What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Writers?

As Cat & Cat undergoes a much-needed reformatting, I've taken the opportunity to reread the novel I finished two years ago. Although I know the plot, characters and structure intimately, I've noticed some stuff on this "fresh read" that I never considered while crafting the narrative. Most notably just how dark the novel turns as Chris Telamon gets deeper and deeper into his game of cat & mouse with Ron Barnes. Coincidentally, while I'm rereading Cat, a friend of mine is simultaneously taking the plunge. Thus, as I pour over the universe I spent two years creating, I can't help but envision the story's development through the eyes of someone who knows me, but only knows one part of me, i.e. the "outer" me, the version of myself I present to the world.

I encountered this same situation back when I first finished the novel in 2012. Family members and close friends opened the pages of Cat, and suddenly for the first time in my life people were walking around my "inner world" and taking snapshots, so to speak. I remember being terrified that my mom or dad or sister or father-in-law might suddenly look at me like some kind of twisted, haunted soul. I mean characters like Ron Barnes & Cindy Calabrese don't just materialize out of the ether. They have to come from somewhere. So do dead cats, victimized children and horrific tableaux like the novel's climactic scene in Titian, Ohio.

In reality, Cat & Cat (and every novel, short story or poem for that matter) is a guided tour through the dark landscape that the writer (in this case me) has so fervently hid from parents, spouses, siblings, in-laws and coworkers. Readers who know me invariably see me and hear me in the voice of Chris Telamon, and to some extent Ryan Leach and even Wormwood. It's only logical, then, that they would also see or hear me in the psychopathic rantings of Ron Barnes or the depravity of Bonnie Reager.

To be honest, I find that realization unsettling. I certainly don't want someone I know re-evaluating me as a human being based upon a story I'm telling. To anyone who feels so inclined, let me just offer this one disclaimer. As hard as it may be to read evil, living it internally and translating it upon the page is even more excruciating.