Running barefoot down those dirt roads with only moonlight and that lamp in the tower window to guide them? How scared out of your wits would you have to be to take off sprinting into the night without so much as your peignoir and mules? I've been reading and thinking and thinking and reading. I need to write something as Diana Killian, but what? I'm over my burn-out, but I'm not ready to write the last Mantra for Murder or Poetic Death books. They need to be written, that I know. It's not fair to leave readers with an unfinished series.
But...I'm just not there yet.
So I've been fooling around with Gothic mysteries. I found a couple of really entertaining sites:
Gothic Romance Reviews
Women Running from Houses
Gothicked
Anyway, for some reason I have a treasure trove of Gothic romance novels in my garage. I use the word "treasure" lightly because we're talking about Genevieve St. John and her sisters.
Well, there's some of the good stuff too, Victoria Holt, Phyllis A. Whitney...ah, memories of my adolescent summers! But there is really also a lot of terrible stuff. My grandmother used to buy these by the bushel. I can remember staring, mesmerized, at those covers when I was a kid. All those weird old houses with the single light in the window. I used to wonder about that light. Was someone being smart about electric bills or was something far more sinister at work? Now days I figure someone just forgot to turn the light off. We have a lot of that going on at Castle Smith & Browne.
Anyway. Maybe some kind of a mash-up? Something funny but maybe a little scary at the same time? I'd have to somehow work it in around everything else, but seeing that Mr. Thrilling and I have committed to Bouchercon this year, I do probably need to publish something as Diana.
