I'm almost done with my book. I'll be there for that evening, but I have an exam the next day, so I'll see what I can do in my planning to set some time aside.

I emailed but never heard back. I am really liking this book so far. Bought it for my birthday. Excited for the meeting.

ty!

Looking forward to it!

See you all next Tuesday!

Hope to have some of the contributors stopping by as well. I see we have one already!

Mm, interesting! I didn't get to read this one, but I'd love to hear the opinions on it.

I so wanted this book. I e-mailed several times to get it for the Naked reader and never heard back

What do people think?

Getting a head start to let you get your Goth on early (and to see whether I've got my log-in problems solved.) Here's the Foreward Kelley Armstrong wrote for Red Velvet and Absinthe, an historical overview of the Gothic genre that Mitzi's book so deliciously updates and intensifies. Tomorrow I'll post Mitzi's own introduction.

"The tradition of Gothic literature stretches back to the early days of the novel, with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764. Anyone who has read Poe or Stoker or Daphne du Maurier would recognize the early gothic elements in Walpole’s story. The story begins with a tragedy—a lord’s son dies on his wedding day. The lord then decides to marry the girl himself. She flees to a church. The lord pursues and is about to kill her rescuer when a birthmark reveals that the young man is his own son. The lord locks him in a tower, but he escapes with the girl into the catacombs. And so it continues, a melo- dramatic tale of murder, betrayal and mistaken identity, with a bittersweet romantic ending. By the third edition, the book’s subtitle had changed from “A Story” to “A Gothic Story.” And so a genre was launched.

Classic Gothic literature, with its stock elements—innocent heroine, mysterious hero, isolated setting, curses, madness, secrets—has gone in and out of fashion since Walpole. In the sixties and seventies, it saw a revival with Gothic romantic suspense, most notably in the books of Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels and Mary Stewart. These novels often included an element of the supernatural, but it was usually subdued. A ghost might hold the key to a secret or a character might discover her ancestors were witches. The erotic elements were even more subdued. Rarely was there anything more explicit than kisses and longing. Even the erotic subtext was muted, far more than it had been in Gothic novels written a century earlier.

In the late seventies, Gothic fiction began another turn, one that firmly embraced both the sensual and the supernatural. Leading this new era was Anne Rice, who returned to the early days of the genre, following in the footsteps of Bram Stoker and James Malcolm Rymer by putting vampires at the center of her work. Her sensual vampires were not the monsters, though, but the protagonists. Twenty-five years later, authors took Rice’s ideas even further, and the genre of paranormal romance was born, replete with sexy supernaturals of every variety, from vampires and werewolves to angels and demons. And these were not the chaste encounters seen in the Gothic romances of the sixties. These were erotic, often explicitly so, exploring every facet of sexuality from GLBT to poly relation- ships to S/M to fetish.

Red Velvet and Absinthe celebrates the Gothic in all its forms and adds in the erotic elements that were often glossed over in the genre’s early incarnations. Here we do find traditional histor- ical tales and exotic settings, but we’ll also find contemporary stories, and those with a magical surrealism that transcends time. The stock elements are well represented, too, often with an original twist, giving us delicious tales of family secrets and horrible curses, enchanted paintings and mysterious beverages.

Those looking for the supernatural will not be disappointed. Stories feature not only recognizable creatures, such as were-wolves and ghosts, but mysterious ones too, men whispered to be demons or golems, and new fantastical beasts born from the authors’ imaginations.

Whatever the setting or the time period or the elements chosen, all these stories embrace the emotional and sensory richness integral to the Gothic tale. We don’t just read words on a page. We feel the red velvet. We taste the absinthe. We smell the flower and sweat. We hear the whispers and cries. And we experience the thrilling danger, the looming apprehension, the exquisite passion. That is the core of Gothic literature and this collection delivers."

