MALICIOUS INTENT

Sean Mactire. MALICIOUS INTENT: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists and Other Criminals Think. Writer's Digest, 1995.

It is dated, and I ignored the less than useful arguments about vampirism and blood lust and crime as illness. I also omitted the chapters I am not interested in--terrorism, cults, kids, career criminals, gangsters, drugs, women. Which seems like a lot of omitting. I feel my info gathered from experience in corrections, and more from television--Law & Order, Without A Trace, Cold Cases, etc is stronger than this source. 

I was looking for ways to improve my manuscript IN YOUR DREAMS, especially for ways to improve the villain(s), and I got some ideas. Organized/disorganized. Psychopath, psychotic, and personality disorders. Good. The point about all family members and others within the victim's circle are also victims. Good. The idea that profiling the victim is just as important as profiling the possible criminal. Good. This book still uses the term "rape" if, when replaced by "sexual assault", makes it obvious that the crime is not about sex. Sex is just another tool to use to harm or attempt to control. Not new. That most criminals can be described as having some form of "arrested development" makes sense. They all put themselves first, like adolescents. The fact that there is absolutely no reference to incarceration, to the difference between punishment (penitentiary) and reform (corrections) never comes into it. Nor the idea that any criminal can change. The word "cognitive" does not appear. "Coping mechanisms" are mentioned. The wide-spread interest in crime and true crime suggests fear, but also that we are all very interested in "the dark side of human nature" but would rather not have to go there ourselves. 

THIS IS THE FIRE

Don Lemon. THIS IS THE FIRE: What I Say to My Friends About Racism. Little, Brown, 2021.

Found this at the library booksale and bought it as research for my TRC workbook. I did enjoy reading this. My notation bookmarks make it look like a post-it porcupine. I found the personal material most interesting. He is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 

I do not get CNN so am not that familiar with the writer. I suspect he no longer works for that network, although the book is current, Trump-era and COVID lockdown. 

It seems difficult to imagine a journalist being objective where this subject, racism, and inequality in America, is involved. 

At this time, my takeaway is: ANGER & ACTIVISM.

Later.

THE GHOST CLAUSE

Howard Norman. THE GHOST CLAUSE. Houghton Mifflin, 2019.

I picked up this novel at the library book sale because I know the author. Because he is American but has written about Canadian and Indigenous stories and settings. His WISHING BONE CYCLE: NARRATIVE POEMS OF THE SWAMPY CREE INDIANS I used teaching high school. A student made a mural of its image. I also read THE MUSEUM GUARD which was set in Nova Scotia. I was also intrigued by the title, as I am working at incorporating a ghost in IN YOUR DREAMS (although it can also be explained as 'haunted by the memory of her dead sister'). 

This 'ghost clause' idea is so interesting. If someone buys a house which then turns out to have a ghost, to be haunted, then the seller is obligated to buy the house back. A clause written in to the bill of sale.

I did enjoy the book. I also enjoy its representation of a marriage of equals which is passionate and happy.