I enjoy stories about The Phantom of the Opera as I have great affection for the title character, and I like Star Wars-related fiction (I’m a Darth Vader girl from way back). It would seem to make sense, then, that I also frequent the V for Vendetta section. There is just something terribly irresistible about angry, deformed men in black capes – so delightfully complicated and alluringly dangerous.

As regards the Phantom, my particular interest in POTO goes back to my very early childhood and a Phantom of the Opera board game that belonged to my older sister. (As soon as I found out the heroine's name was Christine, I was hooked.) I'll take my Eriks and story premises in any form, as long as they are semi-plausible, well-written, and entertaining.

As for my taste in literature, my favorite stories include "La femme abandonee" by Honore de Balzac, "Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann, and "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl. I count The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dracula by Bram Stoker, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, Dune by Frank Herbert, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson as my favorite novels. And I regard the words of T.S. Eliot with reverence and awe.

I have always loved the study of history, though I was a literature major by choice. I respect animals (mosquitoes are the only creatures that I can kill with a happy abandon) and adore flowers of any kind with the exception of the calla lily (too many macabre visions of them in the clutch of stiff Victorian hands). My nom de plume comes from my particular interest in horses, and though sadly I do not own one, I do ride. When I am not working and reading, I tend to the sad inhabitants of the plot outside my door that passes as a garden.

I am the beta for "Black Despair" http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3036136/1/ and "I'll Be Home for Christmas" http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3304746/1/ by Phantasmarose http://www.fanfiction.net/u/979220/. They are both wonderfully executed Leroux-based Phantom stories of which I have been honored to be a part.

A Note About "Midnight Stirs the Memory":

Though my natural inclination in reading POTO stories tends towards a much darker, brooding, and unbalanced Erik, I found myself writing something much lighter and (dare I say the word) fluffy. I can attribute this only to the unpleasantness and general misery that was pervading my personal life at the time. Writing this story became a form of therapy for me and a much-needed distraction, and as such, I couldn't bring myself to make it dark.

Thanks for reading!

Christine (Busanda)