Christmas Ghost Story: A Gothic Duet with Edgar Allan Poe and Leanna Renee Hieber! "Not More Lovely than Full of Glee" a sequel to Poe's "The Oval Portrait"

Darlings... I had JUST posted on Instagram about my Edgar Allan Poe shrine... And not an hour later, what launches? 

"Not More Lovely than Full of Glee", set on a cold December 24th in a distant past, my sequel to Poe's "The Oval Portrait", has launched as a back-to-back audio drama with its inspiration, thanks to the amazing folks at PseudoPod! 

I mean, look at the log line: "AUTHORS: EDGAR ALLAN POE and LEANNA RENEE HIEBER!" I nearly fainted. 

I'm so grateful to the PseudoPod staff for championing my work and creating this beautiful double bill!

 "Not More Lovely than Full of Glee" is a Christmas 'ghost' story about what happens after the events of Poe's "The Oval Portrait"... 

It's now live, for free, via PseudoPod, in digital + audio! Donations to PseudoPod encouraged! 

Darlings, can I just say what a thrill it is, what an honor it is, what a joy it is to see a lifelong dream come true? To be situated next to THE legend, the man who remains my foremost inspiration, it is just the most *incredible* thing. It's impossible to put to words what it feels like to see my name next to his name. He is my everything. I would not be a writer if it were not for him. 

I wrote "Not More Lovely than Full of Glee" for A WINTER'S TALE: HORROR STORIES FOR THE YULETIDE in 2020 and I had a dream that someday I'd see my sequel placed side-by-side with what inspired it. "The Oval Portrait" remains one of my favorite Poe stories, short and terribly chilling, and I felt I had something to say about the woman whose life was painted away... 

Listen / Read via PseuodPod in the Escape Artists Podcast Network! Happy Holidays! Happy Haunting! 

Happy Halloween! Reading: "Not More Lovely Than Full of Glee" is Leanna's Sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Oval Portrait"!

 "Not More Lovely Than Full of Glee" is Leanna Renee Hieber's sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Oval Portrait" in which an artist paints his young bride- literally- to death... Here's her revenge... 

As read by the author! Eerie, beautiful music underscored by the amazing band Valentine Wolfe! You can find this story in the anthology A WINTER'S TALE: HORROR STORIES FOR THE YULETIDE via Pavane Press! If you like this story you'll love Leanna's novels, available wherever books are sold!

Happy Haunting! 

"Not More Lovely Than Full of Glee" - Leanna's Sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Oval Portrait" Now Available in A Winter's Tale: Horror Stories for the Yuletide

Dear Readers,

If you've followed me for any amount of time, and if you're familiar with my work or my goth self, it won't surprise you how connected I am to Edgar Allan Poe. Working with Boroughs of the Dead, I've given countless tours around the areas in which he lived while in New York and I've done even more virtual talks about his influence in inventing modern genre fiction as we know it today, revolutionizing fiction as a working-class, struggling author, critic and poet. 

Poe is my literary North Star, the reason why I became a writer. For more about my connection to Poe, please read this very personal post of mine about his collection of stories and poetry I loved as a child and how that set my course as an artist and author.

Not as many people are familiar with Poe's very short story "The Oval Portrait", but it's one of my favorites. Read Poe's "The Oval Portrait" for free here.

This brief story is a harrowing tale about the power of art. And ever since I was a kid I wanted to write a sequel. What might happen next?

I didn't have the guts to do it for years. I told myself I'd wait until I published 13 novels- an auspicious number - and then I'd allow myself to attempt to imitate my foremost inspiration and seek to further a story he began. This year I published that lucky 13 with the release of my latest Spectral City novel, A Summoning of Souls. 

I was asked this year if I might join in an anthology meant to represent the long dark nights around the holidays telling ghost stories and fantastical tales, a distinctly Victorian tradition that's seeing a popular resurgence. And it was finally time to attempt what I'd longed to create for so many years.

A Winter's Tale: Horror Stories for the Yuletide is here, the inaugural publication from the new Pavane Press, with cover art by Lynne Hansen. My story "Not More Lovely Than Full of Glee", my sequel to Poe's "The Oval Portrait", can be found within its pages... Ready to tell you what became of the woman in that fated portrait.

My title comes from the original source text and becomes a focus point in the story, demonstrating the supreme power of the written word. 

