I know there are bad things in the world. I know that bad things happen every day. But I am not at peace with the knowledge and I never will be. I have a hard time accepting it.

I’m working on my latest novel again after a long pause to focus on making jewelry and selling it. The work on the novel has begun with re-reading what I’ve written so far.

I have a character that is despicable in just about every way. It’s been hard to write those chapters and somewhat unpleasant to re-read them.

And I wouldn’t write such things, but the thing is we want heroes. We want to think about the good that can be done. In order to present someone as a hero, there has to be a villain of some sort. It could be the weather, and AI program, or even an animal. Doesn’t necessarily have to be a human.

But often the most compelling villains are the human ones. The individuals that could be your next door neighbor; going about their villainy with a human intelligence that requires a greater human intelligence to thwart them.

My current novel is titled “With a Little Luck” and is the sequel to “As Luck Might have It” which I have self-published. The first, what I think of as Orwell Gasteyer novels, also had a despicable character or two in it, but did not descend to the depths that this one most likely will.

I think it is one of the reasons I stopped working on it for a while. Well, that and working on the Etsy shop. I feel like it’s just going to get worse … much worse … before I finish it. And I wonder if I have it in me.

I don’t know how it is for other authors, but my stories are driven by the characters. I get them sort of set in my mind. Personalities, values, and that sort of thing. And then I let them interact. So even though I am the architect of the story, I’m never 100% certain about where it’s going and where it will end up.

While I always like a happy ending, it’s not a given. But there will be justice. I can’t write it any other way.

Images courtesy of Collider and QuoteFancy, respectively.