I recently finished a biography on Emily Dickinson. These words she wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson resignated with me: “I was thinking, today-as I noticed, that the ‘Supernatural’, was only the Natural, disclosed-”
I’ve probed the hidden my entire life. I can’t remember a time I wasn’t studying the occult. I remember being nine years-old and taking out books on psychic phenomena, Edgar Cayce, reincarnation, and so forth along with my trusty Nancy Drews – and wondering why the librarian was looking at me odd.
Another love of mine has always been the Victorian era. The Victorians were fascinated both by the world around them (evident in all the inventions of that century) and in the nature of man. Forget the the images of distant, cold persons so prudish that table legs had to be covered. Heightened social awareness propelled Abolition, the Suffrage Movement, education and work reform. New ideas sprang everywhere: Transcendentalism, Egyptology, Spiritualism, Theosophy, the Golden Dawn, Unitarianism. Health movements such as homeopathy, mesmerism, vegetarianism, hydrotherapy.
It is amusing to think many now look upon those times as “genteel”- when the Victorians feared their lives had become too fast paced due to the railroad and telegram. In the 19th century- the “Newness”- was all around.
With my great passion for the so-called supernatural and 19th c. history- it feels a natural progression that my writing should be fueled with these elements.
What are the passions that drive your novel?
