3 Things in My Upcoming Book Things That Were Hard to Write About…
Hey friends. Welcome. Some things aren’t fun to talk about. Likewise, some things aren’t fun to write about. But, for the sake of a story, you push through it. I did, anyway. Here’s how that feels.
Table of Contents
My Next Book
My upcoming book is title Sleepwalker Angel. It’s about a woman in her late 20s who uses long dormant supernatural abilities to extract her cousin from a dangerous rural cult.
It’s a supernatural horror novel. It’s been a fun story to write, but parts of it were a little more difficult to tackle. Three parts in particular.
3 Things That I Felt Weird Writing
Writing a Gross Bad Guy Doesn’t Feel Awesome
My main bad guy is a cult leader. And cult leaders, as you may know, have historically been pretty weird, ethically questionable folks with a need for control over others. The more famous cult leaders have killed enemies as well as followers, slept with a bunch of followers, cut fingers off of followers, branded followers, and so on.
When I dug into the world of cults, cult members, and cult leaders, I was shocked by the amount of control and autonomy followers gave up. But more so, horrified by the cult leaders who convinced, intimidated, brainwashed, tricked, whatever-you-wanna-call-it all these people to follow them.
The cult leader I wrote made me uncomfortable. Everything he did seemed weird and gross to me. A lot of the time while I was writing the first draft I listened to this…
…because the more I wrote about him, the more he gave off the aura of a vampire. Someone who methodically preys on people and takes them out of the real world into one of their own creation.
Writing about Religion
“Don’t talk about religion,” said bajillions of adults to bajillions of kids. Maybe you’ve heard it at a time or two. Religion and politics, right? Those are a sure path to an awkward, often angry discussion and/or argument. Well, I write about religion a little bit in my upcoming book.
The main bad guy is a cult leader so it’s difficult not to get into religion. It wasn’t hard to write in the same way as writing about the cult leader, that made me feel gross. It was hard to write because I couldn’t help thinking, This book might piss off some people. I might be overthinking it, but that’s what happens when you commit a well-known social taboo.
Writing from a Female POV
Switchers is told directly by one character. A male one. This time it’s an omniscient narrator but the main character is a female, so I’m in her head a lot on the page. Being a male, writing from/about a female perspective isn’t a scary in the act of writing as it is getting feedback from female readers. So far the female feedback has been positive, but I was really worried about getting it right.
Whether I nailed it or not will be up for debate, but I feel pretty good about it. Hopefully, if you read it in the future, you will too.
Parting Advice
- Get a copy of Switchers, if you haven’t already.
- Keep an eye out for pre-order links for my upcoming novel, Sleepwalker Angel, in the coming weeks and take action on that.
- Keep being awesome.
-CT
Christopher Tallon is the author of the dark, adventurous, time-travel novel Switchers.