Who's your favorite American gothic author? Why is that author your favorite?

Barbara Michaels is my favorite. It's hard to say why except that I've enjoyed everything I've read from her. She writes some eerie ghost stories and her historical Gothics are among the best of any Gothic author. Barbara Michaels is one of her pen names. I have never read any written under her other name, Elizabeth Peters. I should check those out.

I wonder why authors write under different names. Wouldn't they be more popular if they used the same name for all of there books? They'd have more name recognition.

Anyway, I do not recall reading anything by Barbara Michaels. I may have and just don't remember, though. I'll try some of her books out.

The reasons for using pseudonyms are varied. Some choose different names for different genres of books. Some do it because they churn out so many books a year that they might lose credibility in the market. (If you see that a writer produces several novels a year, you might not think the books were well-written.) Some do it to hide their identity until they are assured of success in their field.

Barbara Michaels and Phyllis Whitney are the queens of American gothics, in my opinion. Michaels' books are the more innovative of the two, in that she sometimes uses actual supernatural elements, and sometimes sticks with the more traditional Gothic romance formula. Whitney excells at using real locations in her books. Her real gift is creating realistic mysteries in real American locations, and as an American, I've had fun seeing my country as a Gothic setting. So often Gothic conjures up images of old European castles, but Whitney can take a modern American house built on a flat prairie and make it "Gothic."

I guess Michaels is the one who comes closest to matching the literary craftsmaship of a du Maurier or Mary Stewart.

I am new here as a poster but read some posts and stuff that posters have left. I know, and you can call me old school, but I haven't found a good author since 19th century between 1800-1880. Sorry, just haven't. Some good ones I suppose just not great. I am found of Frankenstein myself, but my favorite works are Fall of the House of Usher and Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe. I know he only wrote poems and short stories and not necessarily novels, but those have been my all time favorite.

Old school or new school, we are here to discuss Gothic literature. Some of us would prefer to read the old stuff, some the new. But to share your opinions, which modern (20th century) authors have you liked? I think the purpose of this forum is to help lovers of Gothic literature to find and read good stories. If we can get recommendations of the good, we can better avoid all the trashy novels. It's unfortunate that so many trashy novels have been published under "Gothic" that it has received a bad name.