Patrick Scattergood's Blog: Tales to Tell - Posts Tagged "mother-dearest"

Mother, Dearest

I thought, for my first blog post on here, I should probably start by talking about my first novel. Well, writing about it.

One of the things I've been asked a lot is how I came up with the idea for 'Mother, Dearest' itself. Well, that's a rather funny story actually because it didn't start as an urban fantasy that genre hops throughout the book.

Yes, you read that right. It actually started out as a 'by the numbers' haunting story. I'd had the idea of a character called Naz being haunted and taunted, oooooh that rhymes, by his dead and abusive mother.

While writing it, I was proud of it as I tried to not fall in to the normal cliches that horror writers can sometimes find themselves falling in to. Then something strange happened.

I started thinking, what if his mother wasn't really dead?

What if she was something else entirely?

In fact, what if the world around Naz wasn't at all what he expected? That's how it came to be populated with fairytale creatures, ancient gods and goddesses as well as running alongside the world that populates his nightmares and panic attacks.

One of the thing I like the most about the reception the book has gotten is that it has been praised for it's depiction of the main character's mental health issues. I've struggled with my mental health for my entire life so it was important to me that the character of Naz came across as completely realistic.

It's also been praised for how I've used characters that identify as LGBTQ+ and I like that. I didn't include them as a token gesture. Far from it. I identify as LGBTQ+ myself and growing up, it was hard. I was a nerdy bookworm but barely any books that I was able to pick up had characters that identified the way I did.

To me, that became an important reason for me to have the main character of Naz identify as such as well as others. In fact, Naz and Satara are deliberately polar opposite. You have Naz, the shy and quiet character that isn't comfortable in his own skin and sexuality yet. Then you have Satara, who is loud and brash, even sometimes super camp and super confident.

Both, as arrogant as it sounds, are based on different sides of my personality, albeit amplified. Naz, is my shy and quiet side. The side that means I do retreat into my shell and refuse to come out sometimes. Satara, is the me that I want to me. I am camp but I try to hide it as I'm not yet at the stage of my confidence to show it as much as I would like.

All in all, I'm very proud of 'Mother, Dearest', and I am intensely happy that I wrote such a book. In fact, I'm currently working on the follow up to it now so hopefully, people will like that one too.

If you'd like to take a look at 'Mother, Dearest' then here are the links. It's available in both Kindle form and paperback.

US Link
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083G4YGGR

UK Link
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B083G4YGGR

That's all for now. Stay safe, stay kind, stay saucy.

Pat xx

I was asked a good question yesterday. A person reading Mother, Dearest asked me why I not only included so many LGBTQ+ characters in it but also why I had specifically made the character of Satara nonbinary.

It made me think. It was a good question after all. They meant it in a nice way, as they were enjoying the character a lot. In fact, they even said it was nice to see a nonbinary character in a dark urban fantasy setting. It still left me wondering about something. Why were they so surprised that I had such a character?

Well, my friends, that is a question that can be rather easily answered. It sounds like it's going to be a rant but the answer boils down to one, simple thing. LGBTQ+ representation of any kind, is seen as surprising because it's not put forward as much by authors/publishers as straight representation.

When publishers do put out stories with LGBTQ+ characters in, it can sometimes feel like they are doing it to tick boxes, to give themselves a pat on the back. That, as both a reader and an author, annoys me no end. It makes the LGBTQ+ community seem almost like a gimmick for them to put out to sell books.

Satara, who is a siren in both the Mother, Dearest books, is nonbinary and deliberately presents themselves however they want in the book. In one scene, they're in clothing that would typically be described by writers as being feminine, other scenes in clothes that writers may describe as masculine. I love how the character straddles that line. They are neither, they wear what they want and present how they want. There is no ulterior motive to the way they dress. They chose things that they want to wear. Simple as that. It's the same with their personality. Yes, they can put themselves forward as camp, funny, sometimes feminine/sometimes masculine, sometimes scared, sometimes brave. I wanted them to be a character with multiple layers and I hope that I have achieved that with my writing. I wanted them to be funny and sometimes, at the wrong moments, be rather inappropriate with some of their quips. I deliberately wanted them to put forward that they are this brash, loud character but with a mountain of insecurities.

The selfish reason I did this was the simple fact that I, as someone who identifies as a nonbinary pansexual, I rarely saw anyone like that in books and when I did, the writers wrote them in such a way that that's all they were but with no personality. I hated that. Every person, regardless of their orientation/how they present/race etc have their own personalities. So, Satara's personality is one that is simply a person trying to get on with the world. They have secrets. They have abilities. They have flaws.

It's the same with my other characters. Naz is the complete polar opposite. They're crippled with self doubt, they were forced to hide their sexuality whereas Satara is out and proud of theirs.

I hope, to a selfish degree, that the people that have read my work, enjoy the characters I create as much as I enjoy creating them.

Love you all, keep safe.

Pat