An accomplished and celebrated author and editor, Nancy Kilpatrick has worked in the genre offering numerous examples with her acclaimed novels and stories as well as offering plenty of anthology edits highlighting the work of others. Now, in honor of Women in Horror Month, I talk with her about her early interest in writing, her experiences as an editor and writing her own novels.
Me: Hello and thank you for taking the time to do this.
Nancy Kilpatrick: My pleasure, Don!
Me: First off, when did you get into horror in general?
NK: My early grade school did a trip to the big, beautiful library in downtown Philadelphia. We were shown around and the fearsome Dewey Decimal System was explained. We were permitted to select on our own one book to borrow. I found The Little Witch by Anna Elizabeth Bennett. I was enamored.
Me: Were you into genre films growing up? What films specifically got you into watching horror movies?
NK: I loved the Saturday Night Horror Movies which for a long time I was too young to stay up and watch on a regular basis, so they were an occasional treat. But when I hit the full tilt age, I was locked into those movies. Roland (John Zacherle) hosted Shock Theater in Philadelphia before the show moved to New York. My favorites were the vampire movies, but I have fond memories of going to the drive-in with my aunt to see Tarantula; Them; The Mole People, etc. Later, I LOVED The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price and Romero's Night of the Living Dead, both deliciously terrifying. I also adored TV shows like The Twilight Zone for the sheer creepiness--plus the excellent writing!
Me: Who were some of your favorite writers growing up? Do you try to take influences from their style with your own voice in your work?
NK: In my youth in the horror field, it was classic writers. Shirley Jackson, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, and more; all the classics, really. Over the years I've ended up with a library of vampire books, mostly novels, some non-fiction, some film books, to the tune of 2,500+ volumes. I ceased being a completist more than a decade ago and now just buy a vampire novel with a plot and writing style that intrigues me. Previously, it was ANYTHING vampire.
But, I've always been an avid reader of everything I could get my hands on so I didn't just read in the horror field. I went through a number of phases, like devouring Russian (classic) literature, Existentialists novels and essays, everything and anything. I had a huge Franz Kafka addiction and read every shopping list the man wrote. I also loved J.D. Salinger and read all his work, tracking down stories that didn't make it into his books. My favorite female authors were Mary Shelley (Frankenstein, naturally); Angela Carter (particularly her werewolf stories and the film based on those) and for a long time and still, Shirley Jackson. I read everything Jackson and saw films based on her work. Jackson in particular was a genius at what is deemed Weird Fiction. My favorite Jackson story remains "The Lovely House". I'm still in awe of the most subtle creepiness that runs through that tale.
I think all the reading I've done has allowed me to absorb by osmosis--if I can use an archaic term--what writing is about, how it's done, the various styles of the authors I've loved. I've even learned from the bad books I've read. None of this was conscious. I tend to operate by absorption--kind of like a vampire! lol
Me: What was the starting point to become a writer? Were you always into writing growing up?
NK: My grandfather gave me a portable (manual) typewriter when I was a child. Using the hunt and peck system, I cranked out small poems and story fragments and ultimately ended up writing essays when I hit my teens, moral commentary really, what young people often write. I've always read and I've always written from the point where I could understand written language which allowed me to immerse myself in other worