Jennifer Anne Gordon Interview - When the Sleeping Dead Still Talk ~ JeanBookNerd

Photo Content from Jennifer Anne Gordon

Jennifer Anne Gordon is a gothic horror novelist. Her work includes Beautiful, Frightening and Silent (2020) which is a finalist in the Kindle Book Review Awards, and From Daylight to Madness (The Hotel book 1), and coming out in November 2020, When the Sleeping Dead Still Talk (The Hotel book 2).

She had a collection of her mixed media artwork published during spring of 2020, entitled Victoriana: mixed media art of Jennifer Gordon Jennifer is one of the hosts as well as the creator of Vox Vomitus, a video podcast on the Global Authors on the Air Network, as well as the Co-Host of the You Tube Channel Talk Horror To Me”. She had been a contributor to Ladies of Horror Fiction, as well as Horror Tree.

She graduated from the New Hampshire Institute of Art, where she studied Acting. She also studied at the University of New Hampshire with a concentration in Art History and English. She has made her living as an actress, a magician's assistant, a "gallerina", a comic book dealer, a painter, and burlesque performer and for the past 10 years as an award-winning professional ballroom dancer, performer, instructor, and choreographer.

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.

The easiest answer would be to say that it happened when my novel Beautiful, Frightening, and Silent won the Kindle Award for Best Horror for 2020, or even when my novel From Daylight to Madness made it to #2 on the Amazon Horror charts (Stephen King’s the Stand was #1) — but the truth is the most rewarding thing keeps happening, anytime someone goes out of their was to message me or leave a wonderful review it is the most rewarding thing. My novels are incredibly emotional and deal with a lot of themes like grief and childhood trauma, so when people message me about how I have captured grief and how much it meant to them, that is the real reward. Sales and awards are nice, bit the connection to the work is better.

Tell us your latest news.

I just sent my next book to my editor!! It’s a bit of a departure for me style wise after writing three Gothic Novels in a row- it was fun to branch out into literary speculative fiction with medical and body horror mixed in with just a smattering of a love story.

Why is storytelling so important for all of us?

I think there are thoughts and feelings that are almost impossible to express verbally, and in turn I think there are things we cannot process unless they are written. Things should be able to be written and rewritten, read and reread. A friend of mine recently described it as turning the ephemeral into the material, and it gave me chills

Can you tell us when you started WHEN THE SLEEPING DEAD STILL TALK, how that came about?

Several years ago, I started to research my novel From Daylight to Madness, thinking that it would be my first novel. I realized that it wasn’t the right time for me to write that one, so I put the research and the ideas aside for a while. A wrote and published a different novel and then got back to From Daylight to Madness, which is the story of a woman in 1873 who gives birth to a child, and then the child passes away. She is sent to a “Summer Hotel” to rest. The hotel is not what it seems. Once there she connects with a very troubled priest named Francis….so, I was writing their story and thinking that it was really just one book. It was not until I was almost done with the story that I realized that my character Francis, and in turn another sub character, Agnes, needed to have more time, they (especially Francis) needed to have his whole story told. So, I decided to break the book From Daylight to Madness into two books, and that is how When the Sleeping Dead Still Talk was born. I was able to use most of the second half of the “one” book I was writing and then went from there. I am so happy I did that; it would have been a disservice to a character I love so much. Now I think there will even be a third book in the series at some point!

What do you hope for readers to be thinking when they read your novel?

Really, I hope they are thinking about their feelings, the pleasurable terror of it. I hope that they fall in love with my characters who are not easy to like but need love. I hope they root for them, and get their hearts broken by them…and I hope they get chills and feel the claustrophobic dread that I have created around them.

If you could introduce one of your characters to any character from another book, who would it be and why?

This is a great question…I would probably say that I would choose two of my villains. Doctor Hawthorne Hughes from When the Sleeping Dead Still Talk and From Daylight to Madness, and I would like to introduce him to Anthony (the murderer) from Beautiful, Frightening, and Silent. I would love to see a therapy session between those two, and what is anything Doctor Hughes would be able to do for Anthony. They both have sociopathic tendencies so I feel like there would be an intense tete a tete between them.

What was the single worst distraction that kept you from writing this book?

The pandemic in general has been a distraction, the anxiety I feel, the fear. Also not leaving the house has been strange. There is so much that has to be done here in the house besides writing. Take care of the dog, the cat with dementia, my mom with dementia, chat with my husband, make food, do dishes.

What part of Francis did you enjoy writing the most?

I loved the revelations that happened when he slipped more into psychosis. A character that appears in the first novel almost as a romantic enigma with possible bipolar disorder turns into such a complex person. He was like a kaleidoscope, always changing.

What is something you think everyone should do at least once in their lives?

I’m torn between spend the night in a haunted house and travel somewhere you never pictured yourself as a child.

Best date you've ever had?

Picnic in a Victorian Cemetery, complete with poetry reading, wine, crust free sandwiches, and lemon cakes.

