"Netherworld"

Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert. Her work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening,” and Famous Monsters called her "one of the best writers in dark fiction today." Her novels include The Castle of Los Angeles and Malediction. A multiple Bram Stoker Award® winner, she lives in North Hollywood, California.

Morton applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Netherworld, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Netherworld involves my globe-trotting heroine, Lady Diana Furnaval, encountering a mysterious gateway in the depths of a snowy forest in the Transylvanian mountains. Diana is there searching for clues to the death of her husband, William.

The scene is sober and melancholic, as Diana returns from the forest to the abandoned village of Urveri and the inn where William died. Winter is raging, and everything is frozen over, quiet, dead. Diana remains strong while in the village, but a page later, as she’s in the hired sleigh heading back down the mountains, tears freeze on her cheeks.

I’d like to think that most of Netherworld is less somber and ultimately tragic than this scene! Diana is often caustic and witty, and loves to learn about new customs and languages as she travels. The one part of Netherworld that this scene captures well, however, is the folklore that provides the background for the story. When Diana finds the gateway in that forest, the description runs: In Ireland this would have been a fairy ring; in England, a haunted moor. I love mythology and folklore – eastern and western, ancient and modern – and Netherworld is steeped in it.

Learn more about the book and author at Lisa Morton's website.

My Book, The Movie: Netherworld.

--Marshal Zeringue