When people hear the premise of Blood Becoming, there is often a pause.
A vaccine. A small percentage of people affected at a genetic level. Changes that lie dormant, sometimes for years, before something triggers them. It sits close enough to reality to feel uncomfortable.
So, I want to be clear from the outset. This is not about fear of science. It is not anti-vaccine. If anything, it comes from the opposite place. A fascination with what science can do, and how powerful it has already become.
Because the truth is, we are living in a time where biology is no longer fixed. That, for a writer, is where things get interesting.
Starting with real science
The foundation of the idea came from real developments in biotechnology. Gene editing. mRNA technology. The ability to instruct cells to behave in new ways. To produce proteins. To respond differently to disease.
That alone is extraordinary.
What interested me was not the fear of it, but the possibility. The idea that something designed to help could also, under the wrong conditions, have unintended consequences. Subtle ones. Delayed ones. The sort that doesn’t announce themselves straight away.
Where fiction begins
From there, the story moves into speculation. What interests me most is not the science on its own, but the moment it intersects with real lives. Because that is where the story stops being theoretical.
And starts becoming personal.
This is where the concept of the dormant state in Blood Becoming took shape.
It allowed me to explore a version of horror that is not immediate or visible. It sits beneath the surface. Undetected. Waiting. And more importantly, it raises questions.Not just about what is happening, but about what it means to carry something inside you that you cannot control.
Horror grounded in biology
I have always been drawn to horror that feels rooted in something real. Not supernatural in the traditional sense, but something that could almost be explained. Something that sits just on the edge of current understanding.
In Blood Becoming, the horror does not come from monsters appearing out of nowhere. It comes from transformation. From the body behaving in ways it should not. From memory, identity, and biology becoming intertwined.
That is where it becomes unsettling. Because it feels close.
The ethics behind it
One of the most compelling aspects of writing this story has been the ethical questions it raises.
If a scientific breakthrough has the potential to save millions, what level of risk is acceptable?
Who decides that risk?
And what happens if something goes wrong years later, when the original decision-makers are no longer accountable?
These are not new questions. But they feel increasingly relevant. The novel does not try to answer them. It explores them.
Through characters who are affected in different ways. Through institutions that are trying to manage something they do not fully understand. Through individuals who are forced to live with the consequences.
Keeping it grounded
Throughout the writing process, I was conscious of staying within a space that felt believable. Not technically perfect. This is fiction, after all. But grounded enough that it does not feel disconnected from reality.
That meant reading. Researching. Following developments in biotech. Understanding just enough to know where the edges are, and then stepping slightly beyond them. Because that is where this kind of story lives. Not in what is impossible. But in what is almost possible.
Why this story matters to me
At its core, Blood Becoming is not about science alone.
It is about people. About what happens when something changes inside you without your consent. About identity. Control. Fear. Survival. And addiction. The kind that does not always look like addiction at first. The kind that creeps in, reshapes behaviour, and begins to dictate choices.
But it also sits against something larger.
A world that is shifting. Climate patterns becoming more extreme. Systems we once trusted starting to feel less certain. And within that uncertainty, there are always forces working quietly in the background. Trying to adapt. Trying to design something that can survive what is coming.
Not always transparently. Not always ethically. That tension became part of the story.
The science provides the framework. The horror grows from it. But the story itself sits in that human space in between. Between progress and consequence. Between intention and outcome. Because for me, this was never just about what we can do.
It is about what we choose to do when the future feels unstable. And who carries the cost of those decisions. That is what I keep coming back to. Not the scale of the idea.
But what it does to the people living inside it.
Best wishes,
Gail