David Niall Wilson is joining us today with his novel A Midnight Dreary. Here’s the publisher’s description:
A Midnight Dreary, the long-awaited fifth volume in The DeChance Chronicles, picks up outside Old Mill, NC, when Donovan, reminded that he has promised his lover, Amethyst, and Geoffrey Bullfinch of the O.C.L.T. a story, draws them back in time to a vision of the final chapter of the novel Nevermore, a Novel of Love, Loss & Edgar Allan Poe. At vision’s end, they realize that they have to act, to free Eleanor MacReady from the trap that holds her on the banks of Lake Drummond, in the Great Dismal Swamp, and to rescue a princess who has not known freedom in at least two centuries. The rescue that ensues crosses worlds and dimensions, wandering through Poe’s tales, the fables of the Brothers Grimm, and finally to a confrontation on a mountain in Germany. This novel draws upon characters and plots from many of the author’s novels, including his stories of Old Mill, NC, The O.C.L.T., Nevermore, and the vampire novel Darkness Falling.” It is rich with sorcery and adventure. Welcome to the world of Donovan DeChance.
What is David’s favorite bit?
DAVID NIALL WILSON
What I love the most about this novel is the character Edgar Allan Poe. Starting with the novel Nevermore – A Novel of Love, Loss & Edgar Allan Poe, he has been a recurring character in my fiction. My version of Poe wanders through mystical passageways in a place that Donovan DeChance, the protagonist of my series, calls the Labyrinth. Edgar sees this place as a long, gaslit hallway with heavy wooden doors that lead to different times, places, and dimensions. This place appears differently to all who can access it. When Edgar enters one of the doorways, what he encounters is a story that he must live through.
In each encounter, for good or ill, he meets his own doppelganger and interacts with a story that we are familiar with. In the novel A Midnight Dreary, there are stories within the story. Donovan reads the initial adventure that led to the story “The Masque of the Red Death,” and then, himself, walks into Poe’s “The System of Dr. Tar and Professor Fether,” where he and Edgar are both characters.
This novel gives me multiple opportunities to bond with Edgar Allan Poe on a creative level. The main plot involves saving his lost love, Lenore, from a magical trap, explains the odd circumstances surrounding his death, and adds details to two of his stories. This is fun, and makes me smile, but there is more.
In the last chapters of the book, we add Copper, a vampire, who is also a fan of Poe’s stories. He has them memorized, even some that Poe, who has not yet experienced or written all of them on his off-kilter timeline, is not familiar with. The back and forth between the two is one of my favorite parts of the book, and then, we have the ultimate Poe moment. The sorceress they are attempting to track down and trap, sets a trap herself. She creates a false world that appears, initially, to be another Poe story that he (and others) will walk into. She is arrogant, however, and does not understand the story well enough to create the experience fully. She also is unaware that he has already lived through the story in question (I won’t mention which, because I don’t want to provide spoilers). Poe figures it out before the trap can be sprung, and in the process, I am able to add another piece from his work into my personal universe. I have always felt a kinship with his prose, even the stories that are so over-written that they are hard to enjoy.
My version of Poe is likely a bit more interesting and adventuresome than the original. There are rumors that he wrote an early draft of “The Raven” at The Lake Drummond Hotel, which once stood on the banks of the Intracoastal waterway, directly on the border of Virginia and North Carolina. From that rumor, the novel Nevermore, A Novel of Love, Loss & Edgar Allan Poe was born (it was originally meant to be much shorter, and the prologue to A Midnight Dreary, before it took on a life of its own).
I am very glad that it did. There are plans in the works for another story with Edgar at its center, in which I fictionalize a meeting that actually happened between Poe and Charles Dickens, who owned a raven named Grip. History tells us that Grip died… In my version, I think he changes his name to Grimm and remains with Edgar. Time will tell…
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BIO:
David Niall Wilson has been writing professionally since the mid 1980s. He is a multiple winner of the Bram Stoker Award and has published more than forty book. He lives near the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina, with the love of his life, Patricia Lee Macomber (also an author), his daughter Katie (also an author) five cats, a chinchilla, a three-legged turtle, a canary and a very wise old Pekingese named Gizzy Momo.
David is the founder of Crossroad Press Publishing, with over 2500 eBooks, 650 audiobooks, and several hundred print editions spanning all genres. His most recent works include the novels Gideon’s Curse and Remember Bowling Green – The Adventures of Frederick Douglass, Time Traveler (written with Patricia). He is currently writing a fantasy novel titled Jurassic Ark and the first book of a series about teen heroes with unique abilities titled Hoods.
