There is
something about evil that draws me into its labyrinth of dark heinousness.
There is mystery in the pain of it, there is temptation in the promise of
decadent pleasure, there is that longing to surrender without thought or
restrain to the unknown and sometimes to the very well known, things one
dappled with and found irresistibly wondrous. There it is, my secret. I adore
evil. To clarify, I adore writing about it. I have a healthy respect for the
muse and movement of it in the undercurrent and the potency it provides a
story.
Plotinus
in 200 AD wrote, "To deny evil a place among realities is necessarily to
deny a way with the good as well." I am certain you often heard that evil
cannot exist without good. For certain how can white exist without the contrast
of black. The clench and chills of the reader is heightened when there are
sharp defined lines between an honorable character facing a foe of a merciless
horrendous nature. Though we might surrender to providing a singular redeeming
quality to a foe, it is often over-shadowed by their true fully-unredeemable
evil.
Yet,
what does one do when faced with multiple evils. There are times a hero/shero
must make a choice and according to Thomas à Kempis, "Of two evils always
choose the lesser." As a writer with the power, we say bull-bleep that,
destroy both, or maybe allow one to decimate the other. There are infinite
options that makes our job utterly delightful.
Sometimes,
though, as I or we joyfully enter the mind of the monster, as I tweak and
twitter among his/her psychosis, maniacal obsessions and infinite delusions, I
feel like a co-conspirator, for to quote Martin Luther King, Jr. "To
ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it." And, in the sense of the
literary voyeurs that is exactly what we are doing. We are allowing it to
thrive and grow, to play with the good people of that particular universe,
torment them, hurt them and all without an ounce of remorse. Is that terribly
heinous of us? Does that make us monsters as well? I sometimes wonder what is
so twisted inside me that makes this such fun, for in truth, I take to the
villain(s) much more easily than Zi does. Should I be concerned for my mental
health?
Franz
Kafka wrote, "What we call evil is only a necessary moment in our endless
development." Hence, the answer. I know the effect evil has on the reader.
And I want that terror to dip deeply into their primal fear until every bump
and squeak has paralyzed their need to scream, battered pulses to quickening,
and have their breaths shorten and raspy. That is how I see my/our writing
endeavors when it comes to devising the most beastly of all scoundrels, our
work is growing into the perfect piece to scare the beejees out of our readers.
So, if it takes Angelica and/or Zi to be a bit evil hungry in the sense of
respecting it as a fabulous plot device then so be it.
In
reality, we both hate evil, hate the clawing and degenerate nature of its
makeup, hate the existence of those that hurt others for hurt's sake or even
worse for their own demented pleasure. The truth is that the joy of allowing
the monsters their day of victory resides in the outcome of each story. In
thawing their evilness, rubbing their self-satisfied smugness into the
realization of their inability to succeed, the evidence of their cowardliness
and the actuality of their failure is what, we believe, gives the reader the
greatest pleasure, and it is they that we so humbly serve.
We'd love to hear from anyone interested in what we do. Anyone who writes us at writingteamcw@yahoo.com (Write - Blog Dawn - in subject line) and leaves an s-mail address, we will send you a free ebook (choose erotic or romantic thriller) and add you to any future mailings.
Angelica Hart and Zi ~ Vixen Bright and Zachary Zane
www.champagnebooks.com - www.carnalpassions.com - angelicahartandzi.com
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