Death is the ultimate common denominator. We’re all going to experience it, most of us are trying to avoid it, and the rest of us are actively seeking it.

Plus it just makes a story better. Gollum, Jaws, Captain Ahab, Darth Vader, Sherlock Holmes, Romeo and Juliet, Jack from Titanic… Kenny from South Park. Where would those stories be if these characters had survived? Dying for something you believe in is the ultimate sacrifice.

Death can also make a loathsome character noble. Who doesn’t have to pretend not to cry when the T-800 makes Sarah Connor lower him into that molten pit and valiantly gives the thumbs up before he disappears forever? Suddenly you want a Terminator for a best friend, hero, and governor.

Kurt Vonnegut says in one of his 8 rules on how to write a great story that you should be a sadist to your characters and make awful things happen to them in order to show what they are made of. In 2011, the thirteen novels nominated for the coveted Man Booker Prize all put a main character to death.

No one wants to read about everybody ending up happily ever after, sitting around the pool eating strawberries and singing happy little campfire songs.

If this is the kind of ending you want then you shouldn’t be reading my books. Because I like to kill people.

Generally the nicer they are the more I will torture them, because nothing will wring the watermelon juices from a reader’s heart more than the suffering and often eventual death of their favorite characters.

I recently made a friend very mad by having someone kick a dog in my book. Hundreds of people have died, some near and dear to the readers, and my fake person fake kicks a fake dog and suddenly someone real is really angry.

When I have made a character so believable that their fictional death or injury upsets actual people, then my work as a writer is done. I have convinced you.

And not only that, maybe I have done you a favor by moving you to tears.

Aristotle suggested that art is the catharsis for our emotions. We like tragic endings because they allow us to express our suppressed feelings of negativity, all the rage, and hate, and despair that we hold in check to get through our daily lives can find an outlet in a movie, a play, or a book. We can live those emotions out through someone else and then step back into the sunshine with that big plastic grin in place.

If that’s the case my next book should be very therapeutic. I’m on a rampage, and I’m not sure who will survive. So prepare yourself. Maybe buy something black to wear. Because when I do something I like, I usually do too much of it.

-Jalex