Tonight we’re chatting with three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author Gwendolyn Kiste, author of RELUCTANT IMMORTALS (On sale August 23; Saga Press; Trade Paperback Original), which the publisher calls a centuries-overdue literary rescue mission of two of gothic literature’s most unjustly scourged female characters; Bertha Mason and Lucy Westenra of respectively Jane Eyre and Dracula.
But what if Bertha and Lucy’s stories didn’t end with these gruesome exploitations? What if they had a chance to take back the pages to confront their abusers and claim a new ending for themselves?
In RELUCTANT IMMORTALS It’s 1967 and Bertha (Bee) Mason and Lucy Westenra are now undead immortals residing in Los Angeles when Dracula and Rochester make a shocking return in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. A tale of love, betrayal, and coercion brings them face-to-face with the toxic men bent on destroying their (undead) lives, not to mention Bee’s former lover Jane Eyre herself, to put an end to Rochester and Dracula’s abuse once and for all.