Go Gothic with Deanna Raybourn’s “The Dead Travel Fast”…

Do you long for Gothic stories? Look no further than The Dead Travel Fast, Deanna Raybourn‘s new novel that takes readers into the heart of Victorian-era Transylvania, a land filled with mystery and myths of vampires and werewolves. Read on to learn more about The Dead Travel Fast from Deanna herself…

by Deanna Raybourn, author of The Dead Travel Fast (MIRA Books, March 2010)

What is it about things that go bump in the night? From the time we are children, peering over the top of the bedclothes into the shadowy corners of the bedroom with wide, terrified eyes, we love to be scared–at least a little and at least when it’s safe. Paranormal books gives us the chance to be children again, peeking under the bed and wondering if this time, just maybe, something will peek back at us.

When I sat down to begin The Dead Travel Fast, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to bring in my favorite Gothic elements—most importantly, a spooky setting and characters with plenty of shadowy secrets. Often in a Gothic novel, the heroine is forced to determine if the hero is guilty of unspeakable things. Arson, bigamy, murder, blackmail, adultery—the Gothic hero just might be guilty of them all! I toyed with the dark deeds that might be laid at the door of the hero I was going to write. And then I began to wonder, what if the heroine begins to question whether the hero is human at all?

The setting and the plot itself were inspired by a book and a newspaper article. The book was The Land Beyond the Forest, the memoirs of a woman named Emily Gerard. Born in Scotland, Gerard married an Austro-Hungarian officer and traveled with him to his posting in present-day Timişoara in Transylvania. Once there, she recorded much of the folklore and geography of the region, complete with colorful customs and fearful legends of vampires and werewolves. It was the book Bram Stoker used as his primary reference during the writing of Dracula, and I was lucky enough to lay my hands upon a copy of the same edition. About the same time that I ran across Gerard’s book, I found an article about a remote village in Transylvania where the townspeople believed they were being stalked by a vampire. It detailed the age-old ritual for banishing the undead back into the grave, a medieval rite that entails beheading the corpse and tearing out the heart. What fascinated me the most was that the article might have been written in 1803, but it wasn’t. It was written in 2003, and the exhumation of the “vampire” had just taken place. Even today, there are places in Transylvania where the dead do not rest, and the living walk with fear. To me, that made an irresistible start to a book I could not wait to write.

I hope you enjoy reading The Dead Travel Fast as much as I enjoyed writing it—just make sure you peek under the bed first!

A husband, a family, a comfortable life: Theodora Lestrange lives in terror of it all.

With a modest inheritance and the three gowns that comprise her entire wardrobe, Theodora leaves Edinburgh—and a disappointed suitor—far behind. She is bound for Rumania, where tales of vampires are still whispered, to visit an old friend and write the book that will bring her true independence.

She arrives at a magnificent, decaying castle in the Carpathians, replete with eccentric inhabitants: the ailing dowager; the troubled steward; her own fearful friend, Cosmina. But all are outstripped in dark glamour by the castle’s master, Count Andrei Dragulescu.

Bewildering and bewitching in equal measure, the brooding nobleman ignites Theodora’s imagination and awakens passions in her that she can neither deny nor conceal. His allure is superlative, his dominion over the superstitious town, absolute—Theodora may simply be one more person under his sway.

Before her sojourn is ended—or her novel completed—Theodora will have encountered things as strange and terrible as they are seductive. For obsession can prove fatal…and she is in danger of falling prey to more than desire.

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