I hope you'll check out this anthology and enjoy my homage to the brightest star in my literary sky. 

Cheers and Happy Haunting! 

On Edgar Allan Poe, and the Book that Changed Everything

Dear Readers,

I wrote the following post originally for the site Unbound Worlds. This is one of the more personal things I've written, so on this auspicious birthday of the great Edgar Allan Poe, I'd like to continue to pay tribute to his memory and re-publish this piece here, in thanks for his ongoing ministrations as my patron saint.

The single most influential book of sci-fi/fantasy/horror in my life, by far, was my first volume of The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. That tattered paperback went with me everywhere, it was my best friend at a lonely time, and Poe’s words spoke right to my young heart. I’d been exposed to Poe in grade school, earlier than most thanks to a progressive program. Poe became a distinct catalyst. By the time I was a pre-teen I had already begun drafting a Victorian-set Gothic novel in the vein of The Phantom of the Opera (Leroux’s classic being another influential book).

Eighteen years later, my first published novel, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker (which now exists in print as Strangely Beautiful via Tor Books), set in an eerie, ghost-filled London in 1888, can track its existence back to that paperback book with a raven on the cover.

From first hearing “The Raven,” then diving into more poetry and the whole of his canon of stories, I was aware I was digesting true genius; an accessibility that readers young or old could grasp, his Victorian voice immediately relatable to a modern ear, his unique gift of making the grotesque beautiful, his deftly poetic turns of phrase and his powerful high-concept invention of most genre fiction.

I also felt, in reading him, like I was encountering a certain window into my own soul. The classic Shakespearean quote from Twelfth Night goes “some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them.” In one of my novels (The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart) I paid homage to this line but highlighted melancholy instead. “Some are born with darkness, some have darkness thrust upon them…”

I was born with a distinct dark side prone to ghost stories. That side came from no direct influence anyone could tell other than my own preferences; what I gravitated towards and identified with. I learned from Poe, from his art and from his own difficult life, that if that side wasn’t managed and folded in holistically into my full self, it could define me entirely, I could be lost to it, I could war with it without respite. But I also knew my dark side has always been, like Poe, the place within me inexhaustibly full of possibility and imagination, thrilling fantasy, the source of endless esoteric questions concerning the perilous precipice between life and death. My dark side has always been my muse; my creative lens, the more interesting compass determining life’s path.

Donning a Goth aesthetic when I first began shopping for my own clothes, I found that externalizing my interior narrative helped the world navigate me as I was trying to navigate the world. 20 years later, my wonderful, loving and extremely supportive parents have realized dressing in black isn’t a phase. They’ve graciously come to celebrate that my work as a Gothic novelist, artist, performer and Ghost Tour guide means I’ve made an entire career out of celebrating that razor-thin edge between beauty and horror, making friends with melancholy and telling hopeful stories from the shadows. I dance from that liminal space.

Because I dress, daily, in some level and form of Victorian mourning, when people comment on my wardrobe I always say; “if you like my clothes, you’ll like my books, I dress like I write.” The same goes for what I cut my teeth on as a young reader. Themes rife in Poe are rife in my work, as my stories are set in the 1880s, my characters often make direct reference to Poe and his tales, all of which would have preceded them. I speak on countless panels at conventions around the country about the lasting impact of Poe’s genius; my artistic north star.

I often wear (and I also make Poe-related jewelry) Poe’s image on a necklace or pin and I was once asked by someone who didn’t recognize the iconic image: “is that your boyfriend?” I laughed and just said yes. I do believe in past lives, I believe past lives are part of the reason I recognized and was drawn to 19th century stories and writers from grade school age. I doubt I am a Virginia Clemm reincarnate but I do wonder if I would have orbited in Poe’s old literary circles, or perhaps he was just as much an inspiration to me then as he is now. Perhaps the prolific, driven writer wrestling with their melancholic angels echoes through time itself.

The great tragedy of Poe’s life is not only his premature (and entirely suspicious) death, but the constant spectre of loss that haunted him forever; abandoned early in his life, as an adult, his great love Virginia (a healthy, mutual, consensual relationship that by all records was a devoted one on both sides) dying of tuberculosis in the bloom of youth was a blow from which he never recovered, the sincere lack of public appreciation of his groundbreaking, gorgeous work, and the constant financial strife chasing down every penny publishers owed him, all of which drove him to drink. He was not, however, as crazed or as addicted as history has made him out to be, that’s all trumped up allegations from Rufus Griswold, a literary nemesis in life that published a damning and sensationalized biography of Poe after his death. We tour guides try to set the record straight and return Poe’s memory to a more moderate tale of a difficult life of an underappreciated genius.

