A Book for Halloween

I write historical fiction, and I try to be true to the facts. But when I researched Edgar Allan Poe, it struck me that the facts were incomplete—specifically, the facts about his death.

We know almost nothing about Poe’s final days, and what we do know is squalid and sad. Poe deserved a fitting death, not an ignominious one, and so I decided to write it. The result was my novel, Room of Shadows. In the story, my goal wasn’t to portray history but to fix it. I took the few known facts and reimagined his death—not as it was but as it should have been.

Read the full post here.