Clicking Our Heels – Crimes We’ve Avoided Writing About

Clicking Our Heels – Crime We’ve Avoided Writing About

Each member of the Stiletto Gang has dragged their heels in the dirt rather than write about certain types of crime, but if we did, we’d have to develop a special protagonist or antagonist.

T.K. Thorne – Murder has been my go-to crime, although I have written about others in the course of telling stories—rape, theft, and some crimes that have no name have found their way in there! I have a very competent police officer, who is also a witch, to deal with them. (House of Rose, House of Stone, and House of Iron.)

Lois Winston – Because I write humorous cozy mysteries, I don’t write about certain crimes, especially ones involving children. I won’t read about them, either. They give me nightmares. I’d never want to get into the mind of someone so depraved as to commit such crimes.

Saralyn Richard– One of my novels deals with sex trafficking, but I’ve stayed away from sex crimes like rape. A novel about rape would require a different protagonist, antagonist, AND author.

Donnell Ann Bell – I am not a fan of sexual or physical abuse or writing about it. As a former volunteer victims’ advocate, I know what victims endure. If abuse is part of a character’s backstory, I do my best to place it off scene. I’m not a fan of gratuitous anything in any form.

Bethany Maines – I recently wrote a short romance story and had the hardest time not having any crime. Crime makes everything fun. So let’s run through the list… murder (solved by an ex-CIA agent and his granddaughter), criminal organization with all the drug dealing and trafficking that goes with it (mob enforcer and the high school’s fixer go toe to toe with a mob boss), diamond smuggling (struggling dog walker and TV news cameraman catch feelings and the bad guys), murder and white collar crime (the Deveraux cousins all take a swing at this Big Pharma baddie) and of course there are the paranormal shenanigans that require some witches, wolves, and selkies to keep the world from disaster.

Paula G. Benson – Suffocation. I wonder about a protagonist and antagonist who have been co-workers on an auto assembly line as the air bag was being developed. Why would one focus on it as lifesaving and the other see its deadly potential?

Debra H. Goldstein – I’m an equal opportunity crime user, but I prefer not to write about children or animals being injured or killed. If I did, I would have to give my protagonist a good reason to save the day and my antagonist a better reason for being deviant.

Donalee Moulton – I don’t do gruesome, at least I haven’t to date. That is partly because I dread having to do research into some of these topics. It’s also because would prefer not to dwell on the dark underbelly. That said, I can see I time coming when the underbelly may demand a scratch or two.

Gay Yellen – My novels deal mainly with homicides, but the tone is ultimately light-hearted, so Samantha Newman is an amateur sleuth and the killers often multi-task with fraud, petty theft, and plain old fibbing.

Judy Penz Sheluk – I’ve never included a cat burglar, but if I were to do it, I’d like to emulate something along the lines of the very clever 1960s Robert Wagner /Fred Astaire TV series, It Takes a Thief.

Mary Lee Ashford (1/2 Sparkle Abbey) – Although I spent the last several years of my public service career in IT, I’ve not tackled a cybercrime in any of my stories. It could be an interesting premise, right. There are so many possibilities. But I’d need a super smart villain and a tech savvy protagonist with mad skills to set up the story. Still thinking on this one…

Barbara J. Eikmeier – Something on a farm that seems like part of the daily operation but over time could become toxic. A death could easily look accidental.

Anita Clark (1/2 of Sparkle Abbey) – I haven’t dealt with crimes that involve children. I just can’t go there and can’t imagine I ever will.