Murder, Mayhem and Motherhood

I’d never had a problem with murder until I gave birth.

I used to watch Law & Order: SVU religiously. Not to mention Criminal Minds and Bones and anything else with a dead body in it. My ex claimed that the grislier the crime the more I liked it. He thought I was disturbed. (This coming from a guy whose college nicknames had been “Psycho” and “Manson.”) I read Mind Hunter and The Anatomy of Motive by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker. I wanted to know what made serial killers tick.

Not to mention rapists, child abductors, arsonists…

Even my kitty Cookie loves Law & Order, although she prefers the original.

On an ideal weekend afternoon I’d cozy up with a cup of green tea and something like Fatal Vision, The Monster of Florence or Entering Hades. I always read the crime stories that popped up on the internet.  I grew obsessed with whatever sensational murder was currently in the news.

My favorite novel: Crime and Punishment.

And then, I birthed a child.

When I discovered that I was expecting, I seriously considered naming my child either Agatha or Sherlock . I’m not even joking. My darling husband nixed both. I swore I wouldn’t let motherhood change me though. I wouldn’t start wearing mom jeans. I would continue drinking my coffee black and I would certainly not stop…watching TV shows in which children get murdered???

But motherhood did change me, almost immediately.

Suddenly, I couldn’t read about crimes online anymore, especially anything involving children.

Suddenly, I couldn’t stomach TV that was “ripped from the headlines.”

Suddenly, I couldn’t drink my coffee black.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal to most people. But I’m a writer, and, among other things, I write mysteries. My first novel (Swimming Alone, which will be released this fall by Fire & Ice,) features a serial killer. I wrote a comic play about the guillotine.  I’ve written short stories that feature gruesome murders, some even from the murderer’s perspective.

I decided I would have to stay away from crime stories for a while.

But even though Olivia Benson had been banished, I couldn’t keep death off my mind.  As a new mother, I became obsessed with disaster. Staircases, strollers and sidewalks all posed a threat—more so than any sketchy stranger we might pass on the street. I was more afraid of myself. My clumsiness. My feeble arms. My sleep-deprived mind. I was terrified that post-partum psychosis would creep up onto me, and I would do something horrific.

I had another great fear as well. Of course I wanted to keep my baby away from monsters, but what if I accidentally birthed one?

Ted Bundy was a baby once. So was Hitler. What if my obsession with the macabre had somehow seeped into my amniotic fluid and warped her brain? At least with all of the reading I had done on the topic, I would know what signs to look for. The bed wetting, the fire starting, the torturing of small animals.

Hmmm… was she trying to pet the cat, or intentionally pulling out his hair?

It was alarming to discover that my spawn has a will of her own. Unlike the characters in my stories, I would not able to control her every move.

I needed to get away from all these thoughts. Reading had always been my escape, but as much as I love her books, Sandra Boynton wasn’t doing the trick. I needed a good crime novel. What was I to do?

A friend recommended Laurie R. King’s The Bones of Paris. Would I be able to read a book in which the detective has to “descend into the darkest depths of perversion to find a killer” with a sleeping baby in my arms?

I was amazed to discover that I could. Apparently, my new-mommy brain could handle reading crime fiction. These imaginary atrocities helped me to stop obsessing about everything that could possibly happen to my baby. And isn’t that why we read crime novels? Because, somehow, made up massacres and monsters help us escape a world in which real ones exist.

I haven’t sat down to write another mystery story yet, but I think that day will come. Because I can control the world in my stories, and I won’t always be able to control hers.