Nancy Holder
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Interview by Carl Marsh - July 2014
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Hi Nancy
Where do I start! You have written so many books, you have won so many awards! All I can begin with is to say thank you, for being so prolific and writing such great horror fiction. You really are an ambassador for writing! Thank you so much! I love being a writer. Hello to everyone! I’m so happy to have a chance to check in with you. Would you be so kind as to let my readers and I know, how you got to become a writer in the first place? My father and grandmother encouraged me to write, and I did start writing long stories and little screenplays when I was very young. I wrote a fantasy novel when was I was ten or eleven (which I’ve lost, sadly.) But I really wanted to be a ballet dancer and I studied for years. I took about six hours of class a day and then I dropped out of school when I was sixteen and moved to Germany to go to a music high school that had a dance department. Unfortunately my father died and my stepmother wanted me to come home. I finished high school and then went back to Germany, but i got injured. After that I decided I didn’t want a career in the arts and I went to college, where nothing but writing really stuck. I got a lot of encouragement to pursue a freelance writing career, then dropped out of grad school and started writing full time. Did you find it hard when you started in your writing career to find an agent/book publisher? I wrote three novels and sent out innumerable short stories, then landed an agent about a year after I started writing full time. He never sold the two books I sent him. But he steered me to a publisher who was looking for young adult novels and I sold two. Then I was on my way. I wrote young adult, romance, and women’s fiction novels before I started selling horror short stories, then moved into horror novels. I started writing material for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, among other things, and I’m still writing Buffy projects. So that any potential writers can learn from such a talent as yourself, what advice would you give to anyone trying to write a book? READ. READ. READ. Read as much as you write. Write a lot. Keep writing. If you finish a novel or story, send it out but in the meantime, start the next one. FINISH STUFF. Even bad stuff. Of all the books that you have written, which is your favourite, and why? I love different books for different reasons. I love Dead in the Water because it was my first published horror novel. I was thrilled to receive a Bram Stoker Award for it. I love The Rose Bride because it’s my homage to Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bete, one of my very, very favorite films. And I love The Screaming Season (for which I also received a Stoker) because it was effortless to write. If I could also ask about the tie-in novels, you have written numerous ones based on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Smallville and Angel. Of these, did you actually watch them all relentlessly, so as to write the books? Yes. I watch them over and over and still do if I have a new project. One of my tricks is that I also watch them without the sound, so I can see the visuals. I have also written books for other shows including Highlander, Teen Wolf, Saving Grace and the reboot of Beauty and the Beast. I love working on tie-ins. It’s a license to binge-watch and I love getting into the worlds. And which was your favourite to watch on the TV, and why? Buffy was a life-changer, but I love all my shows. I fall in love with them and it’s like a romance. They’re all I can think about until it’s time to move on. Luckily, I usually get to come back to them. Buffy will always be my first love, though. With books that you have read, what is your favourite book, and why? The Shining by Stephen King and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I also love The Woman in Black by Susan Hill. I love ghost stories! Are you currently reading anything at present? I’m always reading! I’m the chair of the Bram Stoker Novel Jury and I also teach in a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program (called Stonecoast, offered through the University of Southern Maine.) My students send me packets of creative fiction during the semester and I read and critique all of it. What do the next 12 months hold for you, Nancy Holder? Next up is the anthology Futuerdaze2: Reprise, co-edited with Erin Underwood. I have stories coming out in Beyond the Pale, Out of Tune, and In the Company of Sherlock Holmes. I’m building the world of Dracula for Storium (tm), and I’m working on novelettes for an X File anthology and V Wars. have two more Beauty and the Beast novels and another project for Delacorte. The Rules, my next Delacorte teen thriller, written with Debbie Viguie, will be out in June 2015. I’m doing some guest teaching and I’m editing and writing some really exciting new projects at Moonstone Books. I ask everyone this, and as of yet, all have answered, so, "If you could be an animal, what would it be and why?” I would be a Corgi or a Border collie, because everyone loves them and they are the sweetest, best dogs in the world. I’m not home in California right now and I’m really missing my two Corgis, Panda and Tater Tot! (And also my cats, McGee, David, and Kittnen Snow Vampire.) Thanks Nancy, Carl Thank you so much to everyone for all your support through the years. It has meant the world to me. I’m glad to have this chance to connect. I’m on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/holder.nancy and I also have a fan page. If anyone is coming over for San Diego Comic-con International (2014), please come to one of my panels and say hi! Nancy @nancyholder |
Occupation: Author
Country: USA 
Amazon
Amazon
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