I’ve always been drawn to revenge stories, to a character who does a stupid thing, and they don’t mean for it to go wrong, but it does. (Of course it does.) My fascination likely originated with a traumatic event that occurred when I was ten years old. I share about it in the Exhuming the Bones podcast. Or you can read on.

The gist is I dug up a dead cat.

I was curious, I guess, drawn to the macabre more than most. But am I the only kid who watched What’s-His-Name dig up King Tut and wanted to find my own amazing tomb to raid? I had a chance to see what a dead cat looked like. And I hadn’t thought it through, you know, that I was deeply disrespecting pet remains. Not to mention the young human who owned said pet. I was all science, no ethics. Call me Victor Frankenstein. Anyway, the cat did get exhumed, and things did not go as planned. I have put that scene on page number one of a book (as yet unpublished). It was the second time I used writing as a catharsis. The first was an apology letter to God about that cat.

With Spiked, I wanted to plumb that brand of impulsive stupidity, but I had a secondary objective, to re-write my own bully history.

And oh man, did I have a bully. She was a year older than me, bigger, stronger, and she owned a bullhorn. She used it during a baseball game. All the players (including my boyfriend), the fans (including his mom), and I heard my name and some other unsavory words—you know, as loud as the announcer at a pro ball game. Short as I was, runt was not what she called me. Can I tell you I wanted to shrivel until I was invisible? I wanted to crawl under the bleachers and not come out. Bob’s mom said something about girls being mean.

Yes. Mean.

It’s taken me forty years and a whole lot of therapy to like girls again, and I’m one of them.

Oh, and did I mention she shot me with a BB gun? I put that in a story, too.

I have a mug that says: Please do not annoy the writer. She may put you in a book and kill you. While many a writer does just that, I believe it’s worse to be some traumatized writer’s bully template.

I never got revenge on my bully. I moved out of state from one parent’s home to another’s. (And you bet, my bully was part of that decision.) Running away from my fear transformed me from a saucy tomb raider into a wallflower. As you can imagine, another theme I toss around in my writing is fear. My next book will plumb what happens when we crawl under the bleachers, run from our bullies, or stick our heads in the sand. If you’re not already receiving my newsletter, I hope you’ll join here. I share what I’m reading, writing, or watching, and I give you an opportunity to join me in my creative process. I can’t wait to share Rory’s journey with you.

Lastly, a review:

Kelly Griffiths’ novel Spiked is what happens when you mix the careful, detail-oriented plodding of a Vince Gilligan show with Mark David Chapman. The story follows unreliable protagonist and anti-hero Rory Harper, a beer chemist that can ferment any lie into a toxic, unrecognizable broth. When a workplace prank goes wrong, Rory finds himself drowning in a mix of escalating workplace feuds, romantic intrigue, and a backwards new life created entirely by his own hubris. As Rory becomes further entrenched in his deception, a co-worker’s sinister machinations threaten to unravel it all—brewing a high-stakes race to the truth. Thriller and mystery lovers will love following the vibrant plot, clever misdirection, and deeply-flawed characters as they discover that reality from person to person is indeed experienced on a gradient.

Jeremy Jusek, current poet laureat of Parma, Ohio, and founder of the Flamingo Writers’ Guild