I love old-style, traditional Gothics. The covers were always pretty much the same – a pretty young thing in something romantic and flowing running headlong from a huge, brooding castle/manor house/mansion that is completely dark save for a single light in an upper window. Never could understand why she was looking over her shoulder as she ran, because that was practically a guarantee of falling flat on her face instead of escaping, but hey – fantasy is fantasy, and sometimes regular rules just don’t apply.

In the many years since I started reading these admitted ‘fairy stories for grown-ups’ I’ve moved several times and then had to clean out my late mother’s home, but in spite of all I’ve kept my favorite Gothics. Now they’re so old the paper is brittle and the glue desiccated to the point that some must be held together with rubber bands, but I won’t part with them. One reason is that a new crop of Gothics – Gothics the way I like them – is sparse to non-existent.

So what is any frustrated writer-person supposed to do? Right. I wrote a couple of my own a goodly number of years ago and by doing so thought I got the Gothic virus out of my veins. My treasured old Gothics were packed into a couple of boxes – boxes that I kept, of course, but didn’t think much about. Occasionally I would dig out one or two books for comfort reading – the literary equivalent of chicken soup or macaroni and cheese. I enjoyed them thoroughly, with the kind of nostalgia you feel when you find you can still get into your decades-old prom dress. You’ll never wear it again, but it’s just nice to know that it’s there and you can.

After a while, though, I found there was something lacking from re-reading my old favorites. I almost knew them by heart and, instead of feeling a delicious frisson of apprehension when the heroine is lured to what is supposed to be her certain doom, I would think somewhat uncharitably, “Jeez, she’s not going to go to the cellar again, is she?”

Logic and fandom aren’t necessarily close mates.

Well, I had done it before, so I decided I could do it again. After all, hadn’t a most perceptive and brilliant reviewer once called me ‘the logical successor to Phyllis A. Whitney and Victoria Holt’? I would write my own Gothic.

And I did. It’s called INHERITANCE OF SHADOWS, released on 12 March. It’s a rattling good story, though different in several ways from the old Gothic.

First of all, it’s modern, firmly grounded in the 21st century. There’s no sweet young thing running for her life across the cover – not that my thoroughly modern heroine would ever do anything so bird-witted as to look back over her shoulder while running madly through the dark. The requisite big house is there, but Carina must have paid the electricity bill, because instead of a single light up under the eaves every window blazes brightly. It’s still as creepy as all get out.

I twist and turn on their heads a few others of the revered Gothic traditions too, but I think that only heightens the tension. The basic premise is that the heroine comes back to the place where her author father wrote his world-famous books – and to the house where he committed suicide in front of her when she was barely three. She has always wondered if he intended to sacrifice her in a copy of a ritual from one of his books.

In the true Gothic style there’s strange and not quite trustworthy cast of characters – a gorgeous man who may or may not be a bad guy, another man (not quite so gorgeous but very kind) who may or may not be a bad guy, a very quiet housekeeper who sees everything, a gaggle of the heroine’s late father’s friends who behave most peculiarly, and a convention full of costumed attendees, some of whom actually believe the high fantasy world her father created in his books might not be totally fictional.

After seeing things that definitely are not costumed conventioneers the heroine begins to wonder if they’re right, especially when strange things begin to happen and she starts to fear that once more she might die in a ritual her father imagined.

When I wrote INHERITANCE OF SHADOWS I wanted to put snippets of Charles Mathis’ (the late author father) books at the beginning of each chapter but didn’t because (1) I don’t write high fantasy and (2) I didn’t think it would sell. Turns out I was wrong on both counts. During an editorial session with the wonderful Mallory Braus the snippets idea came up and the next thing I knew I was told to write them, which is a more daunting task than it sounds. I was almost scared to start – different characters who were more creatures than people, different worlds, different backstories…

However, I am a believer that anything can be handled if only you start on it, and once again that turned out to be true. After a false start or two, the world that “Charles Mathis” created started to flow from my fingertips with terrifying ease. Why terrifying? Because it was so easy. Snippets turned into chapters, chapters which I ruthlessly cut to about a page. Then, after sending them to Mallory, I was told they had to be cut to a paragraph or two. Argh! I did it, though, and maybe it was a good thing. You, the readers, will have to decide.

One unexpected result of this is that a number of people who have read the book in manuscript have urged me to write the “Charles Mathis” books. All of them. That is frightening – seven books in an unfamiliar genre. In one way the idea is fascinating, but in another totally terrifying. I’m going to have to think about it. After you read the chapter-head snippets, let me know what you think.

I’m not going to tell you any more, but INHERITANCE OF SHADOWS is a great romp to read, just as it was to write.

You can find INHERITANCE OF SHADOWS on the Carina Press website

Janis Susan May is a seventh-generation Texan and a third-generation wordsmith who writes mysteries as Janis Patterson, romances and other things as Janis Susan May, children’s books as Janis Susan Patterson and scholarly works as J.S.M. Patterson.
Formerly a singer, a talent agent and Supervisor of Accessioning for a bio-genetic DNA testing lab, Janis has also been editor-in-chief of two multi-magazine publishing groups as well as many other things, including an enthusiastic amateur Egyptologist.
Janis married for the first time when most of her contemporaries were becoming grandmothers. Her husband, also an Egyptophile, even proposed in a moonlit garden near the Pyramids of Giza. Janis and her husband live in Texas with an assortment of rescued furbabies.

www.JanisSusanMay.com