If you could go back in time to one point in your life, where would you go?

Any of the time I was in Italy with my now husband.

What are 4 things you never leave home without?

My asthma inhaler, my lipstick, a hair pick, and now a facemask (or three) but pre covid it would have been a pair of dance shoes.

What is the weirdest thing you have seen in someone else’s home?

A master bedroom shared by two people that had a toilet and sink just in the corner with no wall around it or curtain or anything…

First Heartbreak?

I was 16, he was much older, which should have been a sign that it would go bad.

Last Halloween Costume you wore and when?

I got married on Halloween 2020, so it wasn’t really a costume, but I wore a deep plum colored dress and a black velvet cloak. Halloween 2019 I was a Raven/Witch at a vampire ball. Feathers, black wig, goth crown, steampunk corset over a waltz dress. (I love Halloween)

What decade during the last century would you have chosen to be a teenager?

The 1920’s!!!!

TEN DREAMVACATION SPOTS BY JENNIFER ANNE GORDON

I had to choose this one because it’s been so long since I have travelled. This is made up of places I still need to go AND places I have been.

1 – Venice, Italy
2- Budapest, Hungary
3 – Prague, Czech Republic
4- France
5- Scotland
6- Morocco
7- Alaska
8 – Iceland
9- Portugal
10 - England

Meet the Characters
I will be showcasing the characters from: From Daylight to Madness & When the Sleeping Dead Still Talk (The Hotel #1 &#2)

The books are historical gothic horror, they take place during 1873

Isabelle – a 36-year-old woman who struggled to get pregnant, when she does give birth the child dies after three minutes. She was orphaned at the age of 10 and left to live in a poorhouse in Portland Maine. There she fell in love with a girl named Molly. Without understanding that was even a possibility for love or for happiness, she marries a mad named Henry. I think if this were to be made into a movie that Isabelle would be played by Eva Green!!

Henry Baker – Isabelle’s husband. Cold and unforgiving, Henry is a man who is easily bullied by his overbearing mother. He conspires against and gaslights Isabelle in the months after their young son Oscar dies. Letting her feel as though there is something wrong with her, that her grief is “wrong.”

Mother Minnie – Isabelle’s mother-in-law. She’s just the worst really.

Hawthorne Hughes – he runs the “hotel” which is more of an asylum than anything else. His catch phrase is telling women they are “tired” and if they fuss he tells them “sometimes we’re more tired than we think we are.” There is a lot to this character but for fear of spoilers I will leave you with the fact that he is a liar, and a probable sociopath who dapples in mesmerism. He is in his late 50’s. Handsome, and cold.

Agnes – young woman who stays at the hotel. She is 16. The story told about her is that she shot her father for “no reason”, She has had a couple children who died due to birth defects. So perhaps she did not shoot her father for “no reason”. She is unhinged from reality, can often be petty and mean to those around her. She sneaks into the hotel’s attic and takes care of kittens as if they are her children.

Father Francis – 30 years old of Northern Irish descent. His family moved to America when he was very young. His father was an abusive alcoholic, his mother tried hard but did not make the right decisions. Francis has a large scar on his face running from under his nose to his chin and though his lips. This is due to an “accident” he had as a child, where his father accidentally smashed a glass into his face. Francis is a priest but claims not to believe in God. He develops a fascination with Isabelle. His reality is not what he thinks it is. He is in his heart romantic, but very volatile.

Critically acclaimed Author Jennifer Anne Gordon's conclusion to The Hotel Series, with the sequel to From Daylight to Madness.

It one startling moment in the late summer of 1873 a tragedy fell like summer sun on the gray jagged shores of Dagger Island. Francis loses everything he thought his life was, and what it could have become. His heart breaks and his feet run, all the way back to his childhood home, he reaches for a past that may not exist.

He is there, in the little house in Dorchester Neck. A place haunted with missing time. He feels the comfort from walls that lean in too close, but then …He feels the trauma that ripped his life in two and in a blink of an eye he is back at the hotel. He can feel the memories fade as the cold fingers of winter wrap around him. He does not know how he got there, or indeed if he ever left.
Francis has lived his whole life veiled in the memories that are more alive than his present. The current days fade away before he can hold on to him. Everything he was or thought he could have been is gone. He realizes he may be a monster, and the person he has fallen in love with may not even exist. Francis holds onto the memories he thinks are real …until he is almost consumed by them.
Francis is isolated in a world of mesmerism, with his tormentor and healer Doctor Hughes.
Francis is a guest in this hotel with his past, his present, and who he believes to be his future. Isabelle. His world is a labyrinth … he feels her hand in his. The fingers intertwine and there is nothing left but her …

She is a memory, a ghost, and a hallucination.
He can almost remember the moment when his father’s glass shattered into his face…he can almost remember who he was before he was broken in two.
He can almost remember…
He can almost…
He can…
He…

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