Barry Lyga's Blog: The BLog, page 3

When is a serial not a serial killer? When you’re just not 100% sure…!

The conventional wisdom among those who hunt serial killers is that you have to have killed at least three people with some amount of time in between the murders in order to be considered a serial killer. Which puts Wayne Williams in an interesting position.

See, Wayne was only convicted of two murders, committed in Atlanta in 1981. So that would seem to exclude him from the serial killer club. But Wayne was credibly believed to be responsible for TWENTY-FOUR murders of children in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981, a series of crimes dubbed the Atlanta Child Murders.

No one could ever prove it, but then again, no one else was ever convicted of those crimes. So we’re going to let him in on a technicality.

The Wayne Williams case is interesting for many reasons, but I first came across it while reading John Douglas’s memoir, Mindhunter. Williams was the case that helped profilers understand that serial killers tend to hunt within their racial group. Wayne Williams is Black, and so were his victims. Initially, police assumed that the killer was white, figuring the murders were committed by a racist. But Douglas and his team realized that the murders took place in a majority Black neighborhoods. A white dude would stand out. And no witnesses said anything about a white guy in the areas in question.

So it made sense, then, that the killer was Black. Someone who wouldn’t be noticed as out of place in the neighborhood.

I find the notion that serial killers tend to go after their own race fascinating and I used it a few times in I Hunt Killers. Billy, of course, was sort of an exception to that rule.

There is a metric ton of media out there about Wayne Williams. If you’re interested in more information about him, his Wikipedia page is a good place to start.

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Here’s the opening scene to something I’m noodling around with, a YA thriller tentatively titled AFTERMATH…

I thought it was all over and that maybe I could start to move on (ha!) and then Mr. Williams came to me one night. Late. My parents were asleep and I was pacing the house because sleep and I were mortal enemies at this point. Seventeen years old and I was certain that I would never again have a good night’s sleep. My nights would be long, silent stretches of frustration larded atop fear, until the pressure of the two finally forced me to pass out somewhere far from the shores of midnight.

There were drugs to help, of course. I’d been offered them. They worked. Sort of.

Pacing the house. Because at some point, you’ve stared at your phone too much and you start to resent the bedroom. When hardcore insomnia is your boon companion, you learn to wander. And when your parents and younger sister are all light sleepers, you learn to tiptoe. So that was me, for weeks, a creeping shadow in my own home.

That night, the night Mr. Williams came and started it all, I was in the living room, staring at the blank, gray rectangular eye of the TV. I could have turned it on, but there was no point. It’s not that it would keep me up — life was doing that just fine — but rather that TV didn’t soothe. It wouldn’t help me sleep, and anything that wouldn’t help me sleep was useless to me.

My phone blipped at me. I stared down at it, confused. It was almost three in the morning, and it had been a while since I’d seen 3:15am, so I was hoping I’d zonk out soon. But that little blip shook me out of my staring contest with the quiescent TV and I gawped stupidly at the text notification for a few seconds before swiping it open.

Fel Dad: Are you awake?

I never even considered not answering. I tapped Yes.

Fel Dad: I’m outside.

I wondered if this was a waking dream. Or maybe just a plain old sleeping one masquerading as the waking world. But I drifted over to the steps, down into the foyer, and peered out the peephole. I recognized Mr. Williams, of course. He had been telling me to call him Brad ever since my third date with Fel. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, though. He was Mr. Williams, for God’s sake.

He wore a denim jacket and baggy sweatpants. He hadn’t shaved in a while and it didn’t look like the sort of carefully cultivated face-shrub Millennial dads go for. It just looked sloppy and tired and sad.

Sort of like Mr. Williams. And me.

I turned off the alarm, wincing at the loud Alarm…Off! pronouncement that I hoped wouldn’t waken anyone, then slipped outside.

“Mr. Williams.”

“Brad,” he said.

“Right. Sure.”

He jammed his hands in his pockets and said nothing. I joined him in silence. Better with someone than not, right? Two dudes unable to sleep, being quiet dudes together.

