I've heard brilliant things about Fall Out! I'm thrilled to join the blog tour with a very personal post from the author about experiences that inspired the book.
When I came out to my mam, it didn’t go down very well. She
locked herself in her bedroom and cried for two days straight. The walls were
paper thin so I could hear everything. I later learned that she was worried
about me, about how much harder things would be in a world that can be so unaccepting.
When I came to write Fall Out, I knew the “coming out” scene would be where it all kicked off. I thought to myself, what’s the worst thing that could happen when Cal comes out? I don’t want to spoil it, but I imagined my mam in the kitchen and the worst possible scenario I could imagine. The result was a bit of dark humour that reader have told me works quite well.
Initially, Fall Out was centred around the disaster dates that Cal went on but when I really thought about what I wanted the story to say, it became so much more and that’s when I remembered how badly I was bullied at school. School life was never easy. The boys at my school called me “gay”, using the word like a grenade, before I knew what it meant to be gay. It’s hard to ignore how different you feel when people punch you and trip you up when you leave the classroom, and worse still, you have to hide the cuts and bruises from my mother in case it made things worse. I felt backed into a corner with no one to turn to.
The physical abuse wasn’t the worst part though. It was the names that really cut deep, that made me feel like I was nothing, like I was an abomination. From the age of eleven, I knew I was different, but I didn’t know what that meant. The other boys called me a “faggot”, called me “gay”, like I was a disease to be caught if people ever got too close. I never had any friends though, no one to get close to. You’d have to be made of steel not to let the words get to you. I couldn’t understand what made me different to the other boys. We all looked the same, all bled the same, and yet, I was the one being punched and slagged off in the school yard.
I took all of the pain and fear from those memories and injected it into Cal’s story. I wanted it to be hard to read at certain points and to feel Cal’s pain, because that’s the kind of pain that so many LGBT+ youths feel at school. Isolated. Friendless. Hopeless. No one to turn to. No one to talk to. It was important to use my own experiences – both good and bad – to tell the most impactful story I could. When readers pick up Fall Out, I want them to feel. As an author, that’s the most important thing for me.
About C. G. Moore:
C. G. is a freelance editor and marketer who has written for GCN Magazine, Writing.ie and many more. He runs the #YAtakeover, an online festival dedicated to bringing readers and writers together. He has hosted physical and online events as part of Litfest, and the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medals. When C. G. is not reading or writing, he can be found wrapped up in aerial silks, baking or getting lost in nature with his sassy Jack Russell, Ruby. He has previously lecturered on the MA in Publishing program at the University of Central Lancashire where he shares his love of the written word. You can find out more about his debut, Fall Out, on Goodreads or pre-order from Amazon.
When I came to write Fall Out, I knew the “coming out” scene would be where it all kicked off. I thought to myself, what’s the worst thing that could happen when Cal comes out? I don’t want to spoil it, but I imagined my mam in the kitchen and the worst possible scenario I could imagine. The result was a bit of dark humour that reader have told me works quite well.
Initially, Fall Out was centred around the disaster dates that Cal went on but when I really thought about what I wanted the story to say, it became so much more and that’s when I remembered how badly I was bullied at school. School life was never easy. The boys at my school called me “gay”, using the word like a grenade, before I knew what it meant to be gay. It’s hard to ignore how different you feel when people punch you and trip you up when you leave the classroom, and worse still, you have to hide the cuts and bruises from my mother in case it made things worse. I felt backed into a corner with no one to turn to.
The physical abuse wasn’t the worst part though. It was the names that really cut deep, that made me feel like I was nothing, like I was an abomination. From the age of eleven, I knew I was different, but I didn’t know what that meant. The other boys called me a “faggot”, called me “gay”, like I was a disease to be caught if people ever got too close. I never had any friends though, no one to get close to. You’d have to be made of steel not to let the words get to you. I couldn’t understand what made me different to the other boys. We all looked the same, all bled the same, and yet, I was the one being punched and slagged off in the school yard.
I took all of the pain and fear from those memories and injected it into Cal’s story. I wanted it to be hard to read at certain points and to feel Cal’s pain, because that’s the kind of pain that so many LGBT+ youths feel at school. Isolated. Friendless. Hopeless. No one to turn to. No one to talk to. It was important to use my own experiences – both good and bad – to tell the most impactful story I could. When readers pick up Fall Out, I want them to feel. As an author, that’s the most important thing for me.
About C. G. Moore:
C. G. is a freelance editor and marketer who has written for GCN Magazine, Writing.ie and many more. He runs the #YAtakeover, an online festival dedicated to bringing readers and writers together. He has hosted physical and online events as part of Litfest, and the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medals. When C. G. is not reading or writing, he can be found wrapped up in aerial silks, baking or getting lost in nature with his sassy Jack Russell, Ruby. He has previously lecturered on the MA in Publishing program at the University of Central Lancashire where he shares his love of the written word. You can find out more about his debut, Fall Out, on Goodreads or pre-order from Amazon.
Thanks so much for sharing, Chris! Fall Out will be released on 18th June and you can follow the other tour stops using the banner below.
No comments:
Post a Comment