WHAT YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT CLYDE BARROW....

I wrote a post for DARKLY DELICIOUS YA called The Not-So-Dark Side of Clyde Barrow.

CHECK IT OUT: 
http://darklydeliciousya.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-not-so-dark-side-of-clyde-barrow-in.html

Clyde Barrow Talks to You From the Grave (seriously!)

In my dual MC (main character for you non-writers out there), Clyde alternates chapters with Monroe Baker, a teen waiting tables at her dad's 1920's style, speakeasy dinner theater. Clyde Barrow was one of the most bizarre/unique characters I've ever (re)created in my writing career thus far. I  have to admit that I had a blast imagining his dialogue and would often linger over my words, disturbed (okay, and sometimes delighted) at what I made him say––which may mean I have a criminal mind lying deep inside of me. Be scared, people. (Mom, don't worry. I don't blame you.)
Here is a peek from Chapter Two from Wanted:  Dead or In Love (in which Clyde Barrow first awakens in his coffin). Strange, I know, but I swear it'll make sense if you read the book.

A drum roll please...

Oh - and make sure you read with a Texan twang in your head. That's how I imagined him anyway.

*Excerpt from Chapter Two

* Clyde *

A sudden jolt runs through my bones, swift as lightning and strong as a Texas twister in May. I blink twice, three times, but I can’t see nothing. I must be in the bottom of a mineshaft on a moonless night because it’s dark and I’m cold. Real cold. I concentrate hard as I can to move my body, one finger even, and finally, after what seems like forever, I give up.

I search my brain trying to figure how I got trapped down here. Last thing I remember was me and Bonnie heading down Potter Lane to go pick up Henry at his pa’s house in the middle of nowhere. We’d all visited our kin for two days but we needed to get back on the lam. I slowed down to drive around a fool truck driver who lost his load, when––Christ. It’s all coming back.

As I veered past the crates, rounds of gunfire blasted through my head, my neck, my arms and legs–-jolting me right outta my seat. Bonnie’s spine-chillin’ scream was the last thing I heard before blackness came. It’s obvious to me looking back now that the sheriff’s posse brought along enough ammo to shoot a herd of buffalo. Cold-hearted bastards never even offered us a chance to surrender.

Not that I would, but they dint know that. At least I coulda taken down a few of the laws before me and Bonnie got smoked.

I realize then that I ain’t in any mineshaft––I’m in my final resting place.

OK for Writers to Depict Criminals in a Positive Light in YA?

Good question. 

My short answer is:  it's fiction. Fiction is written to amuse, entertain, and possibly make the reader question things in his or her own life. That's my job as an author…making the reader feel something––rage, happiness, regret, or maybe joy.

I expect there will be some (maybe even a lot) of readers who will get bent out of shape over the depiction of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in my YA novel. After all, Bonnie & Clyde were downright nasty criminals from the 1930’s who were in love. In WANTED:  DEAD OR IN LOVE, they come back to life, and they’re not necessarily typecast as “the bad guys.” No doubt about it, Bonnie and Clyde did a lot of horrific things in their day and were eventually gunned down for it by a posse of tough crime fighters called The Texas Rangers. I’m not making excuses for Bonnie and Clyde––they deserved to have been stopped. 

I think what I tried to show is that most of us––Bonnie and Clyde included––are not solidly “all good” or “all bad.” Many of us make decisions that seem like a good idea at the time that later turn out to be not-so-great. My main character, a teen girl named Monroe, has always lived by the motto, “You Only Live Once,” but when she faces the counterpart to that, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,” she starts to reconsider.

If she could do it all over again, she might say, “Yes, you are in charge of your own destiny. Just make sure it’s the destiny you really want.”

Actual footage taken from Bonnie & Clyde’s death scene in 1934.

Aside from telling what I hope is a unique, suspenseful tale, maybe it'll make someone stop and think before making stupid mistakes that can follow them their whole lives. Or maybe not––it's their choice. Take it from me––I've made plenty. :) 

'Til next time,

KYM