he should come meet his fifteen-year-old son.
I have absolutely no idea where the questions driving my stories come from. But I suspect it’s my characters themselves who, wrestling with a particular dilemma, come to me—and you, dear readers—looking for answers. But here’s the kicker: Your advice to them and my advice might not be the same. What you feel is right might not be what another reader feels is right or what I feel is right.
And that was the worry I had while working on Call It Magic.
Rape is a very sensitive subject to broach, and tragically for some, very personal. Even more tragic, it appears to be growing prevalent, especially with the advent of date-rape drugs. (Or maybe cable news and social media simply make it appear that way by finally bringing it out in the open.) And although it’s more often presented as a young people’s problem, anyone of any age can find themselves victimized. Not just once, either, but again in the court of social media, where everyone is free to shout their personal opinion as to whether or not the victim should have known better or even had in some way asked for it.
But I wish to draw your attention to another—and what I consider equally polarizing—question I hadn’t anticipated but nonetheless found myself pondering within days of Katy and Gunnar showing up on my creative doorstep.
And that would be, is Katy MacBain a murderer?
Would you consider it murder if a person knew that someone should immediately go see a doctor but didn’t tell them and that someone keeled over dead less than a month later? Even if the bastard had been raping the person at the time she discovered he had an aneurysm getting ready to burst inside his vile, perverted brain?
I imagine the answer is fairly cut and dry for some of you, in that of course Katy should have told him. For others of you, I can almost hear you applauding her decision.
So, you ask, do I believe Katy should have told him?
Honest to God—I. Still. Don’t. Know.
And you know what? I don’t think I want or even need to know. And you know why? Because I feel that that particular decision, having to be made in this particular situation, is nobody’s business but Katy’s. And I really don’t want to be one of those people shouting on social media what she should or should not have done since I wasn’t there and I’m not her.
This has never really happened to me before, as I always seem to be able to write my way to an answer. And because I couldn’t this time, you came very close to never seeing this book.
But then I thought, wait, I know you people. We’ve been through quite a lot together over the last fourteen years. And you’re really not reading my stories to hear my opinion of what my characters should do; you’re reading them to draw your own conclusions as to what you would do in their situation. I decided to hand in Call It Magic despite my concern, because—big sigh—I trust you. I have faith that you are all capable of drawing your own conclusions without needing to hear mine as to whether Katy was right or wrong to withhold her information. Then again, some questions are simply unanswerable. And yet again, some answers change over time. (It wasn’t all that long ago women were considered too—oh, let’s go with—uninformed to vote. And too scatterbrained, emotional, unpredictable, physically weak—pick one, any one—to operate heavy equipment, pilot commercial jets, captain ships, fight fires, or wear a badge and carry a gun. Heck, we apparently used to be too dumb to be doctors and lawyers and CEOs of mega-companies, much less capable of running an entire country. Thank God we’ve come a long way, baby. There’re still more glass ceilings to shatter, but we’re slowly and surely getting there.)
Wow. Guess I’m not shy about voicing my opinion on some things.
Anyhoo; I started down this long-winded path for the sole purpose of thanking you in advance (I’m writing this letter almost a year before you’re reading it) for not getting upset that I don’t neatly tie up every little loose end in my stories. Because, you know, sometimes it’s just not possible. (And sometimes I do it on purpose, just so you can pick your own endings to some of the more minor messes my characters get themselves into. Yup, I confess, I’ve done that more