I just got a really nice reader, with several perceptive comments, including this one:

Harris and Klebold must have considered it an absolute failure that "only" 13 died.  This was notorious mass murder that they hoped would kill over 1,000.

Exactly. It's easy to get in trouble saying that, because some people will hear "It's OK that 13 died, since we were spared the 1,000." Certainly not. The 13 was horrible. To us, but not to them.

If you want to understand what the killers were all about, what the hell they were up to, you have to try to envision it from their perspective. And to them, considering their grand designs of four figures in corpses, 13, and they would have been distraught.

And it kind of appears that they were--not just by their suicides, which they already planned, but the body language caught on the tapes. And even then, there were people left all around to kill, but the life seemed drained out of them.

I kind of wanted to point out that one bright spot for families so (understandably) angry at them is that the killers did not die happy. They apparently died feeling like miserable failures. I get lots of anger about making heroes out of the killers, but they did not seem to see themselves that way.

Well that was fun -- but short!

So I just did Talk of the Nation (you can listen to it here, about 1/3 down the page) and it was definitely a charge to be on there, but I don't know what I was thinking about providing you guys with more info. It went by so quickly, I barely scratched the surface of the Slate piece, much less adding new stuff.

Of course it didn't help much that the previous segment ran over, so I was really only on for ten, instead of twenty.

The oddest, thing, though, was hearing myself talk--and hearing his intro, where Neal Conan contrasted my story to the standard myth-version we have all heard endlessly for five years, and I couldn't help but wondering, "God. If I were you listening to me, would I--the new I--think you were some whacko?"

I mean, we know all these things about bullying, jocks, targets, TCM. Surely that wasn't just made up out of whole cloth, right?

God. It is amazing how you repeat something enough . . .

Of course those myths were not invented out of whole cloth, there were all sorts of tiny fragments of evidence that seemed to perhaps point that way, so the press put the incredibly complicated jigsaw puzzle together the best way the pieces fit in the first 24 hours, before we had 99% of them to work with, and of course the picture looked nothing like reality.

But that didn't bother the press. We just kept telling it and telling it and telling it. This is my story, and I'm sticking to it.

The sad part is, while we didn't have the info from the FBI and the shrinks out in the public sphere until yesterday, the myths were all debunked 4.5 years ago. Even Time did a cover story in Dec 99 putting just about all the myths to rest. Didn't help. Just a spit in the wind compared to the pounding of information we beat into you the first week or two.

So all this time later, nearly everyone believes even the myths. And I go on the radio and feel a bit like a whacko myself just reporting the conclusions the FBI and its team came to well over four years ago.

Sad. Twisted. Frustrating.

Wrong.

What the hell are we going to do about this?

Oh well. I just get frustrated going down that road. Start to feel like Michael Moore. Not the role model I'm after, I'm afraid to say.

It does kind of fire me up to tell more of this story, though. Thinking more and more I do want to write that blasted book, if I can just get my hands around exactly which story(s) I really want to tell.

 Can't decide whether I want to 1) focus just on the killers, opening with the massacre, then jumping back to childhood and/or origins of the plot and work my way forward to the killing, or 2) start with the killing, weave in several stories of the survivors/investigators/etc (I would prolly be part of taht etc.), and work my way both forward and backward, with the various players interacting a bit (the ones I have in mind did), and gradually unravelling the picture of who the killers were and how this happened.

I'm leaning toward the latter, because I want to tell the survivors' stories as well. Just as I always did, and was reminded of so starkly when I read Mike Paterniti's incredible GQ piece. And I want to tell the story--briefly--of how/why the media screwed up so badly and gave us this God-awful mess of a BS-understanding. I want to capture the impact of Columbine on some lives as well as the cause.

But that second way is so much more complicated. Not sure I've got the organization chops to structure it yet. Or how I work the killers in there, exactly. Or how to climax the storyline. I do need a storyline, or I'll bore the crap out of you reading it.

By the way, am I retarded for spilling out all my ideas here publicly? If you're an aspiring Columbine author out there, please don't steal my book. "My" book. Not sure when I was granted ownership.  But it's been five years, still no major Columbine book--don't you people wonder what us writer people are waiting for? We wonder too. Hard to get your hands around this one, though.  But I'm eager to hear what all you people think. Don't feel shy about telling me.

I've just exchanged a few emails with Dr. Robert Hare, the brilliant shrink who literally wrote the book on psychopaths (he loved the piece, thank God--I live in terror of my sources screaming horrible names at me) and we're going to exchange links.

I'll have some links to a lot of the questions you guys have been asking, particularly to the most common questions, like how/why psychopaths develop, what can be done to help them (you're not going to like that answer) and what role the parents played. (The short answer on that last one: not a whole lot, usually.)

Meanwhile, if you're interested enough for a whole book on psychopaths, Hare's book, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, really is eye-opening read.

