Earlier this year, I donated an item to a charity auction for the fine organization Nuci’s Space that combined a signed copy of Firefly Rain with the chance to get brutally slain in an upcoming writing project. As I’m about to start writing the new book, I revisited the topic today to try to get a sense of how exactly the lucky winner wanted to get offed. This then led to a wider discussion of making a charity donation in exchange for being brutally murdered, and with that in mind, I thought I might lay out some of the options for folks.
In the past, I have committed on paper the following crimes:
- Murder by severing unnatural psychic connection to the land.
- Murder by man-eating Sasquatch in a top hat.
- Murder by farmland infused with the spirit of a murder victim
- Murder by Cthulhu, ‘cause you gotta do Cthulhu
- Murder by aspiring writer
- Murder by otherdimensional drug-fueled partiers in the next hotel room over
- Murder by evil sentient kudzu
- Murder by insane talking water bird
- Murder by haunted lawn
- Murder by an army of fallen leaves
- Murder by evil alien invaders who hate noise, and while I am at it I would like to point out that I published that story at least fifteen years before A Quiet Place came out, damnit.
- Murder by evil French hotel
- Murder by unnamed thing in dark, abetted by magical fat dude on a passing airplane
- Murder by sentient house
- Murder by dybbuk
- Murder by feeding someone to an ancient evil in a well after middle school one day
- Murder by the Devil, who actually shows a lot of restraint about this sort of thing in my work
- Murder by evil steampunk industrialists and their strike-busting thugs
- Murder by pre-Permian time warp and ancient cosmic horrors in a swamp
- Murder by sea-going zombie
- Murder by being thrown off a zeppelin
- Murder by mob angry over the desecration of their site of ritual human sacrifice
- Murder by evil guy intent on drowning kittens
- Murder by brother-in-law (Not mine. I like mine.)
- Murder by giant invisible cat
- Murder by various high fantasy methods including stabbing, hacking, casting evil spells, and feeding to monsters
- Murder by DIY flamethrower-wielding vampire
- Murder by shooting with a wide variety of high-end firearms
- Murder by stake through the heart
- Murder by zombie cannibal ocelot
- Murder by escaped video game character
- Murder by small child who makes an unholy bargain
- Murder by suburban cannibal
- Murder by loving spouse
- Murder by legendary cinematic monster
- Murder by bad management meeting
I’m probably missing a few, but it’s a start….