The Gothic...

My good friend Lynn and I were talking about the gothic novel yesterday and what we love about them. If you've read my books, you know that I love that gothic feel. I love the dark, turbulent storms, the shadowed corners in the rooms, the gardens that flourish with violent blood red flowers. What I am for when I'm writing is to hit that chill down the spine level of suspense, while making you fall in love. Yes, I am twisted. :-)

I actually didn't know what gothic was until my books were reviewed and they called me a fresh gothic voice. In fact, I wasn't entirely certain I hadn't been insulted. I associated gothic with the 70s and 80s and not in a good way. But then a reader sent me a definition of the gothic and the light went on in my head. Yep, that's me. I love every element of it:

The Gothic novel flourished through the early nineteenth century. Authors of such novels set their stories in the medieval period, often in a gloomy castle replete with dungeons, subterranean passages, and sliding panels, and made plentiful use of ghosts, mysterious disappearances, and other sensational and supernatural occurrences; their principal aim was to evoke chilling terror by exploiting mystery, cruelty, and a variety of horrors. The term "gothic" has also been extended to denote a type of fiction which lacks the medieval setting but develops a brooding atmosphere of gloom or terror, represents events which are uncanny, or macabre, or melodramatically violent, and often deals with aberrant psychological states.

(adapted from A Glossary of Literary Terms)

What's not to love about that? Anyway, my new book is probably my most gothic. I am having such a great time writing it. Actually, it's finished now. I'm sending it out to my readers--with, I might add, the same anxiety I had when I sent my first book out to readers--and I hope to be submitting it for publication within the month.

Wish me luck. :-)