Page 30 of Shhh…It’s A Killer Story

"She's talking to ceramic decorations again."

"I prefer trusted advisors."

"You bought us at a garden centre."

"You don't know where you came from."

"I literally watched you pay."

Details. People get so caught up in details. I grinned before turning back to the blinking document on my screen. It's strange being an author. People assume inspiration arrives like lightning. A flash, a revelation or maybe some magical little whisper in the middle of the night.

It doesn't.

Ideas are much quieter than that. Sometimes they're born from overheard conversations in coffee shops, sometimes from headlines tucked between advertisements or from strangers whose names you'll never know and sometimes... Sometimes inspiration smiles at you while holding the door open.

That's the dangerous kind because monsters rarely look like monsters. If they did...

Well, my job would be considerably more difficult. I rested my elbows on the desk, studying the empty page. Do you know what readers ask me most? No, not "Where do your ideas come from?" That's second. The first is always...

"How do you write villains so well?"

I never know how to answer that. Do they expect me to say I lock myself in a room for three days and summon demons? That I consult ancient spirits beneath a blood moon? That I possess some wonderfully tragic secrets? Disappointingly...

No.

Writing villains is easy. People write themselves. The difficult part... Are convincing readers they're heroes. Now that takes practice.

I absentmindedly traced the rim of my coffee mug.

"You know what I love most about readers?"

Gerald groaned.

"We're asking them questions again."

"They're good listeners."

"They don't have a choice."

"Exactly."

I looked toward you, not the page. You. You've already started making assumptions. You don't even realise it. You're deciding who you'll trust. Who's funny. Who's dangerous. Who's secretly hiding something. Its instinct don’t worry. You simply just can't help yourself. Humans crave certainty. You see a smile and think, kind. You see a uniform and think, honest. You see tears and think, innocent.

It's adorable and catastrophically unreliable.

I wonder...

How many people have fooled you in your lifetime?

Five?

Ten?

More?

Don't answer that. If you knew the number, they probably weren't very good at it. The truly talented ones. Leave without ever being discovered.

Silence settled over the room. Outside, rain drummed against the roof. Inside, only the soft ticking of the clock accompanied the cursor's endless blinking. Stories are funny things. People think authors create them. We don't, we simply decide which truths to tell and which ones to bury beneath prettier words.