And if you google " 'robert hare' psychopath" (there, I did it for you), you'll find lots and lots. I'm sure there's a much better google to do, and I'll have some better links later, but I know the window of interest will slam shut quickly, so there's my little quickie take.

(I'll add all this to The Columbine Almanac once I get a chance. If you haven't been there, I've got links to everything imaginable on Columbine. The link to the almanac is always on the left side of the page--click the pic of the killers. (Sorry about that pic. I've taken some flack about it and am rethinking it, but I can't physically do anything until I get back to the Denver PC hosting this site (in my living room) in four weeks.)

UPDATE--Some links:

Hare's home page (easy to remember: www.hare.org )

Article abstracts

Selected articles (no links, but the info to track them down)

(See Update at the bottom of this post for the details. You can listen to NPR's tape of the show here--go about 1/3 down the page for the link directly to my segment. Much thanks to Mike Ditto for sending the link.)

I may be jumping the gun slightly, because they just called, but it looks pretty definitely, and I wanted to give you all a heads up.

I've gotten hundreds of emails on the Slate Columbine piece and I know you guys have a ton of questions.

NPR just called and we chatted about the story and they want to do a piece with me this afternoon. It's tentatively set for 1:40 Chicago time, but I was too stupid (flustered) to ask basic questions like what show it's for and whether that's live or taped for later. The specificity of the time suggests live to me, but I'm just guessing here. (And I also would not count on radio/TV things happening exactly when scheduled. Or even if scheduled.)

But I should have more info pretty soon. Check back here and I'll update at the bottom of this post. (I'll just leave all this copy and add to it, below a big red Update word.)

Thanks for caring.

And thanks SO much for all the comments and emails. I'm blown away by all the interest, and I'm thinking more and more that I will do this book after all. You guys have inspired me. And convinced me that there is an audience out there--and much as I hate to consider commerce along with art, if I'm going to spend two more years on this project, I can't afford to do that unless I can convince a publisher there will be a market when I'm done.

Uh oh. I am SO off track again. I'm excited. I'm just an Exciteable Boy.

UPDATE:

OK, it's going to be live, on Talk of the Nation.

I will be on for the last 20 minutes of the first hour. (In Chicago/central, that's 1:40 - 2:00 p.m. Add or subtract accordingly.)

And you can call in, so feel free, but don't be too rough on me. I haven't done one of these in awhile.

If you have already missed it by the time you're reading this, they have links to all their old shows, where you can hear it all on your PC. (If it hasn't aired yet and you're just lazy and want to hear highlights later, you'll damn well go listen to it live young man/young lady. Heeheehee.)

(Sorry if you're new to this site and I'm not acting like a Serious Journalist. I can't be serious all the time. That's not what a blog is for. If you want faux seriousness, go watch Diane Sawyer. Yow. (How do you make that wwwu-wwwu-wuu shivering shound?) Just that name gives me the shivers.)

Really late for work--glorious long night of sleep to make up for the past several awake--and checking out Oprah over breakfast. (Say what you want about her, but when she's good, she's really good. The celeb shows can be really annoying, but she's gotta pay the bills, too.)

Hennyway, it's book club day and she's doing One Hundred Years of Solitude. Nice. Love that book. (So get off her back!) One of my fave opening sentences. Something like, As (Colonel Aureliano Beundia Marqeuz faced the firing squad, he remembered the day his father took him to discover the ice. Something like that. I should look it up, but I'm in Chicago and my books are all in Denver. (Mostly. I just carted 20 of them here this weekend so I could finally be surrounded by some.) Perhaps one of you has it right there on the shelf next to you and will help us out.

(Much thanks to reader Maggie, for doing the grunt work, looking it up on Amazon for us: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Ahhhh. Lots more clauses. It needed those.

I also loved the last sentence, which goes on for half a page. I have read that sentence 200 times--out loud, frequently, to people who sometimes would really prefer I didn't; picture waking up with me in the morning, chatting happily about your favorite books and suddenly I'm hopping out of bed, grabbing them, and spitting out my favorite lines that run half a page and take a full minute to recite. Still chokes me up every time, though. Not quite Catcher in the Rye last-line choking, but a different kind of choking. Wistful.

The best line is somewhere in the middle though, and goes on for (three?) pages. A long, hysterical rant by the bitch nobody likes, who finally gets her say, and I must say I finally saw things through her eyes a bit, after despising her so long.

Not that it's just a bunch of great sentences. But it does have some truly extraordinary sentences. Someday maybe I'll relearn spanish enough to consume them properly. I'm told it's a whole nother experience.

Hey, breaking news!--(heeheehee)--she just announced her new selection! The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I am now a literary headline service.

I don't normally plug things here, but there's a sad story in play about the Columbine Memorial being way behind in fundraising.

The site is here, but beware: when you choose "open in new window," it apparently grabs another open browser window instead, and overwrites. Just ate this post, which was several inches long, including the Reuters story. Arrrgggghhhh.

I'll try to recreate this full post later, but there's the link.