Author Interview: B. R. Myers

 

A Dreadful Splendor releases today!

1. Do you believe in ghosts? And/or have you ever attended a séance?

 I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do when I wake up in the middle of the night and hear a noise  downstairs. We had a Ouija board when I was a kid, Parker Brothers sold them, it only seemed to come out during sleepovers. The planchette always spelled out something like ‘fart’ or ‘poop head’, but of course everyone denied interfering with the spirit world. They really should reconsider calling it, “I’m not pushing it, are you pushing it?”

2. Who is your favorite character in the book and why?

Genevieve. She came to me completely fleshed out with a backstory and a trunk full of coping mechanisms and grief. Still, she is one determined character with a lot of sass. I could have easily written it from another character’s point of view, but it wouldn’t have been as effective.

3.What made you choose Victorian England as the setting for your book?

Genevieve came to me first, then the story. The setting was purely dependent on her as a character and what time and place she could have lived.

4. What inspired the deliciously creepy setting of Somerset Park?

Thank you! I love the phrase ‘deliciously creepy’. I was eight, and home sick from school one day and my mom let me watch the local channel’s afternoon movie, The Pit and the Pendulum (she was a big Vincent Price fan). The last five minutes of that movie terrified me — but in a fun way. And even though I’ve seen most of his other movies (House of Wax is stellar!) that first trip to the Medina Castle in The Pit and the Pendulum was the seed that eventually led to me write A Dreadful Splendor many years later. Never underestimate the power of television!

5. Which CLUE character, weapon, and room are you? 

 Colonel Mustard, in the library with the candlestick.

 

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