Clowning Around

There are writers who love to blog.

I envy them. Deeply. Theirs must be a bottomless well of creativity.

Me? I struggle to come up with something even mildly entertaining once a month. This month I have failed. Badly.

I got nothing.

Still reading? Bless you, because all I can think about is clowns.

I wrote a book. It begins with murderous clowns--ergo Send in the Clowns. It releases in two weeks. Whenever I finished the manuscript--April? May?--the thought of ACTUAL creepy clowns was far from my mind.

Fast forward to autumn and there are creepy clowns luring children into the woods. There are clowns with baseball bats closing down college campuses (shouldn't that be campi?) There are clowns everywhere.

What makes them so scary?

I remember when clown Ronald McDonald had much scarier friends. Hamburglar, anyone? I remember Bozo. I remember going to the circus and watching an impossible number of clowns squeezing into a tiny car. Clowns were funny. Clowns were benign.

Not anymore.

Psychologists suggest we are disturbed by a smile that hides true emotion.

Maybe.

I have a different theory.

When the world is so scary, it's nice to be scared by something that isn't quite so terrifying. Global warming, Isis, crippling national debt, or clowns. What would you rather worry about?

You know, when I go back and look, Bozo might actually be a bit scary...

Julie Mulhern is the USA Today bestselling author of The Country Club Murders. 

She is a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out at the gym and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean--and she's got an active imagination. Truth is--she's an expert at calling for take-out, she grumbles about walking the dog and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions.  Her latest book, Send in the Clowns, releases on October 25.