AMANDA STEVENS The queen of spooky.    —bestselling author B. J. Daniels I've always been fascinated by the morbid and the macabre, and like many Southerners, I'm a little obsessed with death. Some of my favorite characters are morticians, embalmers and grave groomers. I'm also quite fond of zombies and ghosts. Basically, I love anything creepy and gothic—old houses with hidden stairwells, forgotten graveyards, deserted insane asylums. I'm more drawn to the South of Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte than to that of Steel Magnolias. "Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one."    —Flannery O'Connor