The Making of Melancholia: An Introduction

Or How I Spent My Covid Lockdown

I began this book at the same time as In Bloom back in summer 2019 but left it for nearly a year until I finished the former book. When I returned to Melancholia, the first few chapters had been completed and I had gotten to the moment when Maggie arrives at the God-Tower. This, as you will know, is before the main crux of the book begins, and the mystery begins to unravel.

I finished In Bloom a few nights before the first lockdown began. By the time I got to the first visit to the Vampire Valhalla, I was back at my parents' house and working hard on this book. I completed it in little over three months, which was extraordinary for what was then my most ambitious work. For better or for worse. The BS artistic things I did with the hyphens and the CAPS lock, I wouldn't do nowadays. A sequel to Melancholia (Melancholia Dawn) is going to be my next book, as I haven't finished with this world yet. There is still plenty of interesting stuff I can do with the world, dealing with the rise of the vampires and what happens after the revolution, and I can't wait to start writing.

The time I had writing Melancholia was a terrible time for the world, but it was a soothing and content period for me. I drank gin in the garden every day to stay calm and wrote either in the early morning, drinking black coffee or wrote in the evening, drinking whiskey mixed with Coca-Cola. Melancholia had heavy themes and frightening aspects such as, you know, the vampire orgy, the underworld, the human-corpse monster etc. All of these things were absolutely terrifying, and yet like Billie Eilish, I was happier than ever. It's the most content I've ever been writing a book.

Melancholia was long in the works, since when I was eighteen, and now I was on a run with writing novels, having written about five, I decided to try my hand at a work to which I had long wanted to return. Before, I had struggled to find a main character for my work and I solved this with the slightly generic Percy-Jacksonish plot of having the main character be Melancholia's daughter. I thought I could get away with this given I made up all the gods, and the rest of the book is quite original, but I will admit it is quite oldhat having a character discover they are the offspring of the world's creator.

The Crestfallen, the vampire orgy with the queen that creates new vampires, was obviously inspired by how bees procreate. It's the most fascinating part of the book for me. I understand how people find this disgusting, and as someone who's quite prudish with this subject, I totally get that. What makes the Crestfallen more than softcore porn is the fantastical elements -- the queen grows over ten feet tall, and the vampires swarm around her. I like the fact, as well, that it's kept behind closed doors. You don't see anything. It's an aspect that's very hush, hush in the book. Every character, vampire and human, is ashamed something like this exists.

People will say I ripped off Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, but actually I ripped off The Smashing Pumpkins and their album, Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness. That was the big inspiration for this book. I modelled the vampire look both on Nosferatu and on Billy Corgan.

Someone could find misogyny in the depictions of women turning into animals and causing terror. This, despite the fact the book breaks the Bechdel test several hundred times over. Then again, I understand the criticism. Women being depicted as monsters, gigantic and terrifying; there's definitely something Freudian about it (sweats). I swear it's unconscious, officer. The book's intention was to depict powerful women with supernatural abilities, and I definitely did that. You could find misandry in how the men are portrayed, foolish and inept, able to be taken advantage of. Look at Princess Ginnie and how she is able to play men against one another, taking advantage of them, yes, but these are self-obsessed and immoral men, and, with this game of manipulation, Ginnie is able to win.

I don't want to get too Freudian here, shifting in my psychiatrist's chair, but around the time I wrote the book, I was in the orbit of someone who was quite manipulative and I suppose I was one of those nervous, fumbling men who got taken advantage of. If you really want to prod, I guess you could say the book is my way of convincing myself (gaslighting) that this was normal behaviour. In my telling, they became a superhero, and I was just a foolish mortal willing to submit. I've since distanced myself from this person, so the sequel to this book will be incredibly interesting.

Steampunk elements abound in this first Melancholia book. This is, after all, a world that Victorians have created. The new book with have a lot of elements from my latest fascination, The French Revolution. You're going to have all these guys squabbling in Kaine after the downfall of the Pharaoh, and Maggie is going to have to decide which one she wants to sponsor. At the same time, the vampires still linger in the world, and they may have a new chosen one. Maggie has also pissed off her whole family, so she's going to have to deal with some very annoyed aunts as she attempts to build a new and better world.