The scene(s) I almost didn’t write

The ending can be the scariest part, and not just because I'm writing horror...

For the spoiler-averse: Very, very mild hints at the vibes of Tender’s ending follow…

Tender, out September 2025 from Influx Press.

Tender has been out in the wild for an entire month. I’ve taken part in my first events, signed my first copies, and stopped in my tracks several times, remembering that my book is on shelves. Anyone could pick it up—how exciting, and how unbelieavable that truly is.

As I work on book two and maybe three (it’s not always easy to tell whether a draft is going to make it to the shelves one day, after all), I’ve been recalling the sticking points of Tender and how I overcame them. In particular, writing the final three chapters of Tender was a rollercoaster: I wrote quickly, excited to reach the end and discover what I really wanted to say as the author. The scenes arc up and down, from melancholy to desperation to the final acts of horror/hope. And when I first approached the climactic end, I was kind of afraid to commit. I didn’t want to be pidgeon-holed as a horror writer (I hope to write different genres in the future), and I was unsure if readers would be as excited about the weirdness as I was. My favourite novels always go completely off the rails, but surreal or twisty endings can be divisive for readers.

Because of the nerves, it took some time for me to find and embrace the right ending for Tender. In part, I think that was due to a sort of oxymoronic coming-together of genres and goals in my work, which I jokingly call “self-help horror”. I wanted to push the body-horror in Nell’s arc to a pinnacle, while maintaining a sense of hope and compassion. I won’t say too much, but Nell as a character is desperate for acceptance and yet reluctant to accept it: her loneliness defines her darkest moments but also her revelations.

And there was another blocker: I didn’t want Nell’s story to feel neatly finished. While my brain is a very different place to hers, I wanted to reflect through her the continuous journey of mental health recovery. I have OCD and anorexia, and though I’m mostly recovered and stable they are still regular companions to my daily life, and my unhealthy coping habits when I’m caught off-guard. They inch into my thought patterns and also my art. They are, in some ways, inseparable from me, and I wonder if the Nell who exists beyond the pages of Tender would be the same. To fully close off her journey felt somehow insincere.

So there I was, faced with a balancing act in my last few chapters: to maintain hope for Nell’s future while not wrapping things in a bow, and also to amplify the horror as far as I could.

The final decision came from a dinner table conversation I had with my husband. This is a frequent occurence when I’m drafting or doing a first edit, as he’s a fantastic idea generator. I arrived with three options for how Nell could ‘meet’ the true self she had been hiding for so long. He took it all in, and then said, “You’re being too normal with this. You should just…” And there’s the spoiler! He put into words what I had been blocked on: that Nell had to have a chance to bury her past self in the most striking way. We continued to discuss how this would look and feel, and I came away ready to plan the ending. I’m pretty sure the draft was complete within the next week or two. So thank you, Darren, unblocker extraordinaire!

Beyond that climactic scene there were several non-spoiler examples of where I had to let the weirdness out. The bug scene—readers will know the one—was actually quite a last-minute addition. There was always going to be a breakdown moment outside of Nell’s flat in Bristol, but I’m so glad I continued working into it, adding more and more creepy details, because it became an externalisation of Nell’s inner turmoil in a way that captured her growing connection (or curse) with nature. And that, of course, encouraged me to get back and thread more critters into earlier scenes: the bee landing on Nell’s hand when she talks to her mother, and several instances where she imagines ants or flies on her skin, but finds none when she looks.

I’m a big fan of Weird fiction, with the capital W. Stories that hint and suggest horrors beyond our understanding (whether cosmic, supernatural, etc) rather than traditional ‘monsters’, and that don’t necessarily explain all of their mechanics but evoke a sense of terror and discomfort that stays with the reader beyond the page. Overall, pushing my work just a little further into the gross, uncomfortable details was liberating to me. And by peppering the narrative with Weird scenes, balanced on the foundation of slow dread and intense passion that flows through the rest of the novel, I felt like I was able to bend genres slightly and embrace my love of strangeness.

Following these additions and intensifications, I was nervous about how to pitch the novel—but with Influx’s help I think we nailed it. Luke Bird’s fantastic cover has the perfect balance between creepy, edgy undertones and an appearance of delicate beauty. When people ask the genre, I now say “literary horror” and “weird girl fiction”, as these categories fit the novel well and are definitely both having a moment in the spotlight. It feels like a stroke of luck that the kind of writing I love most is thriving in our collective imagination. But of course, I do still get plenty of comments asking how scary the book is going to get, or if there’s a chapter they might skip! I love how weirdness can get under a reader’s skin, and at least that tells me I’ve nailed the atmosphere :)

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If you happen to be in the Liverpool area and want to learn more about Tender, you might like to join myself and the incredible Lucy McKnight Hardy (author of Water Shall Refuse Them and Dead Relatives) in conversation at the Dead Ink Bookshop on November 20th!

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‘Du Plessis weaves an intricate garland of folklore, body horror and elegant surrealism into this intriguing and disturbing novel. The intrinsic power of nature, and the threat it can hold over humanity, loom large in this absorbing, weird and unsettling debut.’
– Lucie McKnight Hardy