How I've Used Writing to Get Revenge by Mo Fanning

6 June 2024

I write mostly to tell stories, but underneath the veneer of a clean-cut homosexual who you wouldn’t mind your son dating beats the vindictive heart of a man hell-bent on revenge. When I create characters, I feed them their lines. I create their loves and decide what icks them out. The well-dressed woman who swiped my parking spot? You ended up in one of my books as Joan, the callous BMW driver whose family hate her. The service rep who refused my refund? See if you can find yourself in my latest novel, Husbands. You’re there. Oh yes, you’re there in spades.

Author Mo Fanning

Joan apart, in Husbands, the drum I beat is actually quite different. I’m winding back the clock to my younger days when I still did the lottery and believed in dreams. My protagonist, Kyle Macdonald, a gay supply teacher living in Birmingham, takes risks. Two days after turning forty, I crammed my possessions into the boot of a Ford Ka and drove to Amsterdam with no job or place to call ‘home’. Over the course of twelve exhilarating years, I reinvented myself—no longer playing it safe. The creation of Kyle was cathartic, spending time with someone hungry to believe in magic and happy endings. Through him, I confronted the demons of my past. I took my revenge.

Husbands also gave me a chance to tell someone else’s story. I’d read of powerful gay male entertainment executives using their position to abuse younger men. After reading an expose written by an industry insider, I fired off an email, never expecting a response. He replied the next day and after hearing of my idea, put me in touch with people willing to talk off-the-record. Their stories chilled me to the bone, and I only hope my novel gives them some kind of hope that their monsters can be caged.

Writing Husbands was liberating for me. Not only was I taking a pop at the establishment and exposing the grimy underbelly of the movie industry, but I also got to spend time with someone who wanted to believe in love and that if you try hard enough, stuff just happens. Life has a way of working itself out.

I really hate myself for saying this, but ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. But an act of revenge only gets a writer so far. As someone writing romantic comedy, I accept the convention of needing to tie every story up in a bow. Readers expect a happy-ever-after or, at the least, a happy-for-now. And often, that means having my characters forgive the people who bullied, stole from, or cheated on them. It’s incredibly cathartic.

Mo Fanning has contributed to 100 Stories for Haiti and written for the Observer travel section. His first novel The Armchair Bride was nominated for Arts Council Book of the Year, and his work was turned into a short play for BBC America. The follow-up, Rebuilding Alexandra Small, which featured in bestseller charts, and Ghosted have established Mo Fanning as a leading voice in LGBTQ romantic comedy novels.