Discovering new music is what fuels my world. Music makes everything better. All of a sudden doing dishes, laundry, or other tedious chores become a sway of the hips, a dance, and quiet moments become filled with magic. While looking for something to spur my writing, something dark and atmospheric but not jarring or intrusive, something that will simmer and pulse in the background, I discovered H.U.V.A. Network. It’s perfect background for the Gothic novel I’m furiously working on, Owl manor, Abigail, book 2 of the Owl manor Trilogy. Beta deadline October 4! Yikes, I’m completely buried. As I write with this playing in the background, it helps me visualize the events, as though I’m directing a movie. Here is one of my favorite albums by them, Ephemeris.
There has possibly never been another book like this one. The author crafts a story in duality with the strident suffragist Eva – who seems to be at least sixty years ahead of her time, and with Rafe – the deranged yet calm when not fulminating murderer of ‘sinful’ women. The book carries you through two tales that only begin to intersect halfway along. The relationship between Eva and Rafe is one of the most complex ever created by an author. You have a woman who has spent her life fighting for the right to be considered an equal and a man who has spent his life thinking all women are scheming and evil.
The twist is when Eva, knowing only that there is something seriously wrong with Rafe, but finds comfort in his accepting her forthright opinions. Rafe detests all women but comes to find Eva has a way about her that doesn’t remind him of any other woman he has met and that enthralls him.
One might think the central point of this book is a philosophical analysis of women’s rights in mid 19th century America. The premise seems to be a woman who demands an equal place and voice in society is so alien to society that only a mentally deranged murderer sees value in her.
This book seeps into your soul. I found myself dreaming about this book as I read it. The reader will also find that this story is all encompassing that the length of time spent reading will seem like an endless journey.
There is so much in this book that it has the capability of appealing to almost everyone. I recommend it to any fans of gothic horror like Poe wrote and anyone who enjoys deep character exploration rarely seen in 21st century fiction.
Being a long time lover of the dark and supernatural, the Gothic, I was drawn to Kate Bush because of her song, “Wuthering Heights”, based on the book by Emily Brontë. It was the most astonishing thing I had ever heard in my life. Kate shrieked and wailed like a cat in desperate heat in her rendition of a dead Catherine Earnshaw, a young woman dead in her prime from unrequited love.
Her phenomenal creativity in music composition, range in voice, singing and dance created an explosion of color and emotion that made everything else in my world look and feel mundane. She channeled topics close to my heart: mysticism, witches, the supernatural. Passionate and intense one minute, little girl the next, clown one minute, and insane the next, she performed with a courage and abandon that was melodramatic, surreal, and groundbreaking back in the 1970s when her song “Wuthering Heights” came out.
Her music drew on a variety of influences: classical music, rock, opera, folk. Nominated 13 times for the British Phonographic Industry accolades, and for three Grammy Awards, she won Best British Female Artist in 1987. In 2002, she was recognised with an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, and in October 2017, she was nominated for induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
She is not for everyone. Some people still prefer the Pat Benatar version of “Wuthering Heights”. To each their own. You have to have a love of the astonishing, the freaky and unconventional, the shocking even, to appreciate her.
I met the love of my life because of her. One day in Art school, as I walked by a young man’s desk, I saw the music of Kate Bush sitting next to his things. I raised my hand and gave him a thumbs up. Two years later we were married.
And as I write Gothic novels now, I can’t help but think it’s all related.
Here, performed by Kate Bush, are “Wuthering Heights”, from her first album, The Kick Inside and one of my all time favorites “The Jig of Life” from Hounds of Love, released in 1985.
“I could feel the moisture on my arms, hear the rustling of leaves and twigs, the hooting of owls. He turned to face me and stood still, waiting in the gloom…”
Sometimes the tide sweeps us into a fog where dark forces are at work… All of a sudden evil and good become blurred…
Stifled by the repression of women in the 1800s, trapped in a loveless marriage, Eva lives a life of dissatisfaction and frustration. The tide sweeps her to the Rocky Mountains during the gold rush in 1859, where she finds unexpected hope at Owl Manor, a strange, dark place with owls in the very fabric of its walls.
But the stakes are perilous. Shadows wander the dim corridors. The owner of the manor is moody, volatile. And dangerously captivating.
Owl Manor – the Dawning, the first standalone book in a trilogy of Gothic Suspense novels, is inspired by authors such as Daphne du Maurier (Jamaica Inn), Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Marina, Shadow of the Wind), Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House).
Filled with Poe-esque atmosphere, dark ambitions and supernatural elements, this book is a must read for fans of Gothic Suspense!
