“The Villa is a classic Victorian style horror story,” says the Pacific Book Review. I was inspired to write it about a year ago. I guess you could say as a writer I wanted to scare myself through the story I created. Funny ha?
I love horror- TV, movies, soaps, you name it! If it’s horror, I’ll watch it. Anyway, there are two things I recall that I thought a lot about before I began working on this project.
The first was an episode of the 80’s series Perry Mason, The Case of the Sinister Spirit. The second was a very old Sri Lankan legend of ‘Mohini.’
If you ever watch Perry Mason (I am a fan) you’ll never get tired of it. The particular episode that I’m referring to was about a troubled writer who used his stories to scare people- I mean intentionally. His book The Resort was about a very lavish hotel in the mountains which is supposedly haunted because the owner committed suicide a century ago. So it was said that his spirit walks within and without the property. I thought the whole concept was striking.
The second was the legend of Mohini. If you grew up in Sri Lanka for the first fifteen years of your life like me or if you studied ancient Asian horror legends you will for certain hear or read about ‘Mohini’ the woman in white who walks in the dead of night in lonely roads or cemeteries holding an infant child. If you are a hapless young man who happens to meet up with her, oh! too bad for you! There’s no escape. She would tell you to hold her child while she adjusted her white dress. If you do take the child, either you will be frightened to death or go mad for the rest of your life.
As I thought up the plot I incorporated some of my thoughts from both. My own unique vision came about as I began writing. This is one of the novels that I truly enjoyed writing. I guess you can say that a writer puts a lot of him or herself in what he or she creates.
So, if you happen to get a hold of the book, I truly hope you enjoy it!
Photo Credit:
“Sunset in the Garden of the Haunted Mansion” by Tours Departing Daily (Creative Commons) is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0