Thanks, many, many thanks, to everyone who posted to my first blog or emailed me about it, and thanks for putting the word out. I feel supported and encouraged and not as if I’d flung words into outer space.

Usually I wake up in the morning muzzy-headed, but a few weeks ago I opened my eyes, thinking, What does whited sepulcher mean? Can’t say where the question came from, but I loved the combination of these gloomy and atmospheric words. Anyway, I looked the expression up. A sepulcher is a tomb, and whited means whitewashed. A whited sepulcher presents himself or herself to the world as good, but when you scratch the surface, evil oozes out. An apparent saint, an actual stinker.

Since that morning the phrase has stayed with me, and I keep poking at it, like a loose tooth. During my years (twenty-seven!) working for New York State government, I had two bosses who were terrible people, worse than inept; they didn’t mean well. Everyone who worked for them knew it, so they weren’t as much whited as grayed. But when I was in college and for a few years after, one of my professors really fit the bill, at least to his adoring followers – and I was one. He was smart, interesting, and expert at sniffing insecurity. He ruined lives. I don’t know what would have happened to me, if my husband hadn’t clung to my pinkie toe and pulled me free before I was sucked into the vortex.

There’s enormous power in the whited sepulcher. In fiction, we can draw close to that power without being scarred. I haven’t written anything about a whited sepulcher yet, but I’d like to. When I teach my summer writing workshop for kids at the Brewster, New York, public library, I’m going to start with a whited sepulcher exercise.

The prompt will be to describe the villain, inside and out. Where does she live? Is her home rent free because the landlord is in her thrall? What things does she surround herself with? What does she wear? What’s in her pockets or purse or backpack? How does she smell? What’s her voice quality? Does she have any virtues? Does she think the same way the rest of us do, or is even her thought process different? For fantasy writers, is she human or some other kind of creature, an evil fairy queen maybe? For horror writers, is she the family labradoodle? Does the whited sepulcher have to be an individual, or might it be an organization – a business or a charity, for example?

The second prompt will be to invent the ideal victim for the whited sepulcher, the prey she’s always seeking, the human key that unlocks her wickedness. Describe the victim as thoroughly as you described the villain. Then tell what about him makes him vulnerable? What signals does he give out? Does he have inner resources that eventually will protect him and maybe even expose the whited sepulcher? Or is he doomed?

The last step, naturally, is to put the two characters together in a story. When you do, the most important decision may be point of view. Will the story’s voice belong to the whited sepulcher or to her mark? Or might it alternate, or belong to an outsider? With whom will the reader sympathize? I wonder what the circumstances are of their meeting. In the course of your tale, be sure to show how the whited sepulcher spins her web, and show the moment, if it comes, when the victim realizes he’s being drawn in.

But whatever you do, have fun, and save what you write.