K. Marvin Bruce

The other day I asked a friend to define “gothic.”  Heavy, dark, supernatural—these were a few of the words suggested.  When autumn comes my thoughts turn gothic, and I’m always looking for good gothic things to read. I have blogged in the past about how reading literature that isn’t great is good.  I’m serious about that.  You can learn a lot by reading poor writing.  Some gothic literature is more the former than the latter.  Like Dark Shadows novels. Dark Shadows was running on daytime television when I was a child.  As a teen I began to read the novelizations, by Marilyn Ross, whenever I could find them.  Belles lettres they’re not.  Gothic, most decidedly so.  That’s why I keep coming back to them.  They aren’t scary.  In fact, they’re formulaic and predictable.  But so, so gothic. Spooky mansions, the Maine woods, forlorn vampire, faded wealth.  Even, yes, dark shadows.  The stories crea...

I’ve started to feel it in the air.  Just a tiny bit.  Mostly when I’m outside in the early morning.  While we’re still getting days in the 90’s around here, I sense the slow approach of fall.  A moodiness comes over me that is melancholy and beautiful all at the same time. Ever since I was a child I’ve felt this.  My breath catches in my throat and a strange, sad rapture fills my chest.  Things look a little darker, more foreboding.  This is not violence, but perhaps the distant threat of it.  It’s subtle, poignant, and absolutely exquisite. I’ve stood outside and breathed deeply in the autumn and fleetingly thought that should I die at that moment there would be not the least regret.  It’s a little scary, yes, like Halloween, but not like a slasher movie.  This is the atmosphere I try to capture in many of my stories. Each person is different, I know.  There are those who enjoy the warmth and brightness of summer....

Two of America’s earliest authors were Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe.  They established the first stages of what would become the American prose tradition, and both can be classified, in some ways, as originators of the Neo-Gothic. Irving was a bit older than Poe.  Although his personal life had its share of ups and downs, he made his literary fame with his satirical retelling of the history of New York.  He became an overnight sensation.  Some thought him the funniest writer ever. Running out of money while living in England, he began publishing his series of “Sketches” or short stories.  Among them his most famous works, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”  The latter, according to some, established the spooky autumnal scene as the perfect venue for the scary story. Irving met John Allan while in London.  Edgar was traveling with his step-father there, but may have been too young at the time to know that he’d met ...

A guilty pleasure, I’ll confess, is reading the Dark Shadows novels by Marilyn Ross.  As a child I found these stories tucked away in a paperback bin at the local second-hand store.  If I could find one I hadn’t read, I would snatch it up for a few cents and begin reading right away. Formulaic and predictable, the little books always evoked a stormy atmosphere of the Maine coast.  I’d never been to Maine, but watching the soap opera had cast an image in my young mind that would stay with me for life. When, as an adult, I grew nostalgic for the paperbacks I’d sold back so long ago, I found them difficult to locate.  ABE, the friend of lost treasures, led me back to most of them, followed by Bookfinder.  Re-reading them, however, I notice the lack that young eyes just couldn’t see. I’m not sure when I realized Marilyn Ross was actually a pen name for Dan Ross (or properly William Edward Daniel Ross).  I was, however, acutely aware that thes...

Gothic is a difficult word to define.  Although much of what I’ve published, in my little way, has a dark humor to it, my favorite writing genre is Gothic.  A backlit, ruined castle with a raven winging through an overcast sky, with a leafless tree in the foreground infuses me with inexplicable paroxysms of wonder. Summer can be a difficult time for those of us who would easily live in an eternal autumn.  Right now  the sun is shining and it feels like things might be okay after all.  So today I’ll give my tips to having a Gothic day, even in summer. Select a dark and gloomy morning to awake before sunrise.  Since I haunt my chilly apartment halls frequently at 3:00 a.m., I know such days come even in the summer. Take a long bath with steam rising from the surface of the gray water.  (This works best on a chilly morning.)  Preferably do this in a claw-footed steel tub.  Light a few candles. Breakfast lightly, trying to mainta...