Author Delilah S. Dawson has returned to the blog for a fifth Big Idea. Today she brings us Bloom, her newest romance-horror novel that mixes sweet with… bloody. Read on to see how this book came to be, with a little help from her daughter.
DELILAH S. DAWSON:
Did you know that you can substitute (properly rendered) human fat for lard when baking or use human blood in the place of eggs? Just replace each egg with 65g of blood—or 43g for an egg white. It’s true for pig blood, so I’m assuming it’s true for human blood, although I haven’t tried either substitution. Point being, the human body is chock full of useful substances, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like to let anything go to waste.
That was the original story seed for Bloom—the mental image of a different kind of serial killer, a delicate girl breaking down a corpse into its component parts and using it to make something beautiful, something artistic. But I didn’t want it to be gritty like Fight Club or focused on men like Hannibal (and also Fight Club). I wanted it to be feminine and pretty and aesthetic. A sweeter, gentler, cottagecore sociopath, if you will.
My first attempt began in a Fantasy world where the main character, an ethereal girl with white hair in a long dress and apron, was tasked with preparing the local corpses, breaking them down so that honor was done to them and supplying the people of her countryside with fertilizer and lard and meat. I had a character and a world but no story, and no matter how gently I called to the Muse with homemade gluten free cupcakes, the story eluded me.
And then one day my teen daughter asked me the question that changed everything…
Bloom: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Powell’s
Find out the question at: The Big Idea: Delilah S. Dawson
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