I’ve been thinking: what does a story mean?
It’s because I just published a new novel, Caliban Rising—it’s a thriller, and I hope it means: “Keep turning those pages!”
You sneak onto a mysterious Caribbean island. Nice beaches, but nasty murders. Maybe you get hurled out of a Black Hawk helicopter, or fed to the island’s feral Bengal tiger. Also, there are creepy robots….
Will you survive?
Every thriller, I think, underneath, means just that: danger besets us.
We lead thriller lives.
A young physician we knew walked out of a movie theater, with a bag of popcorn, and collapsed on the sidewalk, dead—peanut allergy. Somehow, that popcorn came in contact with peanut dust.
An SUV (inattentive driver) struck a woman we knew, and killed her, as she crossed a small town’s Main Street. We’ve known decent people, living enthusiastically, brought down by cancer, or Parkinson’s, or ventricular fibrillation.
Sometimes it’s your well-being that’s endangered. We know a hard-working man whose corporation (think Enron) abruptly collapsed. No job. No pension. At age fifty-something, start over, from zero.
Here’s another executive thriller tale: a friend of ours discovered a colleague got hold of his resume, then secretly mailed it to other corporations. This corporate Iago wanted our friend hired away.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
What’s lurking along your own path, or in your blood stream? Every thriller whispers that question. Every thriller asks: how will you cope?
In a novel, at least, courage saves the day, and doing right. Usually. Sort of.
So that feels good.
--Richard