People talk of Gothic novels - aka Northanger Abbey – but what is a gothic setting? Dracula’s castle is gothic because it helps invoke gothic themes. Take architecture, add in claustrophobia and creeping dread, toss in distance from civilisation, a prison-like atmosphere and you are almost there. 

Old places, and isolated wilderness helps to set the scene.  Almost any castle will do, especially if it is partially ruined and has a dungeon or better yet – a locked door. How about an ancient mansion, a hunting lodge, or dilapidated chateau? There are plenty of ruined cottages scattered about the norther landscape.

Take something familiar and twist it. A doll isn’t gothic-scary, but a doll that inexplicably appears on your bedside table might be. How did it get there? Who put it there?

Signing the contacts on some property isn’t scary, but doing so in Transylvania might be, especially if a mysterious and reclusive count lived there.

Historical fiction is based in reality. In Gothic horror, magic and monsters and things that go bump in the night might be real.

In a Gothic horror, the doll would be the ghost of a horribly murdered girl that now possesses the doll.

In historical fiction ghosts aren’t real and there will usually be a protagonist driven mad by the nasty doll shunted around by her wicked uncle.

 I like writing about the Viking Age which tends to be action-packed and practical. But I am beginning to think along the lines of a chieftain’s hall in the middle of nowhere, with a murderer who stalks the corridors at night, leaving gruesome trophies behind!

Yes, I did read Beowulf at uni!

But add in dread, and snow them in over a brutal winter as they are picked off one by one…