“It’s about Fel,” he said, staring off into the night. Too much light pollution for stars. My dad once told me that when he was a kid, you could look up in the sky and see something other than the occasional plane or satellite. I suppose that’s nice. Sort of like a movie.

“I miss her, too, Mr. Williams.”

“No, no, it’s not that.” He drew in a breath, then blew it out in a long, shuddery stream, as though he couldn’t quite bear to let it go. I knew the feeling. Sometimes I inhaled and just held it there for a while. Just to feel like there was something I could hold onto that couldn’t be taken away until I decided to let it go.

“He didn’t kill her.”

I choked on my exhale, and in a moment, I was there again. Skidding around the corner to the band room. I had a text from Jonah that Carson was down by the gym and I totally broke lockdown to haul ass to the band room because Fel had texted me from there when it all began. So I was the first one to see.

Well, second, if you count Carson, who’s fucking dead now, and good on him for that. The one good thing Carson did with his life was end it.

Skidding around the corner. There’s the smell of brass instruments and bow rosin and something else underneath, something we all know from super-cold days and nosebleeds.

“Mr. Williams…”

“Brad.” There was a bite to his voice. A harshness in his tone. Like it mattered — really mattered — that I call him Brad.

“I saw her. I was…I was there.”

He glanced at me with something like pity. Close, but not quite. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe he regretted making me relive the moment in the band room. He shouldn’t have. I relived the moment all the time. It was constant. An overlay on everything else I thought and saw and remembered. He might as well regret making me breathe.

“I know you were. I know what you saw.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. I’m a little drunk.”

I hadn’t realized. My parents don’t really drink, so most of what I know about drunk people comes from movies and TV, which I guess exaggerates a lot. Because Mr. Williams seemed pretty sober to me. He wasn’t slurring his speech or moving herky-jerky or anything like that.

“Carson Mathers did not kill Felicity, Gabe.”

He stared into my eyes as he said it. I swallowed like I’d bitten off part of the fork.

“Mr. Williams—”

“Brad,” he growled.

“I came around the corner and she was—”

—she was covered in her own blood. She was sprawled on the floor of the band room. There were sheets of music scattered all around her and two music stands knocked to the floor near her. Her long blonde hair covered her face, the ends fanned out in a slick of blood. I knew the moment I saw her, but I ran to her anyway, stupidly screaming her name

(Stupidly because for all I knew Carson was right around the corner with his dad’s AR, ready to pop back in and put ten thousand rounds into my dumb ass.)

and racing to her side.

Until you’ve slipped in your girlfriend’s own blood, you haven’t really experienced hell.

His eyes were furious and blazing as he glared at me. Was it alcohol? Again, I’d never really seen a drunk, much less a mean one. Was Mr. Williams going to haul off and pound the living hell out of me if I didn’t agree to his ridiculous statement that Fel hadn’t been killed that day?

“We buried her,” I told him, speaking slowly. Some part of me knew that if I yelled loud enough, my parents would hear and wake up. Probably in time to pull Mr. Williams off me, if it came to that. “We buried her and she—”

He laughed. It was short and ugly, but still recognizable as a laugh.

“I know that, Gabe. I know she’s dead. I’m not saying… I’m just saying Carson’s not the one who killed her.”

Funnily, we could have gone on for quite a while that night, going back and forth like one of those old vaudeville routines my dad watches on YouTube. But in that moment, it all clicked for me and it all made perfect sense.

Carson had killed six that day. Not seven.

Someone else had killed Fel.

For Superman Day, here’s the cover to one of my favorite Superman stories, penned by Paul Kupperberg towards the end of the pre-Crisis era. In a single issue, Kupperberg summarizes everything that matters about the Man of Steel…with nary a villain in sight. Gorgeous stuff. I highly recommend reading it. It’s a deceptively simple tale with a powerful message that really gets to the core of the Man of Steel in a way too few stories have done since its publication in 1985.

Side Quest is a companion limited series to AppleTV+’s Mythic Quest. It explores some of the side characters (get it?) and those whose lives intersect with the main show’s premise in some way. I really liked these little mini-movies, even though the comic book episode triggered some of my comic book store PTSD! (I still don’t have Miracleman #15 or The Shadow#3 from back in the eighties!)

