PACIFIC NORTHWEST GOTHIC Marcus James considers himself fortunate to live near where most of his books are set: the Pacific Northwest. He views the region as just as “Gothic” as the American South or the British moors but in different ways. “There is what we call Pacific Northwest Gothic. Much like the Southern Gothic tradition, but wetter, darker, damper, colder, and wilder. It’s fog and dark forests and cold, rocky coasts and impossibly rocky shores. It is primal and almost devouring, like some strange cryptid in the forest.” This sensibility has inspired Marcus’ writing throughout his career. “How could I not write about this? If you live in a place like New Orleans Garden District, or Savannah around Forsythe Park, or Salem, or if you know of them and their strangeness, you’ll understand what I mean. Bellingham was crying out to be written about in this way.” Most of his stories take place in Bellingham. All of the houses in his books are real, Victorian mansions built by the city’s founding fathers. And almost every house, building, and street corner has a ghost story or twenty in the local lore. Other ghosts in the book stem from Marcus’ family heritage. “In my Blackmoore novels, the main character Trevor Blackmoore, his great-aunt Mabel, aka Queen Mab, as the family calls her, lives in my great-aunt Alice’s house. There is a lot of Alice in Queen Mab, and that house is full of ghosts. The things that go bump in the night have always been a part of my life--my identity. Horror is where I find my home.” Marcus’ aunt’s home was filled with antiques from the 1800s-1940s, old tins, paintings, teddy bears, a portrait of Queen Victoria in black hanging above the fireplace mantel in the dining room. These made their way into his novels. For Marcus, history in Bellingham is simply alive. “The ghosts walk with you, and you feel the past everywhere you go. There are ghosts standing behind maples and oaks, and you feel them staring at you.”
WHAT’S NEXT FOR MARCUS JAMES Marcus is currently working on the third novel in his Blackmoore series, The Beckoning One . This has already taken him years of research, nearly a dozen trips, and mountains of notes. “The research process is very thorough for me, and I probably do more research than I need to, but it’s important that I get everything right. Even if two books worth of research on something culminates in a couple of paragraphs in the actual novel, the reader will know that everything available to learn about it has ended up there.” Meanwhile, his latest novel, Instructions in Flesh , is out now in hardcover and digital formats, and next year, special hardcover editions of his Blackmoore Legacy series thus far ( Blackmoore , Symphony for the Devil , and the two prequel novellas: Rise of the Nephilim and Fall of the Nephilim ) come out, leading up to the release of the third novel in the series: The Beckoning One . Marcus is excited to hear all the responses readers will have to his upcoming books. “And, of course, cooking. There is always the cooking, and
eventually, that is going to work its way into my writing career, and that will be a whole other journey that I can’t wait to go down.”
@MJAMESWRITER @MARCUSJAMESAUTHOR
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