“Am I able to describe her? Do I possess the words for it? Even now, she is reposed in angelic slumber, behind me. If I turn, rise and carry my candle, I might gaze on her dozing visage, in all its sublimity: her luscious lips, pursed, poised; her ivory cheeks; those dark lashes, as soft and subtle as feathers on white down; above, her alabaster brow in rest, faintly crinkled with those great, great worries of her home realm, awhirl in her girlish brain. Atop such troubles, her tresses are gold, spun into silk. Yet for all that I espy in this inky light, it is her shuttered eyes that have caught my Mind’s Eye, eyes black, as black as a Raven’s. She has become the Raven I dreaded–the Raven I knew would visit me–only to find her not a harbinger of death, but a herald of heaven, a heaven I had not the heart to imagine.”

–from The Tell-Tale Art by Rich Novotney

Today, please forgive a moment of self-promotion. Who wrote the above? Does it sound at all like Edgar A. Poe? Hopefully it does just a smidge. This morning I was working on edits for my novel on Edgar A. Poe (at the behest of an excellent agent whom I hope will like what I’m doing), and came across this passage. It’s from one of the ersatz Poe journal entries I’ve created for the book. Here Poe waxes poetic about the love of his life, an amazing woman born three hundred years in the future.