The Big Idea: Delilah S. Dawson
Posted on August 8, 2014 Posted by John Scalzi 14 Comments
For today’s Big Idea, Delilah S. Dawson is here with her southern gothic Servants of the Storm, to tell you all about the liberating pleasures of the phrase “Hell, no.”
DELILAH S. DAWSON:
Hey, you! Buy my book.
::stares::
::waits::
::stares harder::
What, you don’t take orders?
Yeah, me neither. I used to, but not anymore.
And neither does Dovey Greenwood, heroine of my Southern Gothic Horror, Servants of the Storm. At first, I thought my Big Idea was loyalty or fighting prejudice in the Deep South, but then I realized that the very root of the entire plot is Dovey’s defiance.
Everyone tells her to take her meds. But one day, because she thinks she sees her dead best friend, she flushes all those pretty white pills down the toilet.
Turns out, she wasn’t on antipsychotics to help her deal with the grief of losing Carly in Hurricane Josephine. Turns out, there’s more lurking around the ruined alleys of Savannah, Georgia than just the usual panhandlers and tourists. Turns out, Josephine is more than just a storm, and now that she’s settled in like a pig in shit, she and her demonic minions want to take everything Dovey has, including her soul.
Dovey’s answer? Hell no.
Once the meds wear off, she’s dead set on finding answers. She stands up to both prejudice and demons and refuses to accept that her destiny has already been determined, even against impossible odds. And one of the reasons I wrote her this way, pig-headed and defiant and suicidally reckless, is because when I was her age, I didn’t say Hell no. I said Yes sir. And it nearly killed me.
I grew up in a house where No wasn’t allowed and Hell no would’ve gotten me smacked and grounded. I was terrified to break a rule, color outside the lines, or speak up when I disagreed. I got all As. I worked thirty hours a week. I did everything I was told to do.
And maybe that’s why I didn’t stand up for myself when I was bullied. Maybe that’s why I didn’t tell anyone when my dad was emotionally abusive. Maybe that’s why I was willing to shrug it off when that ex-boyfriend started stalking me. Maybe that’s why I let him corner me, alone, to talk. Maybe that’s why I didn’t fight back when he raped me at knifepoint. And maybe that’s why I didn’t tell anyone, after. I was too scared to take risks, too scared to get in trouble, too terrified to do more than whisper No because making a man angry meant I could get hurt even worse than I already was.
So when I started writing Servants of the Storm and putting together the pieces of the puzzle, the pictures of Six Flags New Orleans after Katrina and the Spanish moss in Bonaventure Cemetery and the dangerous neighborhoods where my husband grew up in Savannah, the heroine who emerged was tough in ways I had never dreamed of being, defiant in ways I wish I had been, back then. When my instinct as a writer was to take the easy path and let the story move her along, Dovey ran in the other direction, flicking me off.
The truth is, if I had seen a flash of my dead best friend when I was seventeen, I would’ve rushed home for more pills. But Dovey spits her pill out and goes back to wait to see Carly again. She runs down dark, unfamiliar streets chasing a stranger and walks into hell for the chance to save the person she loved most. Sometimes, when I was writing, I felt like I was both Dovey and Carly, like the current me was the brave, strong, tough girl willing to break the rules while the old me, the teen me, was the sad, quiet zombie going through the motions, doing what she was told.
I’m thirty-six now, and Hell no is one of my many indulgences. I would say it’s a battle cry, but it’s more often something I mutter in my head while smiling politely. Nobody can make me do anything I don’t want to do—not anymore. Writing Dovey’s defiance was like looking back to the girl I was and giving her the strength I never had. Every time she plants her feet and refuses to obey, I cheer. Whenever she makes what an adult reader would consider a stupid mistake, I’ll defend her. Because it’s her mistake, and she owns it… and usually pays for it.
