I always saw my next book, Bury Me in Shadows, as an homage to the Gothic novels I loved (and continue to love) to this day.
Again, though, for me, it’s more about the mood, the voice, the atmosphere.
I am hardly an expert on what makes a work a “gothic”-but for me, it’s a sensibility a voice and style of narrative that usually involves an outsider (for most of the authors mentioned, that generally means a very young, innocent and vulnerable woman) coming to a big, lonely palatial estate with a purpose (bride, governess, distant impoverished relation) which inevitably places the heroine into some kind of danger. These books are sometimes categorized as romantic suspense, sometimes as Gothics there’s certainly some crossover between the two styles. These women also had an enormous influence on my work. Whitney, and Daphne du Maurier-are favorites of mine to this day, and I love revisiting their work when I have the time. But my favorite authors from that period-Barbara Michaels, Victoria Holt, Phyllis A. I was always drawn to the books that had spooky-looking covers-the ones that now have countless websites, Pinterest boards, and blogs devoted to them, usually titled some variation of “Young Women With Long Hair Running Away from Spooky Houses in Nightgowns.” I love these sites and being reminded of books and authors I used to enjoy, like Daoma Winston and Virginia Coffman and Susan Howatch, among others. I eventually outgrew the Scholastic Book Club and the kids’ mystery series (I read almost all of them), and happily spent hours examining the paperback racks at the Zayre’s Department Store in our Chicago suburb, trying to decide which book to take home with my meager allowance.
I loved the Hardy Boys and the other series for kids and I still love watching films from classic Hollywood. It was inevitable that when I started reading that I would gravitate towards mysteries and paranormal stories-with a particular love for ghost stories. Her favorites were mysteries, and if there happened to be a ghost or some paranormal element to it, so much the better. I spent many hours as a child, sitting with my grandmother on her couch, watching black-and-white films from the days of classic Hollywood.
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