Joanna WinterFrom Market Signal to Manuscript

The Journal

Signals, stories and the promises between them.

Essays on genre, commercial fiction, story craft and the choices that begin before the first sentence.

A Victorian woman waiting at a candlelit dinner table while a servant carries a covered tray through a Gothic doorway

Gothic Curiosities · Story craft

Can You Hide a Plot Twist in Dinner?

A Victorian dinner experiment involving November strawberries, invalid meals and one supposedly dead wife.

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A dark gothic mansion with one warmly illuminated window against an aubergine background

Market signal · Gothic romance

Why the Gothic Romance Trend Is Having a Moment

Danger, desire, secrecy and old gothic structures have become newly legible to a mass romance audience.

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Five dark gothic book covers bearing a door, mansion, keyhole, thorn and poison bottle

Cover analysis · Gothic romance

Reading Gothic Romance Covers: Five Books, Five Promises

What five current covers tell readers, and what those signals mean for your own book packaging.

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