Author Nancy Holder
Nancy Holder is best known for her work as co author of The New York Times Bestseller saga Wicked, which has been optioned by Dreamworks. She has written well over eighty novels and two hundred short stories, essays, and articles. Nancy also has written tie ins for such series as Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hellboy, Sabrina the Teen Age Witch, Saving Grace, Smallville, and others. She has won four Bram Stoker Awards, including Best Novel for Dead In The Water. She works with co author Debbie Viguié on the Crusade series and the yet to be released Wolf Springs Chronicles. Her young adult horror series The Possessions delights younger readers. The third novel in the series, The Screaming Season is due out March 2011.
Q: Can you tell our readers a little about your background? What experiences have made you who you are today?
A: I wrote my first short story in the second grade. It was a romance about a mermaid and her boyfriend, who was a merman seaweed lumberjack. An evil merman steals her and puts her in a net. The lumberjack frees her by hacking open the net with his ax. I kept writing all through school—novels, screenplays—so of course I decided to become not a writer, but a ballet dancer! I dropped out of high school to dance in Europe, but I had a bad injury, and gave it up.
After that I decided I’d had enough of weird, unstable careers in the arts. I wanted to be a speech therapist or get an M.B.A., which meant grad school (I have a B.A. in Communications from the University of California at San Diego.) I needed letters of recommendation for grad school, and one of my creative writing professors, Dr. John Waterhouse, suggested that I could have a career as a freelance writer if I so chose. I was so shocked that I gave up grad school after one semester, stayed home, and wrote. A year and a half later, I sold my first novel.
Q: It seems that writers in the horror genre are rather close to one another. Do you find that to be true?
A: Yes, I do. We’re a small, incestuous group, really. Most of us belong to the Horror Writers Association, and we have our special places such as Dark Delicacies, a one-stop horror store in Burbank, California. We “get” each other…and we like each other. It’s a big family.
Q: I know you were friends with the late Melissa Mia Hall. How do you think she would like to be remembered? What do you think her most endearing quality was?
A: I think Melissa would like to be remembered as an author and a fine artist. She painted and her work was incredible. She wrote, and her work was incredible. Finely crafted, arch, clever. She was passionate and creative, warm and caring. I think her most endearing quality was her optimism. She had a lot of rough times, but her response would be to make something wonderful to eat, or to light a candle, or to paint. She adored her animals. Now I’m crying.
Q: Do you worry that with the passing of the current authors that the genre will suffer for want of writers that are as talented?
A: No. There are tons of talented younger writers. I teach some of them in the low-residency program at Stonecoast, offered through the University of Southern Maine. They’re awesome and they’re getting published. I have no fears at all about the health of my genre.
Q: You used to read creepy comics as a child. Which of those were your favorites and why?
A: I bought them by their covers. The creepier the better. Then they gave me nightmares. I have no idea why I read them. I hardly got any sleep as a kid.
Q: Do you enjoy writing stories for younger readers?
A: Yes, although I will point out that Possessions is for older young adults, so it’s not really that young an audience. But I’ve written Nancy Drew as well as a lot of novels under house names, such as the “Camp Confidential” and the “Flirt” series, both of which I loved.
Q: What led you to start writing tie ins? Do you enjoy that? Which of those series do enjoy most yourself?
A: I was working at Mysterious Galaxy, the local indie bookstore here in San Diego, and as I was dusting the shelves, I started admiring the Highlander novels. I wondered aloud if they were looking for any more authors. The store owner, my friend Maryelizabeth Hart, emailed the editor of the series and told her I was interested in writing for Highlander. The editor called me at the store, we talked, and I got the job. I wrote “The Measure of a Man”, which is about Machiavelli.
My next tie-in gig was writing for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and later, Angel. I had written horror and I had tie-in credentials, which were my qualifications. I also wrote for Smallville, Hellboy, Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch, Wishbone, and Salem’s Tales, about Sabrina’s cat—among many others.
My favorite series to write about is/are Buffy and Angel. I would also love to write for Firefly. I am a Whedonian. I’m in Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon by the Women Who Love Them.
Q: What little known thing about yourself would you not mind sharing with our readers?
A: I love flamenco. I studied it a little and I would have loved to have become a flamenco dancer.
Q: What do you think you be doing at this time if you weren’t a writer?
A: I would do more teaching. I love to teach.
Q: What one question have you never been asked in an interview do you most wish someone would ask you?
A: I honestly don’t know!
Q: How do you think the publishing industry has changed since you first started your career? How would you most like to see it change next?
A: The advent of e-publishing, which I think is very exciting. I think authors are getting more control over the publication of their work, and I love that.
Q: What projects can your readers look forward to next?
A: “The Screaming Season”, which is the third Possessions novel, comes out on March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day!) “Crusade” comes out in paperback on May 3, and “Crusade: Damned” comes out on August 30th. I’m also in “Chicks Kick Butt”, an anthology that will debut in June.