I pay homage to Poe, and that well-worn paperback collection, every day. I walk the streets he walked while living in New York, I keep his authorial voice in my ear, and from the moment I knew art could be a healing salve and spiritual calling, he’s never been far from me; my melancholic prince, my patron saint.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Poe. I hope your spirit can take comfort now knowing how loved you are in our time.

-- Leanna Renee Hieber

If you like these thoughts, you'll like my books! Especially The Spectral City series with Kensington Books! Cheers and Happy Haunting!

IndieBound Independent Bookstores: http://tinyurl.com/sanctib 

Powell’s: http://tinyurl.com/sanctpw 

Word Bookstores: http://tinyurl.com/sanctwd 

B&N: http://tinyurl.com/sanctbn 

AZ: http://tinyurl.com/sanctaz

 

Happy World Goth Day! Rhapsodic on Poe Part 2

Hello friends, In my last Waxing Rhapsodic post on Edgar Allan Poe I said I'd share my thoughts on the film The Raven at a later date. What better date than World Goth Day?! A strangely beautiful World Goth Day to all of you! Hug your favourite black-clad soul, (yes, I count, I'm one of that deliciously and delightedly melancholy lot) and do yourselves a favor and play my favourite Goth band, VNV Nation, REALLY LOUD and dance around your house and the city streets like galumphing Tim Burton animation figures today. Remember, I'm one of those Perky Goths so have ridiculous fun with your emo self! By the way, I can't wait to share my upcoming novel The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart with you, because I've created an 1880s Goth club and IT IS FULL OF AWESOME!

All right. So let's talk The Raven. No, it wasn't exactly historically accurate. (At all). But we knew that. Positing Poe as a detective in the last harried, mysterious days of his life is utterly fiction. In reality he was likely far less cogent, probably a lot farther off the deep-end and perhaps a bit less sympathetic. But no one can say his early death was not a tragedy. I would have craved as many more stories and poems as his broken heart and sad soul could have offered us. But, like many gifted persons, his candle simply lost flame.

What I loved about the film was the visual landscape. It was Gothic and stunning as I'd hoped it would be. I enjoyed Cusack's performance. He looked delicious. Bring on the men in tightly-fitted frock coats and billowing black great-coats! I liked seeing Poe as an active rather than reactive figure, I enjoyed the energy and animus the film gave to his character, and I appreciated those who appreciated him. I appreciated that the film dealt with his struggles, vices and those who misunderstood him. I loved being reminded of his creepy stories, I loved his written lines having a new voice and knowing his words will never lose their power. I could have done without the gore, Poe manages gore far more elegantly and delicately than Hollywood. I was pleased in that I did not find the film predictable, I was engrossed and entertained. Did I mention Cusack looked delicious? :)

Whatever allows for us to let Poe further into our lives, and to appreciate him on whatever level we can in popular culture, so be it. Huzzah. Celebrating him on the silver screen is better than relegating him to the shadows in which he lived. He shines brightly in dark splendor in my soul; the light of my muse. I am not covetous of that darkening light and hope it shines for all to see.

None of us should look to Hollywood for definitive accounts. This wasn't posited as the truth, so we must give it leave and license. We look to movies for imagination, and this film hardly lacked imagination and beauty, it was rife with both. I'd like to think Poe would have been greatly amused. (Not to mention he'd probably demand a few drinks and some royalties, rightfully so.)

Should you wish to know where the film derailed from truths, here's a wonderful resource from  "Philly Poe guy" Edward Pettit to help you distinguish fact from fiction.

I enjoy historical, fantastical fiction more than any other genre. I write it, I live it, I breathe it and I'm not entirely accurate either. I make choices for effect and storytelling. The film inspired me to hold fast to my great loves, write more of the Gothic tales I adore, and to continue to honor my muse, Mr. Poe. Evermore.

Join the inimitable Nancy Holder and I on May 26th at Romance at Random and you'll hear her take on the film along with mine, and how Poe influences our work.

