Authors Electric

I wanted to ask all my fellow writers out there if they’ve experienced a particular phenomenon closely linked with their written work. I’ll explain: A friend of mine who’s a published crime writer, has noticed that whenever she writes a novel in which she despatches a character in a particularly gruesome and graphic way, then very often an item will appear on the news reporting a murder that has very similar or even identical modus operandi . She even reached the point where she felt constrained in her work, feeling she was, in some weird way, having an effect on the criminal world and its activities. It should be pointed out, that this has always happened before the novel in question has been published, so there can be no copy-cat element at work. I’ve noticed this odd synchronicity happening with my writing too, but on a slightly different level. In my fantasy novels, the Icemark Chronicles, I wrote about a cat called Primplepuss who belonged to King Redrought Athelstan Strong-in-...