PITTSBURGH — There was always something about the stories of Lucy Westenra and Bertha Mason that Gwendolyn Kiste felt were incomplete — and that's putting it generously.
Lucy first appeared in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula" and is mostly defined by her two murders, first by Dracula when she was human and then by monster hunters after transforming into a vampire. Bertha is the deranged first wife of Edward Rochester who is locked in an attic in Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel "Jane Eyre."
"I always felt that you don't get to know nearly enough about Lucy and Bertha as characters," the 38-year-old Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, resident and horror author told the Post-Gazette. "It was always a question of who they were and who they might have been."
Kiste was finally able to give those two characters the treatment she believes they deserved in "Reluctant Immortals," her latest novel. In it, Lucy and Bertha are transplanted to 1967 California as undead immortals still trying to break free from the men whose abuse has largely defined their stories.
Because the books in which Lucy and Bertha — whom Kiste refers to as "Bee" — are in the public domain, Kiste was able to create something entirely new also featuring plenty of other characters from "Dracula" and "Jane Eyre."
"Especially in light of the #MeToo movement and reclaiming women's voices and stories, it felt like a moment where we could discuss these characters from a different perspective and see them as having their narratives lost and reclaiming them," Kiste said.
"A lot of female characters get pushed aside, even in modern stories. [I wanted to] to take this moment ... and really look at these characters and say how and why did their voices get deleted, and what does that say about horror and society?"
Horror stories have always been a huge part of Kiste's life. Her parents got married on Halloween, and her childhood in New Philadelphia, Ohio, was stuffed to the brim with Universal monster movies and the works of authors like Edgar Allen Poe and Ray Bradbury.
She and her husband now reside on an old horse farm in Waynesburg. The Bram Stoker Award-winning author of "The Rust Maidens," "And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe" and "Pretty Marys All in a Row" recently cemented her Western Pennsylvania bona fides when she allowed the University of Pittsburgh to house her work alongside the archives of local horror legends like George Romero and "Chilly Billy" Cardille.
"It's absolutely awesome," she said of being a part of Pitt's growing collection of horror-related materials. "It's such a huge honor and such a dream come true for a writer."
"Reluctant Immortals" started as a short story Kiste wrote called "The Eight People Who Murdered Me: Excerpt from Lucy Westenra's Diary." She wanted to keep writing about Lucy without just expanding the short story, so she began brainstorming other characters that might be fun to pair her with. Kiste settled on Bertha, who she believes has a "natural connection" with Lucy in terms of how underdeveloped they both were in their original novels.
Kiste set "Reluctant Immortals" in the 1960s as "a nod to that era of horror," particularly the Hammer flicks that included a new spin on "Dracula." In addition to elevating Lucy and Bertha, Kiste wanted to remind fans of "Dracula" and "Jane Eyre" that their male protagonists may have been charming but were, in fact, pretty awful people. In Kiste's estimation, what Rochester did to Bertha doesn't get nearly enough scrutiny in modern literary criticism.
"It's a pretty questionable, terrible decision to put your first wife in the attic," she said.
Highlighting the "vein of toxicity" between Dracula and Rochester was fun for Kiste, as was crafting what turned out to essentially be a buddy road-trip thriller starring Lucy and Bertha. She quite enjoyed exploring how similar their traumas were and, at the same time, the many "differences in how they processed that."
"Reluctant Immortals" seems ideal for Kiste fans who love gothic horror and classic literature. She definitely would like Pittsburghers to check it out, especially considering how much inspiration this region has given her over the years.
"I love living here because there is so much horror history here," she said. "As a horror writer, it's great. I just love being here and feeling like the horror is everywhere here —in a very good way."
