Author Q&A: Rus Wornom: Ghostflowers—A Love Story With Blood

Midnight rides into Virginia in steamy Southern Gothic thriller

July 4th, 1971: A beautiful diner waitress, a mysterious biker and a corrupt sheriff clash in a supernatural story about eternal passions and violent obsessions—a rock and roll dance in the moonlight.

When a local woman’s body is found, the crooked sheriff will do anything to pin her death on the new stranger in town. Ghostflowers is the tragic story of two lovers who are destined to die and be reborn through the centuries—until one finally has the courage to rebel against fate. This is a Southern horror thriller about the undead in 1970s Stonebridge, Virginia—a love that will not die...and the dark secrets in the woods.

“The whole story sprang to life one morning while I was getting ready for work, when my wife gave me a crazy, awful idea for a novel—and it took me over. Within minutes I knew the characters' names, I knew almost everything that would happen, and I knew that the main characters would not live happily ever after. One had to die.”—Rus Wornom, author of Ghostflowers

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR GHOSTFLOWERS

“Atmospheric, suspenseful, passionate, entertaining, and fun! In Ghostflowers, Rus Wornom puts a vampire of myth and legend onto the back of a motorcycle, and sets him loose in the Virginia countryside in the 1970s. Put an Allman Brothers album on your turntable, and enjoy the ride.”
—Jamie Malanowski, author of Commander Will Cushing and The Coup

“Moody, atmospheric and thrilling. Ghostflowers is one hell of a ride. Rus Wornom has crafted a unique vampire tale that hits you like a burst of sunlight after leaving a dark room.”
—Darin De Paul, actor, Shazam!, Justice Society: World War II, Apex Legends, Overwatch, and Final Fantasy XV

“…Brilliant… I read more than half in one sitting. Dinner was late that night. …Ghostflowers is steeped in the heat of passion and a melting-pot summer. A black Gothic rose of a novel, its petals drip with blood of the deepest red. It’s a love story with deadly consequences as its many layers peel back to reveal the strange truth of the man who came to Stonebridge. There is ecstasy, pain, blood and much more in this story steeped in atmosphere and the vampire mythos. It is a horror-love story—that bites. …I loved it.
—Catherine Cavendish, author of The Garden of Bewitchment and In Darkness, Shadows Breathe

“Ghostflowers gripped me from the first page to the last. It’s a glorious blend of horror and romance, a story as shocking as it is beautiful and firmly rooted in the southern gothic tradition.”
—Michael Howarth, author of A Still and Awful Red

“Like a classic rock song that comes on the radio, Ghostflowers will get stuck in your head and make you want to read this on repeat! A dark blast!”
—Steve Stred, Splatterpunk-nominated author of Sacrament and Mastodon

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ghostflowers is the fourth published book by novelist Rus Wornom. He has been writing professionally since 1983. Wornom, 64, is the author of three novels published by Dungeons & Dragons in the 1990s, and is an award-winning former executive at three Virginia newspapers. His novella, “Puppy Love Land,” was nominated for an award from the Horror Writers Association in 1997 (preliminary ballot). He graduated Old Dominion University with a B.A. in Art, and attended the University of Miami Graduate School for Creative Writing. He lives in central Virginia with his long-suffering wife and spoiled pets, and was born and raised in Hampton, VA.

Interview with Rus Wonom about Ghostflowers

#1 - What inspired the time and place for your story?

My wife gave me the initial idea for this novel while I was shaving in the morning, getting ready for work. She said, “Why don’t you write a really bad novel, like, vampires of Madison County, and make us a lot of money?”

I stared at her and just laughed, because initially I thought it was an awful idea. The Bridges of Madison County was an extremely popular book, on the hardcover bestseller list for just about two years, I think, but not very well written at all. (People LOVED it, but, man, the writing was just bad.)

Nevertheless, the idea rolled around in my head while I finished shaving, and within a few minutes I knew who my main characters would be, what their names were, and what would happen at the end. I’m still waiting for that “a lot of money” part, though...

#2 - Ghostflowers is a "vampire" story with some decidedly unusual rules. What inspired you to take this direction?

I was struck a few years back by the notion, put forth by someone, somewhere, online, that one of main reasons readers today read new vampire novels is that they love the rules that writers add or subtract to the vampire mythos. I never cared for vampire rules one way or the other, to be honest, except, in my youthful zeal to collect vampire fiction and nonfiction many years ago, I saw in many historical documents how varied and haphazard these “rules” really were in folklore.

I like it simple and as realistic as possible; I also want my fiction to be as believable as possible (unless I have other goals in mind); and so I determined that the basic rules of vampires, as far as Ghostflowers was concerned, were the rules put forth in Stoker’s Dracula…and some of those I would ignore, too. For instance, even though it never occurs in my novel, my vampires would not be affected by crosses. I really do love Stephen King’s take on the faith of a cross-bearer as the real strength behind the symbol of the cross, but to me a generic, all-encompassing vampiric hatred of crosses makes no logical sense in the real world.

So I used Stoker’s basic rules as merely guidelines, and tried to make sense of the folklore. For example, is it that vampires can’t be reflected in mirrors, or that their reflections show something different than how they appear to others? How much sunlight—if any at all—can a vampire withstand? Dracula, at 400 years old, could walk in the sunlight, according to Stoker. But what if it’s because Dracula was different or more powerful?