Kelley Armstrong

Sounds interesting

I will be late to book club, my kid has a concert tonight,gotta love that they tell you at the last minute. I don't think it will last that long, they are the last group so hopefully I will make it before too much time has passed.

Here's your last bit of homework before the discussion: Mitzi's introduction.


introduction
the genre of paranormal romance has had a very respectable history, having taken shape from the Gothic novel, which falls solidly into the category of Romantic literature. To the uniniti- ated, this might seem a bit odd, considering that Gothic literature is most often associated with elements we might not consider particularly romantic or sexy. I don’t know many people who’d consider howls in the night, creaking staircases, rattling chains, and a madwoman locked in the attic the stuff of romance. But those of us readers who have enjoyed a long-term love affair with Gothic fiction can wholeheartedly attest to the fact that there is, indeed, a romantic theme running through these works, even in the darkest and grimmest of offerings. So too, are there elements of sensuality and eroticism.

Anyone who’s read Bram Stoker’s Dracula will tell you that eroticism is alive and well on the pages. The impassioned torment taking place between Heathcliff and Catherine in Emily Brontë’s classic Wuthering Heights provides some steam as well, even if not overtly expressed in the prose.introduction
Perhaps it’s that delicious shiver we feel running down our spines when we read these works that keeps us coming back for more. Perhaps it’s that subtle sense of fear that thrills us and gives us a forbidden charge that’s ever so slightly erotic in nature. Whatever it is, Gothic literature is as popular now as it was in the past. Although the greats such as Bram Stoker, the Brontë sisters, Mary Shelley and Daphne du Maurier are long dead, we have a host of contemporary authors keeping the Gothic spirit alive and interpreting it in new and exciting ways. It is these writers past and present to whom I owe a debt of gratitude—both as a reader and as a writer.

Red Velvet and Absinthe is a book I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Having enjoyed Gothic novels since childhood, it was inevitable I’d one day wish to do something along these lines myself. The fact that the paranormal has been experiencing an even further renaissance beyond the written word thanks to the recent output from the film and television industries finally gave me the impetus. My goal for Red Velvet and Absinthe was to offer readers a collection of unique and original stories that conjure up the rich atmospheric and romantic spirit of the Gothic masters (and mistresses), but take things further by adding to the brew a generous portion of eroticism that’s far less restrained than what transpired between Cathy and Heathcliff. I hope this will be a collection our literary predecessors would have enjoyed reading, had any of them been alive to witness its publication.

So I’d like to invite you to lie back and relax and listen to the wind howling outside your window as you read these stories in the flickering light of a candle, the absinthe you’re sipping warming your body like the caressing touch of a lover’s fingers....

Mitzi Szereto (Writing from a windswept moor somewhere in England)

I haven't gotten this book yet, but I may have to just go out and buy it cuz it sounds pretty awesome so far.

So I carefully negotiated the schedule at work so that I would be out and home and full bellied by the time the meeting starts tonight. FAIL. Today at 3pm I get told I need to leave work and come back at 7pm (meeting 8pm my time) so that I can close up for the Manager who is sick. He goes home and I have to finish up. FML.

On a happier note, here's my contribution in my absence. This is a great book! I finished it last night. There is something for everyone to read. The book is very well written, sexy, and offers many different fantasies to turn someone on. My favorites were:
-Snowlight, Moonlight (super sexy werewolf story)
-The Persistence of Memory (sad, sweet, sexy, lesbian vamp and human)
-The Blood Moon Kiss (vamp/human story)
-Cover Him With Darkness

The only one I didn't care for at all was Dolly. Just not my thing, and a little weird to me. I did like the twist at the end, though.

Bitter and Intoxicating was different....was she supposed to be the Green Fairy or a succubus? Little foggy on that one, although I was reading it at 3am.

I'm already here and can't wait!!!

The book sounds great. I don't have a copy yet, but I definitely want to read it!

I'll be there, provided no power outages or internet failures! It's a bit windy here so you never know!