I am really, really digging the Slough House novels of Mick Herron. Yes, I know I came to them late! Better late than never, though, right? A bunch of British spies who’ve somehow messed up get assigned to the drudgery of the Slough House branch, where they get to do boring busywork and nothing of any import…until they stumble across some perfidy that maybe — just maybe! — they can rectify. But remember — these people are screw-ups, so it’s not gonna be easy…

I also dig the AppleTV+ show based on the books, which does a terrific job adapting the twists and turns and mordant hilarity of Herron’s prose into action.

When I speak at schools, one of the most popular subjects I discuss is, of course, serial killers. And I usually start off by talking about some serial killer fun facts (well, as fun as they can be!) that I discovered during the course of my research for I Hunt Killers.

It occurred to me the other day that I’ve never written these down. So now here they are, for you, my newsletter audience!

1) According to law enforcement, you can only be defined as a serial killer if you have at least 3 victims over an extended period of time. Both of those elements are important! Kill two people? You’re not a serial killer! (You’re still not someone I will invite to my house, though.) Kill three or more people all at once or in a brief period of time? Still not a serial killer — you’re a spree killer in that case. You have to have many victims and have breaks in between to qualify.

(Look, I don’t make the rules…!)2) Between 1920-50, serial murder was rare in the United States. Then, from 1982-89, there was suddenly a massive, 270% increase! What the heck happened in the eighties? Was it MTV? The hairspray? Those shoulder pads? Or heck — maybe it’s just that the rate was always really high…and in the eighties, the reporting got better. Doesn’t that put you at ease now?

3) The last estimate that I saw guessed that there are about 35 serial killers active and hunting in the U.S. at any point in time. Which isn’t nearly as many as TV would have you believe…but still a lot, right?

4) Serial killers come in all shapes, sizes, races, and genders…but they are overwhelmingly white men in their thirties and forties. (I have now aged out of that demographic, but believe me, when I was giving these talks a few years ago, I got a LOT of mileage out it!)

5) 76% of the world’s serial killers…are in the United States. More than three-quarters! If there was an Olympic event for serial murder, the U.S. would take the gold every single time. Make America Great Again???

6) Everything we know about serial killers — every book you’ve ever read, every TV show or movie you’ve ever watched, every true crime podcast — comes from interviews conducted with serial killers in captivity. Interviews conducted with the ones willing to talk, that is. And here’s the thing: Serial killers lie. They lie compulsively. Inveterately. Obsessively. So…what I’m saying is that we may not understand them as well as we think we do.

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I made a silly little video…

@barrylyga

(Reposting because somehow music got added…?) I wrote a story so messed up that I can’t escape it! Unless…maybe… Get your own copy, and be haunted, too! ORDER: ➡️ https://www.amazon.com/Before-Hunt-Ba... ➡️ https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/befo... ➡️ https://bookshop.org/p/books/before-t... #beforethehunt #ihuntkillers #barrylyga #ihuntkillerstrilogy #thrillers #mysteries #authorsoftiktok #booktok #ihuntkillersbooks

♬ original sound – Barry Lyga

A planet where it rains sapphires and rubies? Nope, not the latest sci-fi novel — it’s a part of our own reality…

Welcome to Tylos, a world that orbits its sun so closely that its temperature causes insane climatological effects, including — yeah — precious gems dropping from the sky. Given that the temps routinely hit three thousand degrees Fahrenheit, it’s not like you’d want to go gem-catching, though.

Here’s more: Planet’s Record-Smashing Iron Wind Hides a Climate Unlike Anything We’ve Seen

Thanks to Ada Palmer on Bluesky for the link!

(This piece comes from my newsletter, which goes out monthly. For more stuff like this, and to get it first, sign up here!)

Yes, it’s yet another one of those “distraction-free” writing gadgets. This one is a Japanese import being readied for the American market. I have complicated feelings about these sorts of things. I would never use one, but damn aren’t they cool???

Here’s The Verge on the device.

Here’s its Indigogo page.

Came across this in my folder stuffed full of I Hunt Killers files and realized almost none of you would have ever seen it. It’s a piece I wrote for The Big Thrill, which is the newsletter of the International Thriller Writers, a society of… You know, I bet you can guess.

