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Thanks so much for the invitation to hang out here today! I’ll begin by telling you a bit about myself. I’m a dark person. When I was born the nurse said, “This baby has a dark soul.” Well, I’m sure she at least thought it. ;)

I find foreboding in everything. Old buildings. New buildings. Bridges. An open field. A weedy pasture. A grove of trees. A quiet street. Anything and everything seems sinister to me. Small towns can be particularly secretive while at the same time seductive. On the surface they can look quaint and welcoming, but underneath they resent newcomers and change. Nature is the same way. Beautiful and inviting, but dangerous and secretive. I decided to tap into those personal anxieties while writing Pale Immortal and Garden of Darkness – books I think of as basically one long story that I call the Tuonela books.

The Tuonela books were influenced by Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip, and also by the small river town of Burlington, Iowa, where I grew up. I’d wanted to use Burlington in a book for a long time, and when I visualize Tuonela in my mind, it always looks like Burlington. I can’t imagine it being set anywhere else. I think part of that is because Burlington calls to me in the strange way it calls to Rachel in the Tuonela books. Sometimes our connections to a place reach back generations and that creates an odd bond.

I’m a visual person, so I think movies have also influenced me in a big way: Night of the Living Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Nosferatu and a lot of the old black & white horror movies. Also Hitchcock. With Pale Immortal and Garden of Darkness, I wanted to take some of those horror/supernatural elements and combine them with a story that was basically character-driven, and a story that, in a weird way, had love at its foundation.

The core story is a story of abuse and abandonment, loss and regret. It’s about the love of a father for a child. The father just happens to have this strange disease. And he might be a vampire, living in a town that might not exist.

Evan Stroud is allergic to sunlight. His disease isolates him, and isolation is something most of us have dealt with in our lives. Evan is the ultimate outsider, yearning for answers he will never find and a life he can never have. And possibly a love he can never have.

Many of the main characters are trapped by circumstance – a recurring theme in Pale Immortal and Garden of Darkness. The weight of responsibility. Do you turn your back on the people you love in order to have a different life, the promise of a better life? This also mirrors the isolation, loss of identity, and sense of displacement that’s prevalent in society today.

Evan’s teenage son figures prominently in both books. I love writing teenagers. They are so naïve and cocky, innocent and volatile. They think they know everything and approach life that way. They can make you mad and break your heart all at the same time.

Rachel Burton, the town coroner, is forced to return to Tuonela. This ties into the responsibility theme. At first she returns because of an ill parent. Then she didn’t want to leave her father by himself. Then the town needed her. But of course deep down the town was calling to her. I’ve experienced this pull with my own hometown. Something is always calling me back, and I have to fight it because I don’t think it’s a good place for me. But it’s always there, and I sometimes wonder if I should just quit fighting and move back. I think many of us long for the roots and heritage of a quaint town and a life that doesn’t exist. And of course with Rachel we have to think that subconsciously she also returns because of Evan.

Speaking of Evan…. Is he human? That’s definitely the big question. Or is he just a victim of subliminal persuasion? Of myth and superstition? Of paranoia? Or is something more going on?

About the author’s note in Pale Immortal — I wanted people to wonder. I wanted them to get up, walk to the bookshelf, and pull out a map to see if they could find Tuonela. I wanted to take the story outside the book and into the reader’s own life. That has been a big part of this journey — adding layers outside the pages.

Since the release of Garden of Darkness, I’ve received a lot of emails and myspace messages from readers asking if I’m working on a third Tuonela book. I’m sorry to say that at this time there are no plans to write a third book although an outline and plot for book 3 does exist. I’m currently working on a creative nonfiction project that will probably be released in 2010. Taking a break from the nonfiction world might see me delving deeper into the horror genre. I also have a short story coming out in an anthology, but it’s too early to talk about that. So, lots going on, but not the kind of news Pale Immortal and Garden of Darkness readers want to hear. Sorry!

The weird twist to this whole thing is that I recently moved from the city to an abandoned village in Wisconsin. Writers are always asked about influence, but until now I’ve never really thought about how my books have influenced and informed my own life.


For more info on Anne Frasier and her books, have some fun and check out the following links:

Pale Immortal Blogspot
Kristin Blackmoore Blogspot
Anne Frasier (website)
Anne Frasier Blogspot
Anne Frasier MySpace