On Writing

DYMOCKS Q&A | Demet Divaroren on Blood Moon Bride

Blood Moon Bride is a fierce and powerful fantasy novel from the award-winning Australian author of Living on Hope Street. In Demet Divaroren’s fantasy debut, Rehya is forced into marriage for her valley’s survival, where she must decide: submit or rebel against a ruthless system?

A visceral tale of fierce women and unyielding, burning hope, Blood Moon Bride shows us that despite overwhelming adversity, magic can find a way.

In this exclusive Q&A, Demet Divaroren talks on her experience writing Blood Moon Bride, the inspiration behind it, and what readers can expect!

Tell us a bit about Blood Moon Bride! What can readers expect?

Blood Moon Bride is set in Mennama Valley, a patriarchal world where women and girls are stripped of their rights and forced into early marriages, often to older men, to breed children and boost the valley’s longevity. Rehya, 15, is a hunter and despises the practice. She does not want to get married and the story follows her fight for justice, equality and the freedom to have agency over her mind and body.

Readers can expect to meet intriguing characters, some they will love, others they may loathe, and embark on a ride that may shock, challenge, move and leave them breathless as they fight alongside Rehya. 

Do you remember the moment you first conjured the idea for Blood Moon Bride? When and how did this story come to you?

Blood Moon Bride started its life as The Bone Collector with protagonist Orion who lived in Mennama Valley. I wrote a few drafts before I had to face the truth that it didn’t have enough substance. So, I took a risk and scrapped three years’ worth of work and changed the protagonist to a girl and found Rehya. Once I did, it instantly increased the stakes for her and girls like her from poor villages, and completely transformed the story.

Although it is fiction, and the world and characters have no resemblance to real people or places, the book echoes the plight of millions of girls around the world who become child brides every year. My mum is one of them. Her family couldn’t afford for her to study past primary school so she worked on a cotton field at the age of 12. By 14 she was married and a year later I was born. While she married by choice, it should never have been an option. Not then. Not now.

Mum’s experience of having limited life and educational choices as a girl and resorting to an early marriage got me thinking about patriarchal systems and the detrimental impact they have on women’s rights across the world. And, soon Mennama Valley was born. 

What do you love most about your heroine, Rehya?

Argh! I can’t pick just one! I love Rehya’s courage to resist injustice and fight for equality and agency over her life and body. I also admire her unshakable spirit.

How did your experiences differ between writing Living on Hope Street and Blood Moon Bride? Was one distinctively more challenging than the other?

Great question! They were two very different processes. While Living on Hope Street’s subject matter was emotionally challenging, the writing process itself was quite straight forward. It took around three years from first draft to publication.  

Blood Moon Bride was…something else entirely. It took seven years from idea to publication. By the time I started the initial version that I later reinvented, I’d become a mother of two. This meant writing in small scrappy bursts, while dealing with the profound physical, emotional and mental transformation of labour and motherhood. Most of which I channelled into this book. Once we got to proper draft stage, every edit required more and more. Deleting a character, gutting scenes, upping the stakes, reinventing the climax, more action scenes, world building…the list goes on! Writing fantasy has been the biggest and most rewarding challenge of my career.

The cover for this book is gorgeous! How involved are you in the cover design process?

Isn’t it beautiful? I am so incredibly lucky to work with a team who respects my vision and input. This cover went through many, many drafts. Each stage took us closer to capturing the mystery and intrigue of the world and Rehya’s strength and resilience.

Finally, what’s coming next for you? Anything you can share?

Nothing tangible to share BUT I love writing fantasy and I’m having fun exploring many new ideas. Stay tuned.

Guest Post on Stella Schools Blog

Someone Else’s Shoes

My mother-in-law went into labour the night before I was born. She lived on the third floor of a small apartment block in the outskirts of Paris. When her contractions started, she walked down a winding staircase and sat on a stone bench in the backyard to wait for the ambulance. My husband was born at 9pm, and by 11pm, my father-in-law had sent a telegram to India and Pakistan to announce his arrival. Approximately 2940 kilometres away, in a village in Adana, Turkey, my fifteen-year-old mum was roasting chestnuts on a clay heater in her childhood home when her waters broke. Mum still had the grainy sweet taste of chestnuts in her mouth when she delivered me into the hands of a local midwife in the early hours of the morning.