Waxing Rhapsodic on Poe, Part 1

When I first found out about the movie The Raven, I was thrilled. I'm not one of those historical purists that fears when Hollywood gets hold of anything. If I were a historical purist, I wouldn’t write historical fantasy and gaslight Gothic works where history is a framework for my own eerie tales, but not a constraint.  

 I was over the moon at the prospect of the film because Poe is my muse and I’ll take any excuse to get more of him in my life. I want him to continue to be popular, to grow in estimation and appreciation, for his historic sites to be preserved. I want interest in Poe to be kindled in a whole new generation. If it takes a somewhat cheesy Hollywood film to do it, sign me up. I enjoyed the heck out of it. And yes, John Cusack was HOT, running around all intense and billowing in black fabric. (Those of you who have read my Strangely Beautiful saga know I like my men in black, billowing fabric.)

When I was in grade school literature class at a small, progressive education program in Ohio, a teacher who I credit as influencing me most, Mrs. Church, introduced me to Edgar Allan Poe and my life would never be the same. Some of my earliest memories are of making up ghost stories to scare my friends, so when I “met” Poe, I met a kindred spirit and his poetry broke open the sky and unlocked my boundless creativity. I always had a fierce inner dark side. This still freaks out my parents a bit, who wonder where it came from. I’m not sure. I had a very happy childhood. But even happy, optimistic, perky people like me can have intense dark sides and can be as equally fascinated with dark and eerie things as we are energetic. I always found strange things to be beautiful (Hence the series title of my first series, the Strangely Beautiful saga) and nothing as romantic or stimulating as a dark and stormy night.

Poe made my world come alive. In his voice I found my own. In his poetry and stories my world-view coalesced. A strangely beautiful world. I adored his poetry, found it deliciously, morbidly romantic, unique and deeply personal. I really couldn’t get enough of it. I’ll never forget my first tattered paperback collection of his stories and poetry- a watercolor raven on the cover- I’ve gone through many editions through the years. This first great literary love affair made me into the Goth girl and Gothic author I am today. I remember hearing about Poe’s sad life, his love for Virginia, and knowing I’d have been his friend (if not his girlfriend) back in the day. (Yes, I know, I’d have gotten fed up with the addiction and drinking, but I wasn’t thinking of that in my pre-teen years.)

My freshman year of high school I was the only freshman cast in the play POE’S MIDNIGHT DREARY, cast as Fortunato the fool who gets bricked up behind a wall. I screamed brilliantly. That childhood love came back full force as I spent rehearsals and performances living in his amazing, twisted work, and I took to writing again. I had been writing stories ever since I could hold a pen or pencil and complete a sentence, so this renewed connection with my muse informed and spurred on my then novel-in-progress, a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera. (Don’t ask. It was bad. But it can’t have been any worse than "Love Never Dies”, surely...)

My love affair with Poe kept on burning like a candle in an attic window. Poe lives in the back of everything. I’m still a Goth girl, I’m now a multi-published, award-winning Gothic novelist, and my long term boyfriends have all been black haired with black goatees. Hmm. Just realized that one.

I've a prominent jewelry collection featuring his image as well as a host of ravens on clothes, figures, things in my home. His influence can be seen in small and large ways in my Gothic tales. I’ve a Raven as an important familiar in the Strangely Beautiful saga, elements of Poe crop up all over my work, especially in the Magic Most Foul saga, DARKER STILL and the upcoming THE TWISTED TRAGEDY OF MISS NATALIE STEWART. Natalie even feels she's trapped amidst a Poe tale herself. When you credit an author as being your foremost and most formative influence, it’s hard to see all the ways in which that author crops up in your own work. I’m a lot more direct about it in the Magic Most Foul saga than I am in Strangely Beautiful, which is more inspired by classic Fantasy authors than Poe’s more intimate horror and sad romance. I feel his presence like a guiding hand in my upcoming short stories, “Too Fond” for Tor.com and “Charged” for QUEEN VICTORIA’S BOOK OF SPELLS (Tor 2013). 

I'll share more specific thoughts on The Raven film in part 2 of waxing rhapsodic, but I've got to get back to my word count for the day. I've stories of my own to write and new projects that I hope to announce soon. Stay tuned, on May 26^th, New York Times and Stoker Award winning author Nancy Holder and I will be sharing snippets of our mutual thoughts on The Raven as fellow Poe fangirls, and how Poe inspires us, over at Sue Grimshaw’s Romance at Random blog!

Nevermore,