A viewer condemned the producer of a wildlife documentary for showing a wolf catching a rabbit and tossing the squealing victim into the air before tearing it into pieces and eating it. The viewer would have been pleased if the production team had taught the wolf to eat cotton candy instead.

While I might sound like I’m condemning the clueless viewer, I understand. I refuse to watch Old Yeller ever again and I know when to close my eyes during movies and wildlife documentaries.

Just think of a cotton candy world where everything is soft, fluffy, and sweet! Unfortunately, this isn’t it.

It’s strange even to me that I write mystery-romance-suspense books with unhealthy doses of murder included. Perhaps it’s because my experience in the world so far—starting when I was a child rape victim—has included evil. Writing or reading cotton candy stories doesn’t appeal to me. Evil is real, alive, and lives in this world. Thankfully, so does good – and God gives everyone a choice. The battle between good and evil and the triumph of good is infinitely more fascinating to me than a diet of feathery sugar. And as Evan says in Texas Miz Mike’s Bridge to Brigadoon, “Aye, murder is nicer in books. We are safely distanced from it.”

Dixie lived next door. She eschewed God and mocked Christians for reciting “do nots” while she “had fun” hanging out in local bars. She was seldom home and her young daughters often called out-of-town grandparents to rescue them when their mother vanished with a new conquest – often a just-released felon from prison. Dixie left this world at 34 in a motorcycle crash just down the road from her favorite bar.

Author Alan McKean’s mom recently turned 100 and received a birthday card signed by Queen Elizabeth II. God holds life and death in His hands. Only He knows the secret of longevity. However, I find it noteworthy that Alan’s mom reads from the Bible, sings hymns, and prays every day.

Cotton candy wolves will exist in the future. Isaiah, Chapter 11 promises that after Jesus returns, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb. The leopard shall lie down with the young goat. The calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play by the cobra’s hole, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD.”

A cotton candy world! Meanwhile…I’ll keep writing mystery-romance-suspense books with an unhealthy dose of murder thrown in because evil is real and present in this world and wolves don’t eat cotton candy…yet.

http://www.amazon.com/Stephanie-Parker-McKean/e/B00BOX90OO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0