Query: Historical horror
Posted: October 17th, 2020, 3:55 am
Hi, everyone! Here's my query and thanks in advance!
Dear... ,
In 1930s Italy, a woman must battle sinister events that threaten her life and her sanity in the rundown, isolated watermill she calls home.
From the moment she sees it, Sibilla Fenoglio can think of living nowhere else but the derelict watermill her husband, a sawmill engineer looking to start his own lumber business, has purchased. Having rested uninhabited since the Renaissance after the unspoken-of disaster that befell the previous owners, Maddalena Caparalia and her family, the mill needs extensive repairs. But Sibilla doesn’t mind. After two miscarriages, one in circumstances her mind refuses to remember and her husband won’t acknowledge, the countryside is what she needs to carry her third pregnancy to term.
But there is something wrong with the mill from the start. Repairs are violently undone, half-seen figures begin stalking Sibilla through the grounds, and echoes of the previous owners’ lives infiltrate the present in a woman’s voice Sibilla is sure is Maddalena Caparalia. A voice that can only scream in warning.
As the disturbances grow more vicious and her husband more secretive, the long-buried memories of what led to Sibilla’s miscarriage begin to surface. She realizes she and her child are in danger. And it is not only what is roaming the mill, what Maddalena Caparalia is trying to warn her of, that she must fear.
A historical horror novel with a good dose of Gothic atmosphere and told in the points of view of both Sibilla and Maddalena, SANCTUARY is complete at 93,000 words.
(Bio)
Dear... ,
In 1930s Italy, a woman must battle sinister events that threaten her life and her sanity in the rundown, isolated watermill she calls home.
From the moment she sees it, Sibilla Fenoglio can think of living nowhere else but the derelict watermill her husband, a sawmill engineer looking to start his own lumber business, has purchased. Having rested uninhabited since the Renaissance after the unspoken-of disaster that befell the previous owners, Maddalena Caparalia and her family, the mill needs extensive repairs. But Sibilla doesn’t mind. After two miscarriages, one in circumstances her mind refuses to remember and her husband won’t acknowledge, the countryside is what she needs to carry her third pregnancy to term.
But there is something wrong with the mill from the start. Repairs are violently undone, half-seen figures begin stalking Sibilla through the grounds, and echoes of the previous owners’ lives infiltrate the present in a woman’s voice Sibilla is sure is Maddalena Caparalia. A voice that can only scream in warning.
As the disturbances grow more vicious and her husband more secretive, the long-buried memories of what led to Sibilla’s miscarriage begin to surface. She realizes she and her child are in danger. And it is not only what is roaming the mill, what Maddalena Caparalia is trying to warn her of, that she must fear.
A historical horror novel with a good dose of Gothic atmosphere and told in the points of view of both Sibilla and Maddalena, SANCTUARY is complete at 93,000 words.
(Bio)