House Series Mysteries Book Jacket
Strange things happen to my mind when I'm away from home. Maybe my imagination gets the better of me. Nights away on business find me lying in bed at 2 a.m., my mind wandering into the shadowy crevices of contrived life-threatening scenarios. I stare at the moon behind the clouds and hear a wolf howling on a nearby, lonely hill. I'm a writer and I admit my mind is constantly abuzz, constructing plots, characters, and when in the mystery realm: deadly tales.
Why write the House Series? I think back to The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe, and how I experienced the macabre. The descriptions of the house and characters are almost unfathomable.Why write the House Series? I think back to The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe, and how I experienced the macabre. The descriptions of the house and characters are almost unfathomable.
Edgar Allan Poe
The Eyes Have It
Alone in a house on an island
You don't want to be trapped off Scotland's coast with the German spy, Henry Faber, The Needle. The book and the movie leave us tight knuckled and with a dry mouth.
The ABC's of it all ...
I wanted a mystery series set in houses, but within various motifs and located in different geographic areas. Sue Grafton has the formula. I'm not mathematically gifted, but I know the equation.
READ A = READ B + C
Sue Grafton
Of course A-Z had better be a good read and with Grafton it is.
There is certain vulnerability, albeit subconscious, and probably not valid, of being alone in a house far away from home.
Settings are not familiar and I am reminded of the lines from the old Jim Morrison song:
People are strange when you're a stranger, Faces look ugly when you're alone.
Jim Morrison
(He knew)
In The House Series an underlying pressure exists when someone is alone in a distant house. Adding to the difficulties there is an unresolved tension that preys upon the lead character and supplemental people have power just by residing in the surrounding area. The problems must be solved, but with deadly consequences.
I would like to say I have photographs of the houses and the locales in my House Series books. I would eagerly place them on the web. The houses and geography of the House Series are purely of the imagination. Yet, these images are oddly as real as anything in my own past. I have often wondered if I have lived in or have visited these imaginary places in another time and place.
The Exchange House Cliff
Next time you're alone, watching the shadows creep across the wallpaper sometime after midnight ... remember, there is a price to be paid by those leaving their familiar surroundings. That price is deadly danger and it awaits everyone in a house far away from home.
Insider's Guide to Mid-Maine Coast
