Mushroom Cloud

I am a huge Law & Order fan. It's my one guilty pleasure. Well, no there's another one. I watch QVC but never buy anything--just marvel at how their spokespeople can get SO excited over fifteen different ways to wear a scarf. It's my Comedy Central. But aside from that, Law & Order is my one TV pleasure. I don't ever watch it first-run. I watch it in reruns when I am too tired to read or knit and just want to veg for an hour. Since I have seen most of the re-runs, I always know who the bad guy is. I watch it, as a writer, more for the cops . . . and the DAs . . . and the various relationships and how they are depicted. My favorite cops are Munch . . . and Goren (two different shows). And in thinking about Goren, I thought the show gives a classic example of how to create a book you can't put down. Because recently, poor Bobby had a mushroom cloud explode in his life.

[STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.]


Goren found out his real biological father was a serial killer.

Holy CRAP!


[OKAY YOU CAN READ AGAIN.]


I find often the most dramatic books that keep you turning pages have mushroom clouds like that. Some Gound Zero event so devastating that the cloud can be seen and felt for miles.

It doesn't have to be an act of violence--though it can be. It can be something as simple as discovering a previously unknown secret about someone--the husband having an affair, the parent who lied to you for years. It can send a person searching through ash wondering how they missed the clues or desperate to get out of the fallout.

Add to that the real issue at hand.

Because the mushroom cloud is rarely what drives the plot. All it gives you is the ash and fallout against which to write the story. In the case of Goren, the question of his father's been answered--now how does he live his life with that knowledge?

In my Billie Quinn books, Billie's mother was murdered years before. It was the mushroom cloud that devastated her father and cast a shadow over her and her brother's lives. Like all mushroom clouds, there was a life before the explosion and fallout, and there's a life after, but the two bear absolutely no resemblance to each other. That's how powerful the mushroom cloud is.

Lately, in my fiction and works-in-progress, I seem to be gravitating toward this theme. The dramatic possibilities. I suppose it's because I believe that people who come through the mushroom cloud events of their own lives and endure . . . are people who found something inside themselves that didn't let them give up. Those kinds of people interest me.

Thoughts?