Does Writing About Serial Killers Frighten Me?
Does writing about serial killers frighten me? No—because I’m not writing about monsters hiding in the shadows. Forget vampires, werewolves, and scary shadows. I’m writing about people. Charming people.Broken people. The kind who walk among us unnoticed every day. The mailman who greets you with a smile. The dentist who fixes your teeth, the teacher who teaches your kids. Approximately one in two thousand people may be a serial killer. The FBI estimates there are twenty-five to fifty active serial killers at any given time. I had a cancer that affects one in two hundred thousand people, and the odds of meeting a serial killer are far less than that. The odds of meeting a serial rapist? Five to fifteen percent of men are serial rapist. The monster who raped me worked down the street as a shoe-repair guy. A nice guy. An everyday guy. He took people’s addresses down from their checks, IDs, and more.
What frightens me is not the violence itself, but the realization that evil rarely announces itself with fangs, bloodstained hands, or an evil-looking face. More often, it arrives as the charismatic grocery clerk. Intelligent. Seductive. Convincing.
As a survivor of violent crime, I am supervigilant in watching my surroundings–even in my home–where the rapist had hidden until I returned from work. Even so, I could stop at a “friend’s” house and be overpowered or pick up my shoes, giving the perpetrator information on where to find me.
I learned long ago that darkness is rarely simple. That understanding shaped the stories I write. My characters are not just killers or victims—they are human beings wrestling with obsession, trauma, fear, desire, and the terrible choices that can grow from them.
Writing psychological suspense allows me to explore the uncomfortable truth that the line between good and evil is often thinner than we want to believe. And perhaps that’s why I’m not afraid to write these stories.
Because what truly scares me is pretending that darkness doesn’t exist.