01-25-2010, 08:44 PM
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
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