In my head, my main character, Summer Moore, became the embodiment of the summer season. She loves the sun, she loves the beach, she loves the green that is the South in the summer. I was going to kill her off at the end of this novel, with Summer deliberately stepping into the sunlight. I quickly realized that she may not at all be affected by sunlight…and that she had to live.

So, I had to ask if the traditional vampire rules are now too old-fashioned, and what rules are realistic. More importantly, I let my characters tell me what the rules were for them—because, in their souls, they were rebels. That turned the basic rules on their heads. Always listen to your characters.

When in doubt, I habitually turned to a quote by Dracula scholar Leonard Wolf: “For what is a vampire but one who says no to the divinely ordained order of things?”

With all that said, I take very little, almost NO time to establish these rules in the novel. I try and show what’s happening without explanation. Let the reader figure these things out, just like we all have to do with the rules of real life.

#3 - You’ve said that Ghostflowers was influenced by Hammer’s Dracula film series, TV’s Dark Shadows, and the novel The Bridges of Madison County. What elements of these influences grabbed your interest?

Dark Shadows was both a subconscious and thematic influence. I knew that morning when the novel blossomed in my mind that Ghostflowers would be a period piece, and 1971 immediately popped up in my mind’s eye. I like to let initial thoughts, and synchronicity, happen without conscious interference. 1971 was the year Dark Shadows ended on ABC. (Bridges of Madison County was also a flashback to the past: 1965, if I remember correctly.)

Once I started writing, the similarities—anguish about a character’s own vampirism, unrequited love that lasts for centuries—made themselves apparent, so much so that the original title for Ghostflowers was a direct steal from Dark Shadows: “Shadows of the Night.” I wanted to change that title eventually, and the word ghostflowers came to mind, inspired by Summer’s garden. Only about a week later, I was reading the biography of late humorist Michael O’Donghue, and somewhere in that text the word ghostflowers was mentioned. Synchronicity. I had my title.

Bridges of Madison County influenced the plot, certainly, for when my wife gave me the idea, I knew there wouldn’t be a happy ending, and that the feelings of intertwined love and sadness would be overwhelming—much like Barnabas Collins’ love for Josette du Pres lingered for hundreds of years.

I also had two conscious intentions—two goals, I suppose—for writing the novel. I absolutely adore Hammer’s Dracula films, and I determined that I wanted to write Ghostflowers as a Hammer film for the 21st century. In other words, vampires, blood, naked flesh, and sensuality, envisioned for today’s audience as a 1971 period piece. Joe Bob would say “Blood, beasts, and breasts.” And I wholeheartedly agree. There is a scene in Ghostflowers that was inspired by a single still photo from Hammer’s Lust for a Vampire. My scene is less bloody, but more erotic.

My other intent was to copy the technique Stephen King used in the first fourth of ’Salem’s Lot, and never use the word vampire in order to build verisimilitude—by showing and developing the reality of the creatures in his novel before saying what they were. I wondered if I could sustain that technique for the length of an entire novel, and make the concept of the vampire as real and as believable as possible. So you won’t find the V word here at all.

#4 - It’s been stated that Ghostflowers is your first novel in 28 years(!). What spark or experience led you down this path?

It was not by choice, but because of circumstance, timing, and finances. I was asked by a wonderful man and editor, the late Brian Thomsen, to write three novels for Dungeons and Dragons back in the early 1990s. Once those were written and published (Spelljammer: The Ultimate Helm, Castle of the Undead, and Dungeon of Fear, all published under pseudonyms), I found myself and my family just recently moved back to Virginia from Florida, and I desperately needed a new job and a regular pay check.

That series of jobs—really, a career in newspapers, doing advertising and marketing—didn’t stop me from writing, but it slowed me down considerably. I wrote a novella in ’96, “Puppy Love Land” that was published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and was nominated on the preliminary ballot for the HWA. I also wrote a novel based on the classic pulp magazines and pulp adventures, The Enigma Club, which is not yet published.

So, I was always writing, but book publication evaded me because I was concentrating on my real world job, and I also experienced a turnover of agents—one of whom dropped me because I had started writing Ghostflowers, at a time only a few years ago when no agent wanted to handle a vampire novel. I contacted my current agent, who enjoyed Ghostflowers, but suggested a few changes. I made those changes within a few days, got it back to her, and she took me on. So I guess the lesson here is do what you have to in order to survive, but believe in yourself, make yourself better, and never give up.

#5 - How do you expect Ghostflowers to affect your future plans as an author?

I have experienced so many ups and downs as a writer that I cannot afford to let myself expect anything for the publication of Ghostflowers. I want it to do some things for me, and I sincerely hope that Ghostflowers will open some doors for me; but the most realistic answer is that I have to start new projects as steps two, three, and onward.

I’m slowly working on Shades, a horror novel about Miami, a city that I love; and I have a writing partner who is working on a series of mysteries with me. I created the series, and I’m outlining the first book, heavily, so that my writing partner can write the first draft, and then we collaborate from there.

So, while I hope that Ghostflowers will make some magic and that readers will find it, I can’t assume a damn thing. I simply hope that it brings some wonder and fear to readers, and if they love Summer as much as I do, maybe there’ll be a sequel.

I know a little of what happens after the final page of Ghostflowers, so who knows? As much as Ghostflowers is a novel about the undead, it’s also very much a rock and roll novel…and rock and roll will never die.