People who meet me in person after reading my work (or short synopses of my work) often tell me they think I'm funny. Why don't I try my hand at a comedy? Why not, I think? Last year, I took this idea to my good friend, writer Eric Shaw Quinn. "I think I'll try my hand at comedy," I announced proudly.



"Ah, yes," he responded with a wistful smile. "A comedy in which dark forces kill hundreds of people. I can't wait."



I am, however, perfectly capable of writing funny bits of dialogue which I sandwich in between terrorist bombings and the unearthing of decades-old, family-destroying secrets. That counts for something, right?



But let me clear about something I have learned over the past few years. The darker a writer's work, the more fun he or she is in person. And as everyone in Hollywood knows, if you ever want to have a depressing dinner party, invite a bunch of comedy writers. So for now, let's go with this. I will make no attempt to write a comedy because I fear doing so will turn me into a morose bore, at which point most people who meet me for the first time will begin peppering me with questions about my most recent tale of dark suspense.



Why is it that a fiction writer in person is so often the inverse of what they write? And I'm speaking of tone here, not behavior. When I meet a comedy writer for the first time, I don't expect him to start jumping up and down while he tries to tickle my stomach. But I'm always taken aback when all he wants to do is kvetch about political figures he despises. For several hours. While getting horribly drunk. And blending in vile remarks about all of his ex-wives.



And when Joan Hansen, the much revered figure who presides over the popular Men of Mystery Conference in Irvine, California, commented to a large audience that mystery writers always seemed so happy and cheerful, no one in the crowd rushed to disagree with her.



Do the worlds we write about pass out of us and onto the page, leaving us to see only those things around us we didn't seek to put on the page that day? Are everyone but the most "literary writers", most of whom chain themselves to pedestrian realism, inclined to write about worlds they don't see from day-to-day? (Perhaps world creation, a term most often applied to Sci-Fi writing, is appropriate to other genres as well.)



I have no easy answers to these questions. But I don't have comedy ideas kicking around upstairs either. So for now it's dark stories and stimulating dinner time conversation.




Get more on Christopher Rice at SimonandSchuster.com