The Asylum of Gothic Fiction

An introduction to my neo-gothic collection, Ending in Ashes

I recently went on a little vacation with my family earlier last week. We went to Vancouver and took the kids to the aquarium. Our hotel had a pool, though the pool room was much smaller and darker than the picture on the website made it seem. The pool was shallow. There was a yellow waterslide. For a while, we had the whole place to ourselves. It was weird. Quiet. Water echoed off the hollow walls. Lighting was dim, and only a little bit of natural light managed to brighten the place through the dirty block windows 20 feet above.

I so badly wished that I’d brought my phone so I could take pictures of just how liminal the space felt. I considered going back to our room to get it, but I remained at the pool, tethered in reality.

I won’t lie. The rest of the trip proved frustrating. Driving in Vancouver is frustrating. Finding parking was trusting. Finding places to eat was frustrating, as my kids are beyond picky. The chicken strips were made with real chicken and not churned-up ground chicken, so they didn’t eat them. The grilled cheese was made with American cheese, not real cheese, so they didn’t eat it.

We’re back now, and I still think fondly of the pool, though. There was no stress in going to the pool. It eased the stress of things for a short while.

But hey, now I’m back and continuing my summer. Yesterday I added the book page for my upcoming collection, Ending in Ashes.

Ending in Ashes is a collection of gothic fiction that I wrote between the summer of 2021 to the summer of 2022. It contains ten short stories that weave a thread from the present day all the way back to 1692. Each protagonist is a victim of societal circumstances, succumbing to the whims and gendered expectations of the period of time in which they reside.

I’ve always been interested in modern history, specifically when it comes to gender studies, mental health, and various cultural phenomenon. I managed to blend all three into ENDING IN ASHES, and I had an absolute blast while doing it. Some stories, of course, took some wrestling, while others proved to be those magic stories that write themselves.

This collection was a growing opportunity for me, as I finally took a stab at writing stories set in different periods, which I never felt confident doing. I always felt like I had to get everything right, that I had to know everything about life in that time period. Over time, however, I allowed myself the get the odd thing wrong. It happens all the time. Even period drama perfectionists make mistakes from time to time, and it’s okay, because the reality is that nothing can ever be perfectly recreated to be as it once was.

Writing Ending in Ashes was a year-long liminal space for me to recover from a painful agent rejection I received on my first novel. For a while, I really thought that I was going to double down on my ambition and drive, fix the problems the agent cited, and send the book out again, but I didn’t. The sting of rejection just hurt that bad. Writing a blog post about the pain wasn’t enough. I needed a hiatus—a year-long solitary pity party.

Gothic fiction became a refuge. Its waters were warm. It eased the stress of things for while. I floated in its waters, taking time to heal. I wrote some really great stuff and created some very fun and existing characters, some of them tragic, some of them an absolute thrill. I embraced tropes I once thought ridiculous. I embraced long-winded prose and over-described a bit of scenery. I pushed old boundaries and wrote some gothic romance with some raunchy sex. I did everything I’ve ever wanted to do with these stories. I’m very excited for everyone to read it.

And while I’m working on a new project now, something that feels more authentic to my minimalist roots, I am grateful to have taken an entire year doing something a little bit different.

If you’re interested in reading, you can pre-order the collection from Quill & Crow Publishing House and experience my little refuge for yourself.

An excerpt from my story “A Patient, A Guest”.