More so than horror movies or novels.

As a writer, I don't think I could ever manage to fully write about the atrocities people commit against one another in real life--if that makes sense. I know there's an old saying about life imitating art, but is it really true in novels, movies?

I was once challenged in a creative writing class I was teaching by a student who voiced her opinion, claiming that she couldn't read most of today's mystery and horror novels, not even mine, because of the "dreadful things that happen to characters in them." The following day I brought her the crime column from the local newspaper. It seems a man attacked his wife with a screwdriver, stabbing her multiple times. The screwdriver was stuck in one of her eyes when she was brought into the hospital ER. In another article, a gang member was killed by a rival gang in the following fashion: he was strapped to a bed in a basement and several ravenously hungry dogs were let in to devour him. This might seem graphically shocking, but these things happened in real life.

And that scares the hell out of me more than what most writers dream up. Except for Godsend--that was reality in its basest form. But trust me, there will be something in the local news to outdo that movie. Some horror story about real life cloning gone insane.

One more thing: Unholy Alliance, my first mystery thriller, was frightening because I used Jeffrey Dahmer as a basis for my stalker. Most people remember him and the real life atrocities he committed, so I went to real life for an unnerving thriller.