My husband and I were infants when we migrated to Australia with our families in the early ’80s. His childhood was lit up with Christmas lights, while mine was sweetened with Turkish delight at Ramazan Bayram (the Festival of Sweets that follows the month of fasting) and KurbanBayram (the Festival of Sacrifice, when a sheep or a cow is sacrificed and distributed to the poor). We respectively grew up on traditional Indian–Pakistani and Turkish dishes that stunk out our school bags. My husband ate ox tongue sandwiches at lunch, and I grazed on stuffed vine leaves. Our palates punctuated our differences to the world around us like exclamation marks.

When our worlds collided at university, it was our similarities that built the foundation of our friendship. We stacked each one like bricks and, thirteen years later, we fell in love and were married by a celebrant in the Royal Botanic Gardens. We help the poor at Kurban Bayram; we pop bonbons at Christmas; we eat Turkish stews, Indian curries and throw a lot of snags on the barbie. Alone, it is easier for the outside world to define us and to shove us into our respective ethnic boxes. Together, we are a mystery. People stumble over our ethnic combination, faces crease into question marks. Heads do a double-take.

‘What’s your background?’ a landscaper once asked my husband.

‘Indian–Pakistani,’ he replied.

‘I knew it!’ he said. ‘But I got a bit confused because I saw your wife and I thought something’s not right here. Indians only marry Indians.’

Our societal labels limit us to a few words, like labels on a supermarket shelf. We are Turkish, Indian, Pakistani, Aussie, Catholic and Muslim. While these labels have helped shape part of our identities, they are a fraction of our complex and layered selves. Each day we uncover a new habit or vulnerability, like our fear of paranormal movies or my husband’s routine ten-point safety check of our accommodation when we travel. It’s these idiosyncrasies that expose and bind us. We are different shades of the same species – a theme I explore a lot in my writing.

My role as a writer is to walk in someone else’s shoes, and it’s the ones that are uncomfortable that challenge me the most. In the novel I am currently writing, Living on Hope Street, my character Mr Bailey’s shoes were so tight that initially they made my skin blister. His racism and prejudice curdled my blood. I met him when he was spying on his African refugee neighbours. ‘Mr Bailey counted four of them, a man, woman and two kids but he was on alert. These people could multiply at any moment.’ I swore at the computer screen till I was red in the face and resisted writing about him, until a thought struck me across the head like a flying shoe. By judging Mr Bailey, I was no different from him. So I forced myself to write and confront my own judgement. I met his wife, who he had loved unconditionally for fifty years; his dog Sunshine, who he had rescued from a dog home; and gradually uncovered his traumatic past until my dislike was replaced with understanding.

Storytelling is an exploration of what makes us human. It is a reflection of our society, our fears, wants, losses, courage and connections. It is an invitation to build empathy and challenge our misconceptions and the negative vitriol of ‘the other’ that is fuelled by the media. This is why Mr Bailey’s story was so important for me to write. Storytelling offers new and informed dialogues that challenge those shaped solely by stereotypes – like the conversation I had with a hairdresser:

‘Is your husband Indian?’ she asked, her eyes wide. ‘Does he smell?’

My mouth dropped.

‘Does he have an accent?’ she pressed on when I was too shocked to answer.

I write to inspire understanding so that the next time someone’s mind defaults to a stereotype they might think twice and, instead, the conversation can start with: ‘What’s his name?’

Human beings are not merchandise that can be packed, packaged and tagged. We are infinite and hard to define. The key to a more tolerant and informed society is to pause from our misguided fears and misunderstandings long enough to see each other. Our words, both written and spoken, have the power to shatter societal barriers and discard labels so that we can get to know each other from the inside out.