I like to write fiction. For various reasons (health, family, other projects), I haven't been doing a lot of it recently. But I keep thinking of story ideas.
Here's the issue: What if I come up with a great idea, a method of doing X, with "X" being a crime of some nature, that, as far as I know, has not been written about, much less attempted. What if, as I envision it, X all hangs together? It would not be a perfect crime, as in either undetectable or one where the perps cannot be proven to have done the crime.
But it might work, as in the perps would be able to pull it off. Do I write it up and publish it somewhere. Do I have a moral responsibility if somebody takes that idea and tries to use it, not for a story, but for a crime?
I kind of, sort of, think that I do. Which is why I have ideas for stories that will never be hammered out on a keyboard. I might commit them to paper, but in the traditional "ink on paper" sense, not in the "type into a word-processing program" sense. But you, Gentle Reader, will never see them. At least, not from me.
For those are the times that we live in.
