Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

Iqaluit ( Jun 12/00) - You have to wonder what pushes a guy like Stephen King, for example, to churn out such horrific pieces of writing. What is inside of him that leads him to create despicable, terrifying characters who thrive on evil?

While we couldn't get King on the phone, we were able to sit in Health Minister Ed Picco's office and ask him the same question -- why does he choose to dabble in the macabre?

It's a little-known fact that the popular MLA for Iqaluit West has been working on a trilogy of horror books entitled The Wayne Stories.

So why, Ed, when there's so much evil around already, create more?

"I find it a good escape from the pressure of politics," said Picco.

"It's escapism. I found it quite interesting. I like the supernatural," he said.

Well, OK, but are you, er, you know...plagued by demons yourself?

"That could be part of it. There's some hidden motive there. If you did some kind of psychoanalysis, you'd probably find that," he joked.

Picco is no novice to the writing. The author of a monthly history column since 1986, Picco, who said he's always been a writer, is also working on a non-fiction book about the history of his home town in Newfoundland.

But back to The Wayne Stories. In the works since 1996, The Face of Wayne, The Horror of Wayne and The Return of Wayne are all about 100 pages long so far.

Each will be about 350 pages long when complete and will follow Wayne's journey through evil.

"Wayne is a character who was born of human parents, something in the vein of a Freddie Kruger type of thing. He was neglected by his parents and adopted when he was four or five to a foster home and so on. He took on the attributes of a very evil person, acting out some of the pain he had suffered as a foster child," said Picco.

Assuring constituents and colleagues The Wayne Stories weren't the teeniest bit autobiographical, Picco said after Wayne's evil makes him do a bunch of bad stuff, it eventually leads him to seek salvation in the arms of a priest.

Readers, he said, will be thrilled by the twist at the end of the series.

"I don't want to give the story away. It's a very surprising ending," he said.

Picco fans can look forward to seeing the trilogy on the shelf sometime in the next few years.