Patrick Scattergood's Blog: Tales to Tell - Posts Tagged "patrick-scattergood"

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

No, no, I'm not talking about the bloody boiling hot weather in the UK right now.

'Time to Burn' is the second of my novels but with a difference.

Instead of writing a follow up to 'Mother, Dearest' straight away, I wanted to try something a little bit different. A friend of mine, Golda Evans, had a story she wanted to write but a massive lack of confidence about writing it.

So, in true superhero team up style, we decided to co-write it.

I must admit, it was one of the weirdest things I've tried to do because I'm so used to being my own boss with my writing. I want to put a dead deer that walks around with its guts hanging out? Hell yeah and I'll make him help Naz on his adventure.

Here, it was different. We ran each decision by one another and I think, we came up with an exciting time travel adventure that not only looks at the futility of war but also at how people don't appreciate the time they have on this world.

I'm really proud of the novel that Golda and I have put out there so go check it out. It's out now in both Kindle and paperback form from Amazon!