A Goodreads user
asked
M.L. Brennan:
The ritualistic murders you wrote about in your second book were haunting. Did you come up with those on your own or was there a certain source you used to help you. And don't worry, I have no plans of murdering anyone. Thank you!
M.L. Brennan
This question coincides perfectly with the launch of my new nation-wide campaign: Just Say No... To Ritualistic Murders.
The idea that killing someone in a ritualistic way in order to get some kind of magic going is certainly nothing new in fantasy, and years of watching shows like X-Files and Supernatural certainly gave me a lot of visual samples. I've also seen a few seasons of Dexter, and that certainly also played a part. So the visual aspect was there, but I've also always been interested in accounts of the Druids -- both historical fantasy as well as articles about what we actually know about what went on, and so I've seen some interesting accounts, theories, and stories that were based on ritualized murder. Plus at one point when I was living in Pittsburgh the bog mummies exhibit came to the local natural history museum, so it's possible that I've been within a foot (plus glass case and velvet rope) of a victim of ritualized murder.
So all these things were kind of sloshing around in the back of my brain when I was coming up with the basic plot elements of Iron Night. A lot of things came together really well there -- I'd established that the magic system of the witches was being used to address the fertility issues of the Ad-hene back in Generation V, and it was a great chance to push that to a natural tension point. And once I had that, then I just had to plan my ritualistic murder.
I won't get into too many of the details -- not for spoiler reasons, but mostly because my editor had me tone things way back from what was initially there (I'll give a hint -- there used to be consumption as part of the ritual) -- but I took a pretty methodical approach to it. Since increased fertility was the purpose of the ritual, I knew that I wanted the victims to be young. I chose to make the victims male simply because I thought that horribly mutilating young women was a bit cliche, and that also gave me a rather obvious choice of appendage to have removed. The idea of immersion is a classic one -- I credit that portion of the ritual to stories about Elizabeth Bathory. I ended up including hand removal because it gave me a good detail for the scene where Fort discovers Gage's body.
One of the funny things about when you're building one of these scenes is that at no point did I actually ever creep myself out. It was just a bit of a problem-solving puzzle. It was only months after I'd written it that my editor asked me to tone things back, and I was rather sulky about it at the time. Then months after that the first advanced copies went out and I utterly horrified a few bloggers that I'm friendly with -- I remember my first reaction being "What? What are you upset about?"
So I guess the whole lesson about the situation is that A) I'm so glad that that part of the book had such a lasting impression with you!, and B) I lose all perspective on anything when I'm in the middle of writing something.
Thanks for the awesome question!
The idea that killing someone in a ritualistic way in order to get some kind of magic going is certainly nothing new in fantasy, and years of watching shows like X-Files and Supernatural certainly gave me a lot of visual samples. I've also seen a few seasons of Dexter, and that certainly also played a part. So the visual aspect was there, but I've also always been interested in accounts of the Druids -- both historical fantasy as well as articles about what we actually know about what went on, and so I've seen some interesting accounts, theories, and stories that were based on ritualized murder. Plus at one point when I was living in Pittsburgh the bog mummies exhibit came to the local natural history museum, so it's possible that I've been within a foot (plus glass case and velvet rope) of a victim of ritualized murder.
So all these things were kind of sloshing around in the back of my brain when I was coming up with the basic plot elements of Iron Night. A lot of things came together really well there -- I'd established that the magic system of the witches was being used to address the fertility issues of the Ad-hene back in Generation V, and it was a great chance to push that to a natural tension point. And once I had that, then I just had to plan my ritualistic murder.
I won't get into too many of the details -- not for spoiler reasons, but mostly because my editor had me tone things way back from what was initially there (I'll give a hint -- there used to be consumption as part of the ritual) -- but I took a pretty methodical approach to it. Since increased fertility was the purpose of the ritual, I knew that I wanted the victims to be young. I chose to make the victims male simply because I thought that horribly mutilating young women was a bit cliche, and that also gave me a rather obvious choice of appendage to have removed. The idea of immersion is a classic one -- I credit that portion of the ritual to stories about Elizabeth Bathory. I ended up including hand removal because it gave me a good detail for the scene where Fort discovers Gage's body.
One of the funny things about when you're building one of these scenes is that at no point did I actually ever creep myself out. It was just a bit of a problem-solving puzzle. It was only months after I'd written it that my editor asked me to tone things back, and I was rather sulky about it at the time. Then months after that the first advanced copies went out and I utterly horrified a few bloggers that I'm friendly with -- I remember my first reaction being "What? What are you upset about?"
So I guess the whole lesson about the situation is that A) I'm so glad that that part of the book had such a lasting impression with you!, and B) I lose all perspective on anything when I'm in the middle of writing something.
Thanks for the awesome question!
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