My name is Francesca Miller  and I welcome you to www.francescamiller.com.  I had the great fortune of being born and raised in Los Angeles, the city most connected with the modern film industry.  I spent much of my life as a writer working as an entertainment journalist and movie reviewer in print, on-line and on radio. I interviewed a plethora of Hollywood luminaries and critiqued loads of films.

When I became a caregiver, writing about movies no longer held the same interest for me that it once did. I decided to turn to fiction and my first work, Boston Gothic, is a period piece that celebrates my love of Gothic fiction.  Boston Gothic provides thrills, chills, death and rebirth with architecture, romance and even a few recipes thrown into the mix. 

I’ve had an abiding love for movies since I was a child and my newest work, Mitzi of the Ritz , grew out of that passion. My mother took my brother and me on weekly treks to the grand movie palaces around Los Angeles. The now defunct “Red Car” was our chariot around the city. We’d venture past the massive gates of the old MGM Studios and down the palm tree lined boulevards of Beverly Hills. The three of us took jaunts to the manicured expanses of Forrest Lawn and visited the Hollywood Cemetery to see the crypt where Valentino sleeps.  Mitzi is my bouquet to Los Angeles, the film industry and the men and women who created it.

While Mitzi of the Ritz deals with the adventures of a spunky Jewish teenager during the Great Depression, it was inspired by my research on the early life of another spunky Jewish teenager, the great French actress, Sarah Bernhardt . Sarah and her handsome lover, Dr. Samuel-Jean Pozzi, have been a fascination for the past five years.  I’ve been fortunate to work on the story of their relationship with the brilliant Dr. Caroline de Costa, Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia and our articles have been published in History Today and the Lancet.

The In A Gothic Mood   pages are a collection of essays on this genre. Gothic literature has played a tremendous role in my literary life. Charlotte Bronte, Poe, Daphne du Maurier, Sarah Waters and new writers like Dianne Setterfield all continue to inspire me. Though I don’t write vampire fiction, I have an interest in the genre and will explore it.

Another page to explore is A Fairie Tale in Green, a short essay about the most forbidden and taboo drink of all time--absinthe (aka "the green fairy").  A second, Gears of the Future, explores the relatively new subgenre of Steampunk.  Still a third is the Bizarre History of Seances  written by none other than novelist Catherine Karp .

It’s my hope that you enjoy exploring my site and visit it often.

 

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