The Marriage of Gothic Romance with DARKEST, BLEAKEST, MOST FRIGHTENING HORROR.

I'm just repeating this post because it's so timely! My novel, The House on Blackstone Moor is out and the sequel will be out very shortly.

Now, this post originally discussed gothic romance with dark horror.

As a matter of fact there is a warning about the horror level in the next book (due out this summer)!

(THE WARNING IS AT THE END OF THIS POST)!

Here's the post:

That's right. You read it correctly--with DARKEST, BLEAKEST, MOST FRIGHTENING HORROR.

I'm not speaking of the great gothic horror novels of the past. I'm talking Jane Eyre with vampires, okay?!

So the question is boys and girls, can these two narratives be happily married and produce successful novels?


I think they can!


I happen (aside from my husband) to be in love with the gothic narrative!
And here’s why:


"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me..."

Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

***

“They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days. Not any more, though…”

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne DuMaurier

***

“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been
wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but
since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold
winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre and a rain so
penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question...”

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

***

“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the
autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the
heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a
singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself,
as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the
melancholy…”

Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

***

The gothic narrative is to my mind the greatest narrative ever written. We are from those very first lines pulled into another world—one that is distinctly and irrevocably different from our own.


Perhaps we read those lines and sensing the danger we might find within this world wonder if we should continue!


But those of us, who enjoy the thrill of the unknown especially when there is the possibility of serious danger, will happily proceed!


These authors write of dark dreams, of sadness and of death and of love too, but even in those novels that depict love there is often mystery and frightening evil as well.


I think books define who we are, when I was a young girl I was drawn to these books with their haunting narrative.


I don’t know why, nor do I know why as a pre-teen I was addicted to the morose prose of Edgar Allan Poe to the point where my parents called me Edgarina!


“Her writing is morbid.” My mother admitted worryingly to my eighth grade teacher.


“Let it come out!”


They did and it did!


I still am in love with this narrative and I always will be, not to imitate it but to redefine it in my own way.


My favorite fiction to read and to write is horror. Not paranormal romance as interesting as it may be, but utter inescapable, heart-throbbing, toe-curling, chills-down-your-back-horror!


And horror is terrifying or they would not call it horror!


Madness, obsession, devil worship—vampirism—these are the themes I use in my writing because they are part of the great and grim world of horror, because in the last analysis if it doesn’t scare the living daylights out of us, it isn’t horror.


And if there is dark horror in my first novel in THE BLACKSTONE VAMPIRE SERIES, wait until you read what the second, Unholy Testament is like. That will be released this summer.


You won't believe the darkness in that book, I can tell you!
I have Satanic sacrifices, orgies, devil worship (lots), and dare I say it--flesh eating vampires!

Well no one's perfect, right?

I mean it's dark, it's so dark that you might need to read it sparingly. But inasmuch as it is the confession of a demon, you will also be moved for he has penned this confession to the woman he loves!

Watch for updates on this and my author blog:



http://carolegillofficialauthor.blogspot.co.uk/