Barry Lyga's Blog: The BLog, page 4

You may or may not remember the Spider-Man musical from years ago, Turn off the Dark. I saw it once in previews and then once when it had actually debuted. I am not much of a Broadway connoisseur, so I can’t speak competently to how the show compares to other musicals, but I enjoyed it for the most part, while still very much aware of its substantial flaws. Still, it’s hard to go wrong with Spidey and the Green Goblin actually flying over your head as they fight to the death.

The original writer of the beleaguered show, Glen Berger, wrote a wild memoir about his time working with director Julie Taymor and composers Bono and the Edge. If you’re at all interested in the show, it’s well worth a read!

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To be considered a serial killer, you have to kill at least three people. Look, I don’t make the rules, OK?

Richard Otto Macek — the Mad Biter — got into the club by the skin of his —

Well, no. Not gonna say that.

When I was researching I Hunt Killers, the very first book I read was My Life Among the Serial Killers, by Dr. Helen Morrison. Morrison was a psychiatrist who did some of the first early work in trying to understand serial killers, so hers was a seminal volume and really helped me get into Billy’s head. In later years, some people quibbled with her work and her conclusions, but I wasn’t writing a treatise — I was writing fiction. She was helpful in the early going as I was generating context.

She also has John Wayne Gacy’s brain in a jar in her basement. As you do.

Her writing about Macek was interesting because he was the first serial killer she encountered. Macek became obsessed with her and apparently at one point thought she was his wife. Weird.

Anyway, you can imagine why he was called the Mad Biter: Yes, dude liked to chew on the people he’d killed. He even worked his jaws on a couple of people he didn’t finish the job with.

In the end, we are aware of three deaths attributable to him (including a young child), as well as some assaults that did not end in deaths. Macek was caught, tried, and imprisoned. In 1987, he did us all a favor and hanged himself with his shoelaces.

Here’s his Wikipedia page.

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I can’t believe it! After more than ten years, the I Hunt Killers prequels are finally in print, along with a truly disturbing new story, “Ugly J and the Beautiful Day.”

Some advance readers have already posted their thoughts:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “[the new story is] a fascinating insight on one of the most interesting characters of the series. I honestly just so thoroughly enjoyed revisiting the characters after so long and this is obviously a must read for any fan.” — Oblivionsdream on Goodreads, 5-star review

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “it was great to be able to revisit these characters and learn more of their back stories” — Karen on Goodreads, 5-star review

“These stories are so monumentally f*cked up. And I mean that in the best possible way” — @wild_hearts_ on TikTok

“Barry Lyga does it again! A prequel worthy of I Hunt Killers, one of my all-time favorite YA thrillers!” —Kami Garcia, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Creatures and Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity

So…what are you waiting for? Buy your copy today!

Amazon | KindleBarnes & NobleBookshop.org (to support independent bookstores!)

BUT WAIT — THERE’S MORE!

This isn’t the end — it’s only the beginning! Jasper Dent, son of Billy, is keeping the world safe from killers like his father in a whole new series.

You read that right. I have a whole new series in the works for Jazz. And as I work on writing these delightfully disturbing stories, I need your help spreading the word about why you love I Hunt Killers and the Jasper Dent world!

More news to come!

Hey, there, Goodreads folks! I am giving away 10 copies of Before the Hunt…along with copies of I Hunt Killers!

 

.goodreadsGiveawayWidget { color: #555; font-family: georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; font-size: 14px;<br /> font-style: normal; background: white; }<br /> .goodreadsGiveawayWidget p { margin: 0 0 .5em !important; padding: 0; }<br /> .goodreadsGiveawayWidgetEnterLink {<br /> display: inline-block;<br /> color: #181818;<br /> background-color: #F6F6EE;<br /> border: 1px solid #9D8A78;<br /> border-radius: 3px;<br /> font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;<br /> font-weight: bold;<br /> text-decoration: none;<br /> outline: none;<br /> font-size: 13px;<br /> padding: 8px 12px;<br /> }<br /> .goodreadsGiveawayWidgetEnterLink:hover {<br /> color: #181818;<br /> background-color: #F7F2ED;<br /> border: 1px solid #AFAFAF;<br /> text-decoration: none;<br /> }<br /> Goodreads Book Giveaway Before the Huntby Barry Lyga

Giveaway ends March 21, 2025.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

You have to have a Goodreads account to enter. Check it out!

I don’t know quite how I feel about this story, but it sure is an interesting read: A romantasy author is accusing an agent, editor, and another author of colluding to steal her novel. This piece from the New Yorker is a great, even-handed look at the situation.A keyboard with a mechanical word-counter to track your writing? I don’t want one…but I kinda want to want one! Check it out.The California wildfires are a horror beyond imagining, and there’s damn little I can say here about them that would mean anything at all. But I found this article absolutely fascinating…and a little bit of hope in a world that sorely needs it: “Los Angeles Wildfires: Why These Homes Didn’t Burn“Apparently, design guru Karl Lagerfeld was obsessed with iPods and owned hundreds of them, each of them altered to his own standards and in his own style. Now they’re up for auction.

