What inspired The Keep’s gothic setting and mood?
The whole idea of writing a gothic novel came from visiting a castle, which I found to be a very electrifying experience. Not that I’d never been to a castle before. But I had just finished Look at Me, and I was just trying to think about what to do next and I went to this castle in Belgium that belonged to Godfrey de Bouillon who led the first crusade. And I thought, “Ahh, this is amazing,” but I didn’t know what to do with that feeling. I really thought, “I want to write about this.” And it took me a while to figure out what “this” was. At first I thought “this” might be a novel set in medieval times, but, it’s going to sound weird, but I felt like I wanted something cheesier than that. I wanted something artificial. I wanted an artificial realm that was moody and intense and had all kinds of dramatic possibilities and could let me walk that line between humor and scariness or the uncanny. And then I began reading a lot of gothic fiction and the plot sort of unfolded naturally with a
