Guest Post by Tamara Thorne & Alistair Cross Authors of Mother

10 MORE Things You Might Not Know About MOTHER

Mother is a psychological thriller with notes of Psycho, Gaslight, and Misery in its theme. It concerns a young couple, Claire and Jason Holbrooke, who are forced by circumstance to temporarily return to Claire’s estranged mother’s home. And what happens there is more terrifying than either can comprehend. We loved every minute of writing this novel, and here, we will reveal some more of the little-known facts within the story, as well as behind-the-scenes trivia.

#1 A small part of Mother takes place in modern-day Brimstone, Arizona, the fictional town in Tamara’s upcoming solo novel, code name ‘BB,’ a spooky coming-of-age novel set in 1968.

#2 We never explained who kept moving the little GI Joe figures around the house and are leaving it up to readers to decide whether their travels are a human-created conspiracy or a ghostly one.

#3 The existence of Timothy Martin’s secret hiding place was the first of Claire’s memories to return, and this set the stage for our idea that many of her repressed memories would come back to haunt her throughout the novel.

#4 As a child, Tamara knew someone who kept a shrine to her long-deceased baby daughter. The shrine included a lock of hair tied with a pink ribbon. Tamara found this spectacularly creepy. This played into Mother’s hair obsession.

#5 Stephanie Banks is the name of a character Alistair created in the early 2000s, long before his dream of becoming a writer came true.

#6 Dr. Hopper’s name is a play on the term doctor-hopping, usually used to describe someone who hops from doctor to doctor to obtain illegal amounts of prescription drugs.

#7 The sex of Claire and Jason’s baby was originally a girl. We changed this when Priscilla began revealing her motives to us.  

#8 The character Ace Etheridge appears, under a pseudonym, in several other Thorne & Cross novels, and in Mother, his hidden identity is exposed.

#9 Gladiola Gelding, a friend of Phyllis Stine’s, is a character in Alistair’s novel The Crimson Corset.

#10 DJ Coastal Eddie Fortune, who makes several appearances on the radio in Mother shows up in many of our books. He first appeared in Tamara’s vampire novel, Candle Bay.

#11 The character of Candy Sachs is a play on Sach’s candy. And Candy’s breathtaking breasts, of course.

#12 The initials “C.J.,” which Roddy Crocker spots on a handkerchief, are a nod to people who are very, very close to us...

#13 Mother is dedicated to our own mothers because they inspired us to write - however, they did not, in any way, inspire the character, Prissy Martin.

#14 We named Duane Pruitt’s dog, Waldo, just so we could have characters ask, “Where’s Waldo?”

#15 EZ Cheese, our fictional brand of aerosol cheese spray that Claire craves one night, has a starring role in our novel, The Ghosts of Ravencrest.

#16 The fictional evangelical show The God Club with Reverend Bobby Felcher, which is referenced by Priscilla Martin, is also beloved by Belinda Moorland’s mother in The Ghosts of Ravencrest. The God Club appears in some of our other novels as well.

#17 The characters Johnnie V. and Tracey Weathers are named for people we know (and love) personally.

#18 We chose Opium Perfume as Mother’s signature fragrance because it gives us both migraines.

#19 Neither of us have ever tried LSD, so we relied on reports from our more adventurous friends.

#20 Mother was originally intended to be a short, hard-hitter of about 80,000 words, but when the neighbors of Morning Glory Circle introduced themselves to us and began telling us their secrets, the novel grew. And grew.


Disclaimer: This guest post was received by the author or publisher - the opinions expressed within this post are the authors and do not always match those of the blog owner.  This post is not an endorsement of the book or product but to provide others information.