I completely forgot about this until recently….

Many, many years ago, at the height of I Hunt Killers, I was asked by my publisher if I would consider writing a non-fiction book about serial killers for the YA market. This seemed like an absolutely fascinating challenge to me, so we kept talking about it.

For reasons I no longer remember (I think it was mostly to do with deadlines), this project never came to fruition. But I did find on my hard drive a sample introduction I’d written for the theoretical book. I can’t remember if I ever showed this to anyone or if I just did it to see if I could. In either event, here it is!

This is a book about serial killers.

“No kidding,” you say. “It says that on the cover.”

OK, OK. Fine. But this book is a little different from other books you may have seen or read about serial killers.

For one thing, everything in this book is real. There are roughly a bajillion books out there about serial killers that are made-up (I’ve even written a couple of them), but everything in this book is true. It’s like a horror story, only it’s worse than that because everything in here actually happened to someone.

Most of the time, the people these things happened to were young. Right around your age, in some cases. Serial killers usually like easy victims, and for a grown man, a teenager or other young adult is easy pickings.

I know what you’re thinking: “Not me. If some serial killer pervert came after me, I would kick his ass so hard, he wouldn’t be able to crap for a week.”

I believe you.

But here’s the thing: Serial killers aren’t always obvious. They’re not like in the movies or on TV, where you can always tell something is “off” about them. Sometimes that happens, sure, but think about it — have you ever seen a story about a lunatic on TV and they interview the guy’s next door neighbor? Sure you have. What’s the one thing that neighbor always says?

“He was such a quiet guy.”

“I had no idea.”

“I never imagined in a million years he could do those things.”

Something like that, right?

Something like that.

Serial killers all too often look just like you and me. (Well, they look like me, at least — most of them are white guys in their thirties and forties. If you bumped into me on the street, you wouldn’t think I was planning on killing you. But I could be.) They blend in and they seem perfectly normal. Some of them seem totally helpless and harmless.

And by the time you realize they aren’t… Well, it’s too late. You’re another statistic.

So, yeah, this is a book about serial killers. We’re going to meet some of them. We’re going to try to figure out a little bit of what makes them tick. We’re going to meet the people who hunt them, and the people who study them.

But you know something?

No matter how much we do together, you and I, I don’t think we’re ever going to understand them.

Go ahead. Turn the page. There won’t be any blood.

Not for a little while, at least.

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I’m currently reading Jim Dodge’s Stone Junction, from the halcyon days of 1990. I have to be honest with you: at a hundred pages in, I’m not even 100% certain what this book is about, but it’s so gorgeously written and off-the-rails bonkers that I’m just along for the ride!

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I’m behind the times, so I just started watching 2023’s The Diplomat, a fun Netflix show from some West Wing alums about the new ambassador to Britain (played with eternal vexation by Keri Russell) and her infuriatingly awesome/awesomely infuriating husband (played with delicious aplomb by Rufus Sewell). In the current political environment, it stretches credulity a bit that all of these people are so earnest and competent, but that’s why it’s fiction, right?

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I stumbled upon Collins Jumaisi Khalusha back in July of 2024, when he was arrested for the murder of 42 women. I had a bunch of other serial killers ahead of him, though, so I stashed the link away and moved on. And now I’m kinda glad because…

Well, one month after his arrest, Khalusha escaped custody!

And there’s a chance he’s not a serial killer after all!

Let’s back up. Khalusha was arrested in his native Kenya on suspicion of murder after 10 bodies were discovered — dismembered — at a dump site close to his home. They arrested him at a soccer match. I don’t know why that stands out to me, but it does.

Khalusha confessed to 42 murders, including his wife, who was his first. He said he strangled her, dismembered her, and dumped her body parts. It looked pretty bad for Khalusha.

Then, his attorneys said, “Hold up!” They claimed his confession was coerced via torture.  And then, in August, Khalusha and some other criminals escaped from custody…apparently with the help of those “on the inside.”

So, look, this month’s headline might be a misnomer. Collins Jumaisi Khalusha might not actually be a serial killer! Or he might be. But his story is interesting, that’s for sure!

(Truthfully, the fact that his wife was among the victims makes it all look sort of hinky to me, but I’m not an expert.)

Here’s the original story about his arrest, and here’s the story of his escape.

Photo Credit: @DCI_Kenya/Twitter

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I left Twitter a while ago, but if you’re on the fence, here’s a nice little explainer for why you might consider leaving, too: “Break Up with Your X“My one-time collaborator Colleen Doran has written a terrific essay on what it means to be a somewhat famous creator…and what it doesn’t mean, too!So, scientists asked 500 Christians to describe the face of God, then ran it through AI and hoo, boy, you think there’s maybe some bias in it? Check it out.I don’t drink coffee (I prefer my caffeine hi-tech, as someone once told me), but this brief piece on how coffee is basically one of only three things in the world that both feel good and are good for you is well-written and will definitely make you feel better about that fifth cup.