The Making of In Bloom: An Introduction

My most controversial novel.

I mean, well yeah.

Any book excused of the things that one star Goodreads review accused this one of being would be controversial. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this is my most progressive book. In Bloom is a novel that takes what could have been a toxic male, incel concept and finds a complex, nuanced, even feminist take. Male virgins trying to lose their innocence so as not to get sacrificed to the town dragon; this could have been far more toxic than it eventually became. If you asked the author of that Goodreads review, I guess they would say it became even more toxic than it could have been as a simple misogynistic tale. I defend In Bloom. It's a progressive book. These were my intentions, and the beauty of being able to edit the book at any time, means I can still make it even more progressive if I so wish.

The book is set in a satirical, emphasis on satirical, pre-twentieth-century (emphasis on pre-twentieth-century) version of Germany. Now, why is this book set in Germany? For me, that was a way of hammering home the fairytale narrative. This book was either going to be set in Germany or Russia. My god, imagine if I'd set the book in Russia. That wouldn't have been controversial at all now. I digress: the book was set in Germany to feel like a Brothers' Grimm fairytale. That was my intention.

I feel like most of the chapter-by-chapter breakdown is going to be me on the defensive, literally peeling apart paragraph by paragraph with forensic detail, going, "now my intention here..." What's funny is that I knew the book would annoy people from Germany while I wrote it, not in a xenophobic way but in a gentle, ribbing way, similar to the French jokes I had put in First Howl. I'd like to leave that comment there, and that the attention was to satirize and critique, rather than establish some kind of far-right wonderland.

And yet, I do get that much of the imagery and writing that I'm using is similar to that used by Wagner in his operas. That made me feel sick when I read the English translations of Siegfried. Then again, the button-pushing part of me wants to write a sequel to In Bloom, in part to respond to the critique of the first book. This sequel would be a deconstruction of the first book, and it would be something of an apology, but at the same time -- any sequel to this book, this most controversial book of books, would naturally be a provocation.

Then again, part of me knows In Bloom is a toxic novel. I knew it even before I wrote the book. The concept was "American Pie Meets The Call of Cthulhu", which was always going to push buttons. No, those two works aren't controversial at all. Really, it was like mixing Arsenic with Ricin and hoping the final brew wouldn't kill too many people. The original concept was the virgin slapstick comedy from American Pie, only instead of humiliation or masculine pride, the reason they have to lose their virginity is the town dragon; this ancient presence that lives in the mountains, brooding.

I'm pleased the Goodreads reviewer at least found the dragon cool, despite their underlying criticism being that they thought the book promoted a fascist -- well, Nazi -- ideal, and that by praising the dragon, the book's embodiment of authoritarianism, it was a lot like saying "Star Wars is a fascist film, but I love The Stormtroopers and the Darth Vader Imperial March, can't get enough of that." I find the stuff around the dragon fascinating, personally, but not because of the fascist connotations. I wouldn't know, but I'm sure the dragon is a big symbol on online Far-Right websites, given that it represents both tradition and fierceness. I didn't really intend the dragon to be a far-right symbol in this book, though it is a black-scaled dragon and, as the Goodreads reviewer identified in a rare moment of self reflection, there is some commentary on German history; there is some Holocaust imagery with the ash falling from the dragon's cave. All of these aspects are circumstantial, however, and really the dragon is the gruelling embodiment of death, mortality, evil etc. The very traditional, classical German town, is threatened by something dark and sinister just on the outskirts, constantly threatening to engulf it unless they make the ultimate sacrifice, giving up their young boys. In that way, you can see the dragon (evil) as being simply fascism and the boys being indoctrinated when they go up to the caves. Hey, they are basically incels and, dowsed in dragon fire, they are both baptised and destroyed at the same time.

I had to take a deep breath writing that paragraph, and I admit this is hard stuff to digest, all this talk of fascism and evil. While I do believe In Bloom is a progressive novel, it's still a nasty novel that goes to dark places. Even the light places in the book, such as the beer halls and the classical German references, were basically co-opted by the Nazis.

That was the central problem with writing this book, trying to get to some kind of brevity. A lot of people would say that, with the topics I've thrown around over the last few paragraphs, there shouldn't be any kind of brevity with a story like this. Yet the book was never meant to be about Nazis, is not about Nazis, and was originally intended to ward boys away from being incels.

I wanted to avoid that hyper-serious self-pity you get with the incels. Hence, the jokey tone. Part of that goes with the abuse of the German language. Now, I can see why someone who's actually German would take issue with their language being toyed around with and murdered in this fashion, but even here my intention was not to depict a culture revered by the far-right in a overly reverential fashion. I love German beer, music, countrysides and culture. I've got no problem with Germany; I'm talking about the tropes, more than the country. I wanted to annoy the far-right.

At the time, in 2019, someone like Jordan Peterson was just beginning to come on my radar. Not in a good way. His emphasis on tradition was something I desperately wanted to mock; so here's the lack of reverence in this book. 2019 in general was an interesting year to be writing In Bloom. If Realm was written in the final months of Theresa May, ending just after she announced her resignation, and maybe has something of the ridiculous we-won-the-battle-before-the-battle triumphalism of Boris Johnson, then In Bloom, begun right after Theresa May's resignation, had this extremely jokey, trashy attitude to tradition and fatalism.

In Bloom was written between July 2019 and right before the first lockdown in March 2020; thereby it represents something of a world on the edge of cataclysmic disaster. I guess that's why the book ends how it does: on the brink of something; the monster still out there and waiting to be fought. That monster turned out to be Covid. Jo's journey, that of self-discovery, also echoed my own journey in having gone from a severe personal crisis at the end of Realm, to sense of comfort and command in my own identity. I'm not Trans, so would never compare myself to Jo, but I did feel far more comfortable with myself at the end of In Bloom then I did at the start.

In Bloom is about Jo's journey, their road to self-discovery which takes them from identifying as a girl at the start of the book to becoming -- and being confirmed as a boy -- by the very end. This is why the book ends with the black butterflies, those that only come for boys, coming for Jo and confirming him as a boy. I don't see why I should have ended the book with the dragon dying. By this point, everyone knows Jo will kill the dragon. Why should I write an entirely predictable third-act? Say if I had tried to mix it up and have Jo be killed by the dragon, then I would have had my transgender character used a sacrificial lamb. No. It was best to end the book with Jo being confirmed as a boy because that is what the book is about. It's about the male identity.