Holly Faye Dixon
Mother Grim and The Headless Knight
Inspiration
It is difficult to pinpoint where my inspiration came from for this novel, because it is very much an amalgamation of thoughts and ideas that have been dwelling in my mind for many years. Magpie-esque, I have plucked inspiration from a multitude of places. Some of my personal interests fed into building my characters - I was interested in the art of tattooing, so my protagonist’s husband is a tattoo artist, I love learning about the Goth subculture, so my protagonist’s son is pursuing the Goth aesthetic despite being mocked by adults around him. I think at the very heart of it, I wrote this body of work to satisfy myself, to write the novel that I wanted to read but had not found on the shelves, so you might have to forgive this work for being indulgent. One of my favourite things about this project is the exploration into a dysfunctional relationship between a mother and a child. I had a chance to explore taboo feelings of resentment towards the people that raised us, and to investigate how a person might break away from toxic family members despite societal pressure to love and forgive our parents unconditionally. In some ways, this novel has helped me to work through some of the disturbing moments and thoughts from childhood that have affected my mental health and cast a shadow over my relationships.
This work does cover a number of controversial topics, which I have tried to handle with as much sensitivity and tact as I am able to do. There can often be a very uneasy balance - particularly when writing in the crime or horror genre - between writing something honestly and respectfully and writing for the purpose of entertaining others. Perhaps once I have presented my work to more readers I will be able to better gauge where my novel truly falls in this regard.
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Edited Extract:
Disclaimer: It is important to make it clear to that the following extract contains graphic violence and sexual content which maybe upsetting.
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"The realisation that it was Eli knelt on the bed - Eli thrusting into another man, Eli panting and sweating towards a breathless orgasm - rose sharply to the surface of Liam’s mind, the same way a person remembers a grim task seconds after waking up to a false feeling of weightlessness. Liam felt a painful numbness worst of all in his hands, in his fingertips. He felt like his skin was sliding off his cheekbones.
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In the thick mist of Liam’s shock, Luca raised his gun and fired three shots into the room. Two landed.
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The first bullet punctured the wide stretch of pale freckled skin on Eli’s back - right between his shoulder blades - and got lost somewhere inside Eli’s great chest. The second shattered the greasy mirror on the wardrobe by the bed. And the third burst through the back of Eli’s head, exited from his left eye and ricocheted off the wooden headboard, splattering blood all around.
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Eli’s body sagged onto the smaller man beneath him. Liam and Luca would never know that man’s name, but he had one. To most, he was Theodore, but with Eli he was always Teddy. Teddy buckled under the full extent of Eli’s weight. Blood dripped from Eli’s head onto Teddy’s face and hands. “Eli . . . Eli . . .” Teddy found Eli’s hand; he was squeezing it, shaking it, kissing Eli’s fingers, anything to rouse him. Eli’s hands were limp and bloody, not even twitching with life. Teddy’s horror rattled through Liam’s body."
Future Drafts
This project has been in the works, playing on my mind and filling my free time since 2016 and I expect it will continue to be worked on for a few years to come. I have drafted the first nine chapters in full and have a collection of written out scenes from other parts of the novel (my current word count is somewhere between 57,000 and 100,000). I recently had a breakthrough in plotting out the middle and ending of the novel (something that had been significantly delaying my progress). The title is a working one - originally I had 'Mother Grim' and 'The Headless Knight' as separate titles but felt that for the time being that merging the two addressed the plot (the brother's murder) and the theme (the ghastly relationship between mother and son in the novel). My intention is to write a full draft of the novel in its entirety before moving onto the redrafting and editing stages. To enquire further about this piece or to read a full draft, you can contact me here.
