First, a bit of fun news! All That Is Common To Man has been included in the Indie Authors Association list of monthly featured books! Each month has a different theme, and mine being mystery and horror fit into October’s. Thank you very much for including me!
You should go check out their substack here…
Warning, there are spoilers ahead for All That Is Common To Man…
Let’s start here.
Lily was an interesting character to write, especially because the deadly sin she represented was two sided. For the others it always seemed more direct, but Lily was both the offender and the offended, the victim and the abuser. She was the object of lust and was herself seduced.
With Lily, she exudes desire. It’s enticing and attractive, even though it’s to one’s detriment. But it’s not just the action of misplaced sexual desire - it’s the shortcuts. It’s about getting the right thing in the wrong way. Typically, we think of lust as simple sexual desire, but that’s not really it. Lust is craving something that we shouldn’t. Maybe the thing we lust after can be a good thing, but only in certain circumstances, or when certain conditions are met. Not all good things are good all the time. This is true not only in matters of human sexuality, but of food, sleep, entertainment, and career. It can apply to anything people could want. For Lily, it was her overwhelming desire to escape the house, and her supposed ticket out was through a married man.
One of the ways the characters overlapped was in their actions, but I wanted them to be very distinct in their motivations. Take the affair between Elisabeth and Jonathan, for example. She’s unfaithful to her husband, with his brother of all people. But for her, it’s not about sexual desire. It’s about adoration. Her pride drives her. She even says as much late in the book. After Nathan confronts Elisabeth and she has to confess (at least in part), she says she enjoyed being “prized”. She describes the sex as “necessary”. There’s no pleasure in it except for the pleasure she takes in her own esteem. And for Jonathan, a man who has spent a lifetime envying his brother, he finally takes the one thing he should never have.
Even though their actions are similar, the motivation behind it differs. Each character has a different reason for choosing what they do, and each of them receive something different in return. With the exception of Lily, what they ultimately get is their own demise. After all, these are the seven deadly sins… But it was important to me that there was some hope in there too, even in the bleakness of Thurman Manor.
As it turns out, Lily is the only member of the family to escape. She simply walks away, seemingly empty-handed, if her father’s threats were to be believed. But not really. After all, her future is now in her hands. Her story ends vaguely on purpose. I wanted there to be a sense of hope there, some inkling that redemption could be possible. It’s not written in stone. Anything could be possible. And that’s true for us as well, if only we’d have the courage to walk away with empty hands and into the unknown.
Hiram