Thoughts on Literature from a Not-Yet-Novelist

 The fog clung to the edges of my mind tonight, dear readers, thick as the kind you’d find rolling off a lonely moor in some half-forgotten tale. It’s Jackson Alexander Thornefield here, tapping away at this blog from a corner of the world that feels more like a shadow than a place. I ain’t a novelist—not yet, not by a long shot—but stories? They’re my blood, my bones, the hum in my head that won’t quit. Tonight, I’m spilling some thoughts on literature, the kind that creeps under your skin and nests there, like a secret you didn’t mean to keep.

I’ve been reading again, or maybe consuming is the better word, letting books pile up like ghosts in a haunted house. Gothic romance has its claws in me deep—those crumbling manors, those hearts that beat too loud in the dark. Brontë’s Wuthering Heights sits on my desk, its pages dog-eared and yellowed, whispering of Heathcliff’s rage and Cathy’s ghost. That book’s a storm, all raw edges and longing that cuts like a knife. Then there’s Poe, with his pendulum swinging slow, each tick a reminder that time’s a trap. His stories don’t just scare you; they make you feel like you’re falling through the floorboards of your own mind.

What gets me about literature—real, bone-deep literature—is how it’s alive. Not in some flowery way, but like a pulse you can’t ignore. Take Shelley’s Frankenstein. It’s not just a monster stitched together; it’s a mirror, showing you the pieces of yourself you’d rather not name. I read it last week, and it left me restless, like I’d been stitched up wrong too. Stories like that don’t let you go. They cling, they haunt, they demand you wrestle with them in the dead of night.

I’ve been thinking about why these tales pull me in. Maybe it’s the shadows, the way they hide just enough to make you lean closer. Or maybe it’s the romance—not the soft kind, but the jagged sort, where love is a wound that won’t close. I keep circling back to the idea that stories are how we make sense of the chaos. Life’s a mess, all loose threads and sharp corners, but a good book? It weaves those threads into something that holds, even if it’s just for a while.

I don’t know if I’ll ever write a novel myself. The thought’s there, scratching at the back of my skull like a rat in the walls. I’ve got fragments—ideas about a cursed estate, a woman with secrets in her eyes, a veil that’s more than it seems—but they’re just whispers for now, not ready to be pinned down. For now, I’m content to read, to let other folks’ words carve out pieces of me I didn’t know were there.

What about you, out there in the dark? What books keep you up past midnight? What stories make your heart ache or your skin crawl? Drop a line below—I’m all ears, or whatever passes for ears in this strange head of mine. Let’s talk about the words that won’t let us go.