Children are born crying and defiant, and we do our best to quell the rebellion and teach civility and courtesy. With teens, every moment is a choice between Hell no and Yes sir. Part of the escape of YA is shrugging the responsibility off our mature shoulders for a while to recall the sudden fire of disobedience, the thrill of running in the wrong direction, or the butterflies of kissing someone when we know we shouldn’t. If you’d like to step into the shoes of a fiercely loyal girl who makes terrible mistakes for all the right reasons agains the backdrop of a beautifully decaying city, I hope you’ll give Servants of the Storm a try.
Also, there’s a demon Basset hound. If the defiance doesn’t lure you, that should do it.
—-
Servants of the Storm: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s
Read an excerpt. Visit the author’s blog. Follow her on Twitter.
Demon basset hounds frighten me. :)
I think you’re dead on about the potential of YA for escape. I wonder if the darker parts of YA provide an even better frisson of escape and thrill that way.
Your honesty here is amazing and awesome. BE DEFIANT! You rock.
Wow.
I’m originally from Kentucky, and I also spent six months in Chattanooga during the roughest stretch of my adolescence. A lot which happened which contribute to how you will never get me to live in the South again even if you pay me.
But that said, I love to read stuff set there, and this book may well be touching on reasons why. I went and read the excerpt, and yeah, I’ll be checking this out.
I’m glad I didn’t wander off when I saw the words “southern gothic.” Added to wish list.
The cover art is about the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen on a book. Who did that?
The cover is based on a photograph by Violet Damyan (http://violetdart.com/), manipulated and designed by Regina Flath at Simon & Schuster. I love it so hard!
So excited to see you here, D! See you tonight.
I was already going to read this (let me tell you how I love the Blud books!), but a Hell No Heroine? I am IN.
Great cover. Very eye-catching!
Hah, I wish I could be a Hell No person. Alas, i am paid to be a “Thank you sir, may I have another!” person.
This is interesting … but I have to say the whole “stops taking her meds” thing makes me leery. As someone whose mental health is propped up by psychopharmacology (depression and anxiety, in case you were wondering), I’m perhaps oversensitive to depictions of mental illness (particularly in fantasy/SF, which is what I mostly read). Even if you’re not actually crazy when you see dead people … I’m not sure entirely how to articulate what I’m trying to say here. Coming off antipsychotics cold turkey (I presume they’re antipsychotics if they’re prescribed to deal with “hallucinatory” ghosts) is not good for you, either.
Not having read the book I can’t say if the charge rightfully applies to Dawson, but the idea of “Don’t take your meds, you’re not actually crazy, the world is actually magical!” … bugs the hell out of me. The thing about mental illness is that it *alters your perception of reality* – sufferers (myself included) are *not qualified* to accurately self-diagnose and treat themselves, for much the same reason that you’re not going to get a good haircut if you try to do it yourself with your eyes closed, and the mental health establishment is not the enemy.
Deep breath. End rant. I may be barking up completely the wrong tree here, and if so I’m sorry, Ms. Dawson. It just … bugs me. Pet peeve, I guess.
Fletcher, that is an issue I knew would come up in the face of this particular story. As someone who has battled depression and been on antidepressants, I recognize that the stigmas around mental illness do not benefit from the presentation of Dovey’s meds in my book blurbs and synopses. The demons are actually distributing the same pills as a panacea to all ills, including Dovey’s father’s blood pressure and her mom’s headaches. Dovey was never actually psychotic; she was seeing things the demons didn’t want her to see, so they drugged her. I’m not sure if this explanation will bug you more or make you feel any better, but as a sufferer of depression, it was not my intent to malign the benefits of proper therapy and drugs for diagnosed chemical problems.
Delilah – that does help, actually, and I rather suspected my pet peeve wasn’t your intent. Regardless of outcome – not having read your book I can’t pass judgment on it – the fact that you considered the implications does satisfy me.
What you wrote here was enough to make me run to B&N and buy the book. Your honesty and the ideas presented are so intriguing that I felt like I HAVE to read this book. I love the Big Idea here. It’s introduced me to several amazing authors!