Publication Day for The Hungry Dark

The Hungry Dark is now published. This one’s been a long road.

The story behind the book is very long and I’m too tired to get into it. But it’s now out, and I’m proud of it. I think it’s good.

My faith in that opinion has been shaken by the advance reviews I received – the majority of which are three star reviews where the text is mostly ‘meh, wasn’t for me, characters weren’t great’. This… is concerning.

It’s tempting to write reviews such as this off, for reasons I’ll get to in a second. However, I’m deeply suspicious of my instinct to do this. “These people don’t know what they’re talking about, I’m definitely a genius and my work is perfect, and they’re clearly… I don’t know… what sort of books are we supposed to sneer at currently? Harriet Spiggot fans. They’re all Harriet Spiggot fans who wouldn’t know a good novel if it sat on their faces,” says the defensive writer.

Essentially, I’ve worked on this book for years, so it’s especially tempting to think “I’ve done a lot of work on this, therefore it must be good.” Anyone should be able to spot the logical fallacy at the heart of that statement.

I, personally, think there’s something to this idea I have that these three star reviewers just… didn’t get the book. This is best exemplified by a snippet from one review:

“The book mentions that Melita suffers from a chronic illness, and whilst the descriptions of the actual symptoms were very well done, the illness hardly seemed to affect her after the first chapter. I think including more of these struggles would have helped flesh Melita out a bit more as a character, as I found her hard to connect with. Her actions also felt rather nonsensical, and even contrary at times, which was quite frustrating to read. I didn't really understand her stoic pacifism - and it often just came across like blunt stupidity and self-sacrifice without good reason.” – a reviewer.

So, reading that, what I hear is: “I didn’t pick up on any of the depictions of Melita’s illness after the first chapter.” The reviewer more or less says this directly – Melita’s relationship with pacifism is a core part of the book, and its relationship with her illness is discussed in several key scenes. Several times in the story she’s so burned out she can’t even move. She constantly throws herself into danger because of maladaptive coping strategies. She, and I can’t believe I have to point this out, tries to kill herself on two seperate occasions. I find the idea that her illness doesn’t affect her after the first chapter absolutely baffling.

I suspect that certain readers didn’t understand the depiction of mental health in The Hungry Dark, and weren’t particularly curious about what they saw as contradictions, or lack of depth. There’s something I, as a writer, could do about this – I could make Melita’s journey much clearer.

The only problem is, I already have. I had several chats with industry people about The Hungry Dark and something which came up repeatedly was they just didn’t get the mental health stuff. One person really didn’t understand why a character named Kinta was present in the story. Kinta was always supposed to be an (even more) maladaptive mirror to the protagonist. In subsequent drafts, I made this clearer, even referring to Kinta as the protagonist’s twin. I really can’t make this stuff much clearer.

Plus, I know I shouldn’t make Melita’s experiences with mental health any clearer. A couple of reviewers have said things such as:

“My only real critique is in the writing itself, which is almost a little too earnest, starting with the subtitle and going from there. I appreciate the themes and ideas being explored--ideas of pacifism, self-worth, fitting in, selflessness and working for others, depression, chronic pain and disability, equality, and so on. I think they’re important and glad to see them. But they felt over-discussed. There were constantly explicit words being put to these ideas, instead of trusting in the writing and the readers both to get the message without repeatedly saying it.” - a reviewer.

I agree with every word in that quote. The reviewer is entirely correct. But you see the issue? For some readers the mental health issue just disappears after the first chapter, and for others it’s stated too bluntly. It’s too obvious. Over-discussed.

Sigh. I’m so tired.

Well, never mind. This is how it goes. The book’s out. During the course of writing The Hungry Dark I improved massively as a writer, I learned a great deal about the sort of material I want to write, and I healed my relationship with my own work. Since starting to write on the book, I’ve been cured of depression and Anxiety, I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD, and I’ve become religious (which was a big surprise). I’m happy it’s out. I’m happy to move on now.

For anyone who might be interested, I made a soundtrack for the novel. I use soundtracks such as this to get myself into the right headspace whilst writing. The order of the songs roughly track the story. Here’s the playlist on Youtube Music, whilst here it is as an embed, although a couple of the tracks don’t work, for reasons which are beyond me:

And, finally, here are some images I used as inspiration for the novel at its genesis.