Clicking Our Heels – Have You Ever Killed a Real Person Off in Your Books?

Clicking Our Heels – Have You Ever Killed a Real Person Off in Your Books? If So, How and Why?

Teresa Thorne – Not yet, but watch out!

Saralyn Richard – I haven’t exactly killed off a real person, but in A Murder of Principal a maverick principal comes to an urban high school with an unpopular student-centered agenda and is victimized. Because I worked as an administrator at urban high schools, and one, in particular, for many years, I knew people would try to match up the murder victim with one of the real-live people in the school. I went to him before I wrote the book and made sure he was okay with the book’s premise and whatever assumptions people might make about his being the model for the character. His reply was, “I would be honored to be represented in your book, even if you kill me off.”

Donalee Moulton – All the deaths in my books are fictional, both interestingly by hanging. In Hung Out to Die, the victim’s death was intended to look like a suicide. In Conflagration!, the enslaved Black woman accused of burning down the entire lower town of Montreal in 1734 was sentenced to death by hanging. She was then burned at the stake. Reality can be so much more brutal that fiction.

Kathleen Kaska – No.

Donnell Ann Bell – No. But I have had people contact me and request to be the murderer in my books. I use their name (with permission) and they for some reason are delighted! 🙂

Debra H. Goldstein – Yes, but I’ll never tell because I’d have to kill you, too.

Judy Penz Sheluk – Gosh, no, though I will say I’ve been sorely tempted. I have managed to exact revenge in a two of my short stories. ‘Live Free or Die’ (included in Live Free or Tri) and ‘The Last Chance Coalition’ (in Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers) were both inspired by true events. It was very cathartic to get even all these many years later, if only on paper.

Lois Winston – Yes, but I held no animosity toward the person in real life and didn’t use his real name. He was a neighbor from about twenty-five years ago. I write humorous mysteries and couldn’t pass up the chance to immortalize his quirkiness in Seams Like the Perfect Crime, the 14th book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries. When I began the book, I didn’t intend to kill him, but as I wrote, it became evident that he’d be the perfect victim for the book.

Bethany Maines – I don’t think I’ve actually killed anyone off, but I have made several real people be the butt of a joke or made them look stupid. One was an English teacher who said I wasn’t very creative.
/Gay Yellen – All victims from my mystery series are fictional, though some have characteristics of people I’ve known: a young woman from a small town who couldn’t cope with a highstakes
job in the big city, an egotistic journalist, and a male chauvinist.
Mary Lee Ashford – I have not killed a real person off. I’ve considered auctioning off an opportunity to be a victim but in the end decided against it. Though when I first started writing mystery, I was working on a project where the first line was, “It was a regular day at City Hall, except for the dead body in the lobby.” And I have to say the victim varied depending on who was behaving badly that day. Of course, none of that made it into the actual book. And my lips are sealed.