Also, I sent away for a "horrible" book to read this month: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! It's really a kick! It revolves around Jane Austen's original novel, but with Zombies thrown in to terrorize Derbyshire, Netherfield Park, Merryton, basically all the locations in which the story takes place!
In the spirit of the season, I decided to look into Gothic fiction, which is the genre of literature that includes elements of horror and romance. Its origin comes with the first of its kind, "The Castle of Otranto", by English author Horace Walpole, written in 1764. This was groundbreaking stuff at the time, to be followed by authors like Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein, works by Edgar Allen Poe, etc, up to the beginning of the 19th Century, and the rest is history, as they say. 
The name "gothic" refers to the medieval buildings in which the stories generally take place, the ruins of a dark earlier age, representing the collapse and decay of humanity.Walpole set the parameters for the gothic tale. There are always the following characters interjected: the virginal maiden, the old foolish woman, the hero, the tyrant, the stupid servant, clowns, ruffians, clergy. These characters reinforce the story: the innocent deflowered, the knight in shining armor, the comic relief, the moral judge, etc. It's all there, with suspense, bone-chilling terror and forbidden love among the ruins thrown in for good measure.
By the way, The Castle of Otranto tells the story of a lord and his family, beginning on his son's wedding day, with a tragic event happening just after all the celebration. The tragedy is the fulfillment of an prophecy. It goes on from there with murders, trysts, sorrow, suspense, pain and suffering. Doesn't it make you want to crack the cover!?
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