The Story Behind Mother, Dearest: Book One

 I thought that it might be a little bit of fun to talk about my debut novel, Mother, Dearest.

At first, it was fully intended to be little more than a fun little horror story about a man being haunted by his dead mother. That's exactly what the first draft was. Now, if you've read the actual book itself, you'll know that's exactly what it isn't.

After running through it a few times, more and more ideas started to come to me, and it merged into a completely different story that sits in a completely different genre. It is now a dark urban fantasy that not only includes things such as magic, fairy tale creatures, even an undead talking deer, but also takes a hard look at mental health issues, homophobia, transphobia, and the world's reaction to them.

One of the things that I am proudest of is the reaction to the writing of the mental health scenes and the representation of LGBTQ+ characters. Don't get me wrong, I've had my fair share of trolls and homophobic comments aimed at the book, but it's been mostly positive. I did have one Twitter user describe it as "gay shit with magic" and that kind of showed how much the world still needs to do in order to move forward with attitudes towards people's sexual orientations and their gender identities.

While writing the book itself, I took influence from a great many sources. Some readers have compared it to the work of Neil Gaiman and the television show Carnival Row, both of which I took as huge compliments. I firmly believe that I write in my own voice, but to be compared to those is very high praise, and I'm proud that the reviewer thought so highly of the story.

I was also inspired, in part, by the music I listen to. While writing, I listened to a lot of songs by Bif Naked, Skunk Anansie, Placebo, and more, as well as being influenced by the movie and comic book versions of The Crow by James O'Barr.

Mother, Dearest, and the sequel, The Man Who Died Twice, have gone on to be double award-nominated at the Queer Indie Awards two years in a row. That makes me feel really proud as a writer, especially as an LGBTQ+ creator, that people liked the stories so much that they were nominated by such an amazing site.

If you want to check out the Mother, Dearest series then you can here.