‘Mad, bad and dangerous’: the writing of Blood

There is often a defining moment when I know I have found a story. It may be a snippet of information I overhear while eavesdropping on a tram conversation on my way to work. It is sometimes a single word, a gesture, the slightest movement, or little more than a nagging feeling that I have stumbled across the beginnings of my next piece of writing.

My recent novel, Blood (UQP, 2011), grew out listening to a Radio National program dealing with children who had either spent time in prison with incarcerated mothers, or had been fostered into care until their mothers were released from gaol. The children interviewed on the program conveyed a level or courage and resilience that might at first set them apart from kids who have experienced more comfortable lives. I was struck by the continued love these children expressed for their parents, even though it was obvious that they had suffered greatly as a result of the bad choices and reckless behaviour of mothers and fathers.

As I listened to the program, while sitting at my kitchen table finishing a short story, I thought about my own children (I have five) and the level of trust they put in me. I have tried to be a good father to my children, but have sometimes, like most parents, got it wrong. Their forgiveness of me has been unconditional and their love seemingly unbreakable. I have come to realise that it takes quite a lot of ‘fucking things up’ for a child to lose faith in a parent.

My idea for Blood was to explore this premise through the eyes of two children, a brother and sister. I wanted one of the children, the older of the two, to be so worn down by his mother’s transgressions and bad behaviour that he no longer believes in her, and she is a danger to him. Additionally I wanted the younger child to be naïve, to initially retain that level of trust in a mother that secures all of us as children.

I settled on two characters, Jessie, thirteen, his eight-year-old sister, Rachel, and their wayward mother, Gwen, a hard-drinking, man-chasing troublemaker. I wrote an initial short story, ‘Blood’, which focused on the relationship between the three central characters, particular obstacles that the children face, and a blood ritual enacted between Jesse and Rachel that seals both their fate and any chance of survival.

I felt a great deal of attachment to the characters, particularly the children, and after the story was published I quickly decided that I wanted to write a novel extending the idea. With the longer form in mind I felt that the children’s courage and loyalty to each other would need to be tested through their ability to confront both danger and their own fears. I knew it was important that the children be separated from their mother at some point in the story, so that their resilience could be fully tested.

A second point of interest behind the writing of Blood was my creative interest in the relationship between the characteristics of place and landscape and characters that inhabit or pass through these places. I decided to set Jesse and Rachel on a journey of survival, a postcolonial odyssey through a landscape of colonial ruin and failure. The children witness dead towns, collapsed tourist ventures, agricultural rust and dust bowls, all the while being pursued by a modern day version of the Big Bad Wolf, Ray Crow, a criminal and drug dealer hell-bent on inflicting pain.

My intention was not to suggest that harsh and violent landscapes create violent characters. Such a simplistic analogy is too readily applied to explanations of the Australian psyche. But I did want to create a menacing physical and psychological atmosphere that would fully test the resilience of the children and their ability to survive an epic journey. I wanted readers to barrack for Jesse and Rachel, whether they were being chased by a psychopath or challenged by the obstacles around them.

I had two major challenges to deal with in the writing. The first was voice, particularly that of the narrator, Jesse. I wanted to produce language that was authentic to a thirteen-year-old boy who was both a child and a world-weary and ‘streetwise’ individual who had already dealt with more difficulty than most of us face in a lifetime. And in Rachel I wanted to begin with the voice of an innocent, who, through the journey she undertakes gradually find a level of strength in herself that would only reveal itself if she were able to free herself from the blind faith she has in her mother.

A second challenge was the portrayal of the children’s mother, Gwen. In my previous fiction writing my women had always been, if not ‘angels of the hearth’, not far from it. I knew Gwen would have to be mad, bad and dangerous for the novel to succeed. But she is also a mother. It is a word she cannot bear hearing, let alone have it spoken by her children. But in the end it is what drives her to beg for forgiveness – as a mother.

Gwen is one of the more unlikable characters I have written (although, I note that reviews of the novel have conveyed some sympathy for her). And she is certainly the most honest. There were times during the writing that I debated with others and myself if I should redeem Gwen, allow her to be a more ideal and good mother. Occasionally I was tempted to ‘save’ her. But had I done so I would have failed Gwen. To idealise her would have diminished the pain she herself had suffered in her life.