“With her latest, Kiste pits the toxic villains of gothic literature against the undead and forgotten women of the genre determined to end their evil reign once and for all.”
Los Angeles, 1967. The forgotten women of literature—Lucy Westenra, a victim of Dracula, and Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester’s wife in Jane Eyre—now undead immortals.
When Mr. Rochester and Dracula arrive in the Haight-Ashbury district, Lucy and Bertha join forces to face their ultimate enemies before the two toxic men destroy them both.
Why we’re excited about this book:
Readers should be quite familiar with the work of three-time Bram Stoker award-winning author Gwendolyn Kiste. The author of Pretty Marys All In A Row, The Rust Maidens, Boneset & Feathers, Kiste’s short fiction is collected in And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe and has appeared in such periodicals as Vastarien, LampLight, and Nightmare, as well as such anthologies as Gorgon: Stories of Emergence, Horror for RAICES, The New Flesh: A Literary Tribute to David Cronenberg, and Shattered and Splintered: A Horror Anthology, among others. With her latest, Kiste pits the toxic villains of gothic literature against the undead and forgotten women of the genre determined to end their evil reign once and for all. Stephen Graham Jones (The Only Good Indians, My Heart is a Chainsaw) says: “This is a black rose petal crushed for generations in a moldering Victorian novel, one that’s now steadily trickling blood down the spine, those drops not collecting in a cupped palm but the sharp corners of a mouth.”, and Lisa Kroger (co-author of Monster, She Wrote) says: This book is glorious justice for the characters who have been sidelined, while the villain’s story gets told and retold for decades. I loved every page.”
Why Gwendolyn is excited about this book:
“I’ve been a huge fan of Dracula and Jane Eyre ever since I was a kid, but it always bothered me the way the books ultimately dismissed the characters of Lucy and Bertha. They were such fascinating women who never had a chance to truly shine. With Reluctant Immortals, I took these two characters and gave them their voices back, all while writing the novel as though it was a super feminist Hammer film, complete with gothic settings and a rollicking psychedelic adventure through 1960s California. This is the most fun I’ve ever had writing a book, and it will hopefully be just as much fun for readers as well.”
Rising from Gallery/Saga Press 23 August 2022, Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA
