April 2025

When writing Gothic fantasy, urban fantasy, one inherits, whether one likes it or not, a cumbersome weight of baggage: centuries of conventions, of codes, of frozen images. The vampire must be seductive and cruel. The banshee must be a raving madwoman who heralds death. The ghost terrifies. The ghoul is ugly and bites you. And opposite them, humans are sooooo pretty (even me) and therefore good.

I could have gone along with it. It was the easiest path. But good grief, how dull that seemed.

Why should a monster be fundamentally evil because of the world's perception of him? We all follow this old diktat: the princess is pure, the prince is charming, and opposite them evil has taken the shape of ugliness or difference. But ugliness is no more a moral failing than difference is. And beauty and goodness are not synonyms.

So I decided to give my monsters back what had always belonged to them: free will.

An aristocratic vampire, mentor on occasion, manipulative like no other. A banshee who could kill you with a scream, but plays the mother hen with a tough love tenderness. A ghost who is a chatterbox and would rather natter than scare you. As for the ghoul, she is more beautiful than many a princess, and hopelessly in love with the hero. She also eats brains, but that remains incidental.

In short, I decided that a being society has labelled a monster could turn out to be just as human as the humans around them. That is my attempt to dislocate the trope and take the story off the beaten track. And it feels good.

My roster of secondary characters was in place. As they move within a fairly self-contained world, I treated myself to an MBTI study (you learn a thing or two when you set out to be an author) to give their interactions a layer of realism. I built these characters hoping to please you, that's true. But I won't hide from you that I thoroughly enjoyed myself too while doing so.