As I tried to think of something to write for this blog, I discovered a trailer for a recently released horror film called The Orphanage. I was hooked after seeing the trailer and jumped over to the website. I found a wealth of information on a movie I know I’ll want to see. Other movies I’d put in the same realm of creepy but wonderfully done would include The Others, The Haunted (1963 version), The Sixth Sense, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and a few others. The Orphanage doesn’t rely on gore to scare, making certain the horror aspect evolves from many angles and that there is “story” and “character building” to make for a truly engaging emotional experience.

What does this have to do with Poe? For Christmas I got this huge leather volume of all Poe’s works. I’d been eyeballing this book for some time and my hubby grabbed it as a surprise gift. The delightfully twisted, thrilling, and shadowy stories Poe created have always intrigued me, and you might say he was one of the authors that made me want to write my own Things That Go Bump In The Night.

Now you might ask what a romance author is doing with the creepy supernatural story line. It’s very hard for me not to include the supernatural in some way, shape, or form in all my romance novels. Granted, I’ve actually written more romantic suspense than I have straight paranormal romance. One of my earlier paranormal romances, which isn’t in print right now, was the reincarnation romance FOREVERMORE. When I wrote my vampire trilogy, DEEP IS THE NIGHT (Ellora’s Cave www.ellorascave.com), I sank my teeth (pun intended) into the vampire genre with the idea of creeping out the reader at the same time I treated them to a flame-thrower romance. I wanted readers to discover they could truly be scared out of their wits, on the edge of the seat, and thrilling to the romance at the same time. My interest in Poe slipped into this novel where the heroine, a true Poe fan, finds herself remembering lines from his stories when something odd happens to her. Micky has been haunted by Shadow People her whole life. Here’s a snippet from DEEP IS THE NIGHT: NIGHT WATCH, to give you a peek into what I mean:
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