On Death Note and Drayners

Note: This blog was originally published on my MySpace blog, June 18, 2007.

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Lately I've been reading Death Note, and I think it might be influencing my writing. The central character—Light Yagami—is a sexy, brilliant mass murderer, and you somehow end up rooting for him to achieve his megalomaniacal dreams. You even love him for it.

Okay, the "love" part might just be me, and I'd rather not delve too deeply into what that means. So moving on:

Since I've started reading this manga, my own writing has gotten a bit...hmm...darker. In Want Me, Walker Cain casts a spell that locks on to Joel's will and drags him into reality-shifting sex over and over. To add to the angst (and let's face it—horror), Walker steals everything that Joel believes is good about his life. The guy's insane, yet that perfect, unrepentant insanity kinda makes you like him.

Want Me is a wrenching novel, and I figured I'd stay shiny from there on out. But last week I sold a short story to Dark Eden Press, and there I was, reveling on the dark side.

I wouldn't call this one wrenching, but I think that's more a factor of point-of-view than story content. Where Want Me was told through the eyes of the victim, Just Wait is told from the PoV of Travis Drayner, who has no qualms about "borrowing" the physical attributes of other people and absorbing them into his own body. His twin brother Mark is even more powerful—he can take what he likes and he can keep it. But does Travis want him to stop stealing? Nope. Travis aches to see just how far his brother can go.

You can't help yourself from liking Trav, though. He's freaking adorable, despite the fact that meeting him and his brother in real life would probably scare the hell out of anyone with a decent sense of self-preservation. Light Yagami is sexy because he's imaginary (at least, I hope that's why he's sexy), and the same goes for Drayners.

This new tone in my writing might just be a phase—I've finished volume seven (gaw!) of Death Note, and there are only twelve in the series. Either way, I don't mind one bit. Walking on the dark side is fun. After all, that's where the good cookies are. And apples. Lots and lots of apples.

Okay, the forbidden fruit thing is definitely Death Note influenced. But oh, it was so much fun working it into my Drayner story. It should be coming out soon—I don't have a release date yet. So if you want to see how I worked apples into it, you'll just have to...well...wait.