The Keys: A Gothic ReTelling of Bluebeard with Zombies

By Alyne de Winter

Beware the Scent of Tuberose and the Maniacal Music of the Keys!

At six years old, Lissette attends a concert by the handsome and dazzling concert pianist, Armand Guy de Rais. She is instantly infatuated. Ten years later, their lives destroyed by the French Revolution, Lissette's mother marries her off to a wealthy aristocrat living on a Caribbean island. Could Lissette's childhood fantasy be coming true? Or is there more than a whiff of decay in the flowers, in the house, in the music of the keys?

This is a Gothic Faery Tale of about 6,000 words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alyne de Winter
• Release date: Nov 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310962479

Alyne de Winter

Alyne de Winter is an author of Gothic Mysteries and Occult Thrillers featuring tormented beauties, eerie settings, night religions, secret histories... After years of drawing and painting, by a fluke ended up as an English major. She wrote and published award-winning poetry but always wanted to write fiction. The stories did not come to her until she went to Europe, then they flooded in and still haven't stopped. She loves the tradition of the writer establishing themselves with short stories while building the novels, so you will find many short stories on her page. The short story requires intensity of focus, economy of language (so every word must be effective) and must keep the plot lines tight. She likes to think of the short story as poetry's second cousin. Major influences: Grimms' Fairy Tales, Complete Works of Shakespeare, Angela Carter, Tanith Lee, Daphne du Maurier,Charles Dickins, Anne Rice, Theophile Gautier, Edgar Allen Poe, the films of Barbara Steele and other 1960s horror films. (Not a gore fan) Religion, History, costume, Ancient dance and folk cultures, and witchcraft. The Gothic novel has always been a love letter to the past, a grieving for lost beauty and an elegy to the soul.

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