BREEDING GROUND: What The Dead Whisper To The Living

This month, I’m sharing details about What The Dead Whisper To The Living, appearing in A Quaint And Curious Volume of Gothic Tales from Brigid’s Gate Press.

ABOUT THE TALE

This story started as a haunted house tale in Gwendolyn Kiste’s Monster Mash workshop on LitReactor. In the workshop, we were asked to think about our ghosts – who they were, how they died, why they remain instead of moving on.

THE METHOD TO MY MADNESS

Even though I didn’t go into to much about the back story of my ghosts, I did lean into the themes of ghost as place. The space where my characters Samuel and Lizzie Winslow live is absolutely a haunted place. But – spoiler alert! – there are no creaking doors creeping open in the middle of the night.

There is atmosphere, though. Dust motes hang in empty rooms, ones haunted not by the spirits that once inhabited those spaces but the ones that never were. Perfume lingers like words unspoken and little hurts that never quite go away.

And my characters are haunted, too. By things that never happened for them. By things that happened to them. And by the things they do to one another.

Mostly, my story is about Samuel and his attempt to fill the silence that haunts him. In the end, he, too, is haunted, mostly by the desire to leave something behind that his daughter, Lizzie, will remember him by. Of course, since this is a dark, Gothic tale, that doesn’t mean his legacy is a happy one.

READ WHAT THE DEAD WHISPER TO THE LIVING

23 powerful voices in dark fiction, carefully and passionately curated by Alex Woodroe

Welcome to the Gothic realm.

Alex Woodroe has passionately and carefully curated a powerful volume of gothic stories, written by an amazing and diverse group of contemporary writers.

Within the pages of “A Quaint and Curious Collection of Gothic Tales,” the reader will encounter stories of pain and suffering, ghosts, curses, unspoken secrets, greed, murder, and one of the creepiest collections of dolls ever seen.

Come on in; enter the parlor, find a place by the fire, and experience the beautiful, dark, and occasionally heartbreaking stories told by the authors as they continue the Gothic tradition pioneered by the likes of Shelley, Radcliffe, Brontë and others.

A Quaint and Curious Volume of Gothic Tales is out now from Amazon