Dark Thoughts at Inappropriate Moments



 Stephanie Evans thinking about somethig awful

 
As charming and wry as Evans’ bright debut (Faithful Unto Death, 2012), filled with reasons to own dogs, love your children and your wife, and have faith.
                    Kirkus Reviews on Safe From Harm



HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Charming and wry? Oh, her books certainly are. But Stephanie Evans admits--yes she does--she has a dark side. She's looking for a bit of solace and camaraderie, it seems...and indeed, she's come to the right place to talk about her

Dark Thoughts at Inappropriate Moments

                 by Stephanie Evans

My twenty-two year-old son is in the hospital with an especially nasty staph infection that took my six-foot three-inch ex-football playing son from offensively hearty (that’s a football pun I’ve snuck in there), to flat out on his back in the space of about seven hours. I mean, from the first twinge of pain he felt, to me discovering that my Mini Cooper really does have go-cart handling if a mom needs to get her son into the emergency room in a hurry, we’re talking right at seven hours.



Doctor baffled by author'



And the reason this is a suitable topic of conversation for the Jungle Red Writers is because as I sat next to my son’s hospital bed, watching my really tough kid in very real pain, I started thinking, “You could kill somebody with a bug that works that quick.” You could, too. I asked his doctor and he gave me the stink-eye and Charlie said, “Mom,” all drawn out, but the doctor said that, yeah, he thought you probably could and then he carefully gathered up every last bit of the dressing he had changed and took it out of the room with him.

I think that way now. About the possibilities.



What happens on Padre Island stays on Padre Island



When my husband Richard took me to Padre Island off-season and we had the entire beach to ourselves and there were twenty-foot dunes behind us and nothing but sand and sea and sunrise in front of us, I started thinking how if a couple was on the Padre Island beach off-season, and he was as much bigger than her as Richard is than me, and if he wanted her out of his life…well, this would be the time and the place. Piece of cake. Hold her face underwater until she drowns, dump her the rest of the way in (because almost no one accidentally drowns and only gets their face wet), and walk away. Who’s to know? I shared this with Richard and he said wasn’t this supposed to be a romantic weekend and did I think that comment was helpful in setting a romantic mood. And Richard is a lot bigger than me and I did not want him mad with twenty-foot dunes behind me and the cold, sullen Gulf of Mexico in front of me, so I got with the program.



Stephanie drives like this, she really does



And it’s not just murder methods that attract my attention now, it’s motives, too. I’ll tell you what, when that eighteen-wheeler rode the bumper of my Mini Cooper for a thirty mile stretch of West Texas desolation, well, it’s a good thing I don’t carry a grenade launcher in my backpack. There would have been chicken feathers from Abilene to Lubbock. We had an especially media-worthy murder in Texas not that long ago. A woman killed her husband. Do you know what that man had done the night before she killed him? What her motive was? He had told his wife about his mistress, and then, body part by body part, he had compared the charms of the two women and the wife came up short every time. Readers, that’s a motive--that man wanted to die. That was like suicide by proxy or something. She’s in jail for it but that’s only because we don’t want y’all talking about Texas any worse than you already do. There should be a reasonableness clause.

So this is what I’m asking; I know it’s not just me. I know you, too, are getting these dark thoughts at inappropriate moments. I’d like to know what some of them are.

You do that and I’ll send someone Faithful Unto Death and Safe From Harm, the first two books in the Sugar Land Mystery series. I just want to know I’m not all alone out here. With my dark thoughts.

HANK: Oh, Stephanie.  You are among friends. Nuff said. SO? Who's gonna be the first to confess?

Stephanie Jaye Evans is a fifth generation Texan.  She received her B.A. from Abilene Christian University and her Masters of Liberal Studies from Rice University. She wrote a mystery as her master’s capstone project.  That mystery, Faithful Unto Death, won the 2010 William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers.  Faithful Unto Death—A Sugar Land Mystery, published by Berkley Prime Crime, came out in June 2012 and is an Agatha nominee for best first novel.  The second in the series, Safe From Harm, will be out March 5, 2013. Kirkus Reviews writes of Safe From Harm, “As charming and wry as Evans’ bright debut (Faithful Unto Death, 2012), filled with reasons to own dogs, love your children and your wife, and have faith.”  She is currently at work on the third novel in her Sugar Land Mystery series.