Jason Mott just released his new book “The Returned,” which follows a family after it discovers its supposedly deceased 8-year-old son standing on the front porch. Mott will be hosting a book reading today at Flyleaf Books, and he spoke with staff writer Tat’yana Berdan about the inspiration behind the book and his writing career.
DAILY TAR HEEL: What inspired you to write “The Returned”?
JASON MOTT: It all started with a dream I had about my mom. I had lost both of my parents. Back in 2010, I had this dream that I came home after work, and my mother was sitting at the kitchen table. And we sat there for a while, talking and sharing stories.
That dream stayed with me for weeks. Later, I was talking to a friend of mine, and he said, “What if that really happened and it wasn’t just one person?” I wrote a short story, and people really responded to it — so I decided to begin a novel shortly thereafter.
DTH: Can you tell me about your writing process? How long did it take you to finish the novel?
JM: It took about a year. I was working at Verizon Wireless at the time, answering phones, so I was writing before or after work, whatever time worked for me. I tried to do a big outline to start and then write a certain amount of words or a certain amount of pages each day. It really went faster than some of the other stories that I’ve done. I was really surprised — once I got going, (the process) went very quickly.
DTH: What challenges did you face throughout the writing process?
JM: The most difficult thing was trying not to exploit the idea of deceased loved ones coming back to life. There were different people I talked to about what it would be like if their loved one came back to life.
Most commonly, people would be very excited at first, but then I asked if they would feel the same way six months later. People would be worried about how they’ve changed (since their loved one passed away). I wanted to be as true to those conversations as I could, to tie in all of those concepts and discussions.
