What is it about things that go bump in the night? From the time we are children, peering over the top of the bedclothes into the shadowy corners of the bedroom with wide, terrified eyes, we love to be scared--at least a little and at least when it’s safe. We read fairy tales and stories of suspense, secure that when we peek under the bed, the monsters will slither quietly away.

When I was growing up, my favorite books were classic Gothic novels—everything from the Brontës to Victoria Holt, Anne Radcliffe to Elizabeth Peters. I thrilled to the spooky settings, the venturesome heroines, and the promise of something sinister lurking just behind the door. And of course, I loved the heroes! Like Byron, they were mad, bad, and dangerous to know; they exuded mystery. Many times it was up to the heroine to discover if the hero was really a hero after all or if something more ominous dwelled behind those dark good looks.

I always wanted to write just such a book, and when I sat down to begin The Dead Travel Fast, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to bring in all of my favorite Gothic elements. I wanted a heroine who would take her adventures into her own hands, a setting that would be grimly evocative, a hero with secrets to spare.

The setting and the plot itself were inspired by a book and a newspaper article. The book was The Land Beyond the Forest, the memoirs of a woman named Emily Gerard. Born in Scotland, Gerard married an Austro-Hungarian officer and traveled with him to his posting in present-day Timişoara in Transylvania. Once there, she recorded much of the folklore and geography of the region, complete with colorful customs and fearful legends of vampires and werewolves. It was the book Bram Stoker used as his primary reference during the writing of Dracula, and I was lucky enough to lay my hands upon a copy of the same edition. About the same time that I ran across Gerard’s book, I found an article about a remote village in Transylvania where the townspeople believed they were being stalked by a vampire. It detailed the age-old ritual for banishing the undead back into the grave, a medieval rite that entails beheading the corpse and tearing out the heart. What fascinated me the most was that the article might have been written in 1803, but it wasn’t. It was written in 2003, and the exhumation of the “vampire” had just taken place. Even today, there are places in Transylvania where the dead do not rest, and the living walk with fear. To me, that made an irresistible start to a book I could not wait to write.

I hope you enjoy reading The Dead Travel Fast as much as I enjoyed writing it—just make sure you peek under the bed first!

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