Newbie from the Pacific NW

[elizabethcoleman]

Hey, I just signed up. I'm excited to find this wonderfully active forum.
I discovered gothics a while back when a friend gave me one as a joke. It was The Shrouded Walls, by Susan Howatch, and I fell in love from the first page. Immediately, I grabbed as many as I could find from the used bookstore, but alas, they weren't nearly as good. I ended up getting one of Howatch's non-gothic novels. She's a hell of a writer, and I thought maybe her gothic was only reflective of her skill, and not the genre as a whole, and I gave up for a while. But then I tried again, and I got another good one, followed by a bad one, and then...a good one! I'm learning to spot stuff I'll like from the first page.

There's something about the atmosphere and the isolation that appeals to me. Also, the characters (in the ones I like, anyway) tend to be cerebral and active at solving the mysteries around them. Like me, they tend to be caught in a battle between logic and sentimentality.

Also, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is one of my favorite movies ever. I love independent women who can love, but who don't need a man.

I do write, but mostly science fiction/fantasy/horror.

Glad to be here!
Elizabeth C

[MaMiller]

Hi Elizabeth,

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Wow, that takes me back. I loved the movie and admittedly, enjoyed the series!

I actually want to live where she lived. I write too and I have two books set in big ole' scary houses on the coast of Maine. So I guess I never fell far from that Mrs. Muir fantasy

When I was young, I used to draw my own Gothic romance bookcovers. You know, dark mansion at night, with a white horse and a woman captured in the moonlight... I miss those books.

Good to see you here!

[Penfeather]

. . . they tend to be caught in a battle between logic and sentimentality.

That is so beautifully put. To survive, a proper Gothic heroine must rely on both deduction and intuition. Not counting the ones where the hero appears at the last moment, deus ex machina, to save her. That's cheating.

I'm envious that you live in the Pacific Northwest. I spent a winter in a cabin on Puget Sound a few years ago and it was heaven. The NW is such a suitable environment for a Gothic -- too bad there aren't any (that I know of) set there. There are plenty of lighthouses and weatherbeaten old Victorian mansions along the coast, from Oregon up through British Columbia, that would make ideal Gothic locales.