Goodreads asked Deborah Goodrich Royce:

What are you currently working on?

Deborah Goodrich Royce I have just finished a first draft of Ruby Falls, also a thriller but I would classify it as meta-gothic. In it, I play with much spookier themes. It begins with a little girl clutching her father's hand, deep in a pitch dark cave called Ruby Falls (near Chattanooga, Tennessee). The girl is completely terrified because they have clicked off the lights. She can't see a thing but she hears the water falling around her and cannot determine its location in the utter blackness. The tour guide is telling a rambling story of how divers have never been able to locate the bottom of the pool of water and the little girl tries desperately not to be afraid and not to move—so she doesn't fall into that water—when her father lets go of her hand. The lights come back on and he is gone. Simply gone. She is alone and frozen with fear and no one at the tourist attraction knows what to do with her. And the story takes off from there.

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