Thursday, October 26, 2023

Untamed

 What do you get when you combine Shakespeare and a terrible B movie? The taming of the killer shrews, of course!

Untamed, available in Greater Than His Nature, is my take on a retelling of Taming Of The Shrew, set on an island where scientists have been experimenting on a young woman who turns into a killer shrew when she can't control her emotions.

It's also an allegory for autistic people who are forced to go through harmful "treatment" like advanced behavioral analysis because neurotypical people think we need to be fixed.

In that regard, and because it's based on Taming Of The Shrew, please be aware there is gaslighting and mentally abusive and manipulative situations in my story. They are not glorified or romanticized in any way, at least that was not my intention.

There's also quite a bit of violence. If it were a visual medium, like a movie, it would be very gory. My main character turns into a shrew who attacks and eats people. Of course there's going to be a lot of blood involved in that. However, I believe I handled it tastefully (no pun intended) and did not describe the violence or blood shed in much detail at all.

Also, fun fact: I was struggling with the character of Peter for a while. I knew what he needed to do for the plot, but I couldn't figure out his personality. He was a very boring character to write.

So I decided to write him as if I was writing a character for Karl Urban to play in a movie. Sort of a very toned down version of Billy Butcher from The Boys, complete with Hawaiian shirts (which I even managed to use as symbolism, which made me very pleased).