Anyway, I wrote this piece on the occasion of the publication of Blood of My Blood. Enjoy!

“Watch out for the Ewoks,” my brother told me.

Let me explain.

The time: A couple of years ago. The topic: The third and final book in my thriller series I Hunt Killers, titled Blood of My Blood. The book hits shelves on September 9, but at the time of the conversation with my brother, I had just begun writing it.

“Watch out for the Ewoks.”

The I Hunt Killers series takes place very much on earth, in the present day, with nary a lightsaber, hyperdrive, Jedi, or Bantha in sight. It tells the story of Jasper “Jazz” Dent, the son of Billy Dent, the world’s most notorious serial killer, and his quest to figure out if he’s been damned by nature and by nurture to follow in his father’s footsteps. It’s gruesome, intense, and very, very down to earth.

So why was my brother exhorting me to beware the fuzzy alien critters from Return of the Jedi?

It’s my own damn fault. You see, when I wrote the second book in the series, Game, I ended it on not one, not two, but three cliffhangers, leaving all three of the major characters in serious life-or-death jeopardy: Jazz shot and left to die in a New York City storage unit. His best friend Howie bleeding out on the floor of Jazz’s own home. And Jazz’s girlfriend Connie, worst of all, in the clutches of Billy himself.

My editor was leery of Game’s cliffhangers. She was worried readers would be upset and, sure enough, when the book hit, my email inbox and Twitter timeline clogged with readers ranting, imploring, and wheedling. It was just the passionate reaction I was looking for: If readers don’t feel invested in your characters and in your story, all the cliffhangers in the world won’t get a reaction out of them.

“How could you do this to me?” they screamed at me.

And almost every time, I responded, “This is the middle part of the story. When things go bad for the heroes. It’s like The Empire Strikes Back. Luke loses a hand, Han gets frozen and carted away. Things fall apart.”

I was happy with my answer, but something lurked in the back of my mind until my brother’s chance comment brought to the fore:

“Yeah, you pulled off Empire,” he said to me when I began writing Blood of My Blood. “Watch out for the Ewoks.”

The Ewoks. Those annoying, too-adorable-by-a-half, ridiculous merchandising opportunities masking as characters from Jedi! I’d hated them as a kid seeing the movie and I hated them still.

After Empire, I waited with bated breath for years to see the resolution to the story. And George Lucas, in his eternal wisdom, fed me Ewoks.

And I wondered: Was I going to do the same? Had I given my readers a triple dose of cliffhanger fever that I would try to cure with the metaphorical equivalent of walking alien teddy bears?

Oh, God, please! No! Anything but that!

It’s one thing to set up a cliffhanger. Any idiot can do that, and I was three times the idiot at the end of Game. But now I had to not only resolve those cliffhangers, but also deliver a satisfying ending to the story as a whole.

I suddenly felt an enormous amount of sympathy for the much-maligned Mr. Lucas. Granted, the entire population of the planet isn’t waiting for Blood of My Blood the way everyone in the world waited for Jedi back in the eighties, but still. I felt a kinship with him.

Momentarily, at least. Because at the end of the day, I knew my ending. I’d conjured it years before, in the early stages of writing the first novel. I’d even written the entire epilogue while working on Game, so that I could just slot it in when I was ready. And — miracle of miracles! — that epilogue still fit when I got to it.

Knowing the ending in advance meant that I had a goal to shoot for. It meant that I’d laid out all of the paving stones — and some landmines! — for myself through the first two books. And now I only had to follow them.

Follow them I did. And now Blood of My Blood, the culmination of five years of work on my part, hits shelves and the hands of readers. I should probably be nervous, but I’m actually pretty calm. Whether the story is any good or not is, of course, up to each individual reader to decide. But I’m proud of the ending to the whole bloody mess. There’s no last-minute Death Star run, but there are betrayals and traps and twists and, yes, quite a bit of blood.

No Ewoks, though. I’m pretty damn sure of that.

(This piece comes from my newsletter, which goes out monthly. For more stuff like this, and to get it first, sign up here!)