the things I’ve mentioned bother me about the genre, I thoroughly enjoyed this fast paced read. I felt the “on camera” carnage – albeit limited compared to what I understand Ketchum does in most of his books – and the degradation of women was spot on, and in this case it definitely worked for me.

What I liked most about this book wasn’t so much the story – which was no less stellar – but rather the substance and the structure. (Alliteration more or less unavoidable, sorry.) Rather than making this post a book report, I’d like to talk more about what Ketchum does that I find admirable and seek to emulate.

First off, the murder spree depicted in this novel is reminiscent of the real life spree of Howard Unruh, a veteran of the second World War who had a similar list to Wayne Lock’s: a deadly version of Santa’s “Naughty or Nice” list. As someone who writes about true crime – “real” murders to be exact – I found this novel to be a textbook exercise in What to Do When You Write About Real Serial Killers. Although this is my first experience with Ketchum’s work, a little Internet research reveals that many of his books are based on actual events and in Joyride, his mastery of this genre is apparent. Ketchum seems to have a keen understanding of a truth I hold to be self evident: The world is a sick and twisted place, and the real life atrocities man visits upon his fellow man are often way more sadistic and shocking than those found in books that are entirely fictional. Reality trumps fiction, every time.

Moving on to structure, I really liked the way the point of view switches in the novel. In a longer novel, it might not work as well, but given the brevity of this work it was a great storytelling device. I’m doing this in my own thesis novel and have been a little concerned whether it’s going to be effective, but seeing how Ketchum accomplishes this is both comforting and inspiring. Just as we’ve often been counseled to note the weaknesses in other author’s books so we don’t make the same mistakes in our own work, it’s also important to note the strengths so we can utilize similar techniques as we write.

Back to brevity, I think one of the reasons I so enjoyed Joyride was it’s a quick enough read that you stay on the edge of your seat the whole time. There’s plenty of mayhem but it’s an abbreviated enough form that I never felt Ketchum was bashing me over the head with the gory details, although there were some of those as well. I had no issue getting and remaining invested in the story, and at no point did my interest falter.

In closing, I want to address the fact that this author isn’t shy about depicting graphic violence towards women. Ordinarily that’s a “button” – that John Dixon first mentioned and Jenn Loring mentioned again in her post about this book – for me as well, but I didn’t feel this particular novel went overboard with it. What Ketchum’s own feelings are about women, and how misogynistic or not his general illustration of them is I can’t really speak to since I’ve only read Joyride. I’ll likely pick up a few more of his novels in the future to determine if this is truly a hallmark of his work.

The Sculptor

All things happen for a reason, and I believe I screwed up/switched up the readings/viewings on the syllabus for a reason, too. No one wants to read two weeks in a row of my outright bashing yet another novel in the genre I claim to love, and I think if I’d written this post a week ago, many of you would be left wondering: “Carla, do you even like to read BOOKS, period?”

The answer, in the case of The Sculptor, is a resounding “no”, not if this what the genre has come to. In fact, I question whether I even want to continue writing in it, if this is what sells.

Start off with our killer, a cookie cutter character if ever I encountered one, and these elaborate murder scenes that are frankly torture porn. Throw in one of the silliest signatures – making his victims into representations of Michelangelo’s work – I’ve ever heard of and you end up with a book that is the psycho killer genre equivalent of The DaVinci Code. (I realize the aforementioned was a huge bestseller, and we should all be so lucky as to be Dan Brown, but it’s still not a compliment, just in case you need clarification.) Don’t even get me started on the romance and relationship between the big strong man and the puny little library mouse of a woman – whose life is, naturally, in danger – that he finds strangely alluring.

It’s almost hard for me to pinpoint exactly what I disliked most of this book. Some of my fellow classmates have mentioned in their entries that they found the dialogue clunky and the repetition of the same jarring, and I agree wholeheartedly. However, since we should presumably all be thinking about our writing style when we read others, I have to admit repetitious dialogue is a trick I frequently employ in my own work. I apologize now to my former readers, am currently editing most instances of this trick out of my own book, and promise to never ever do it again in the future. It does take you out of the story and serves no real purpose other than to bash the reader in the head with info they already had.

But let’s get away from style and get back to substance. I’ll admit this killer was extremely creepy, and these murder scenes lingered in my head long after I closed the book, and that is indicative of a successful horror novel. It did scare me. The thought of becoming the Sculptor’s prey gave me chills. But I think it was more the graphic nature of these scenes, and not the personality ascribed to the killer by the author, that I found frightening.

I’ve got a confession to make. I’m not a huge fan of the torture porn that’s so prevalent in the horror genre. Movies like Saw and books like The Sculptor bother me, and not necessarily in a thought provoking way, and I think it’s because so much of the action is “on camera”. Very little is left to the imagination, and the killers in these works don’t really seem to be serving a higher purpose. Maybe they do really have a “higher purpose” and I just don’t get it. I guess you could say I’m old school. I don’t want my vampires to sparkle, but I do like my serial killers to be romantic figures. The Sculptor was not.

This is not a book I’ll revisit, but I will say it made me think about the genre in general and my own writing, so I’m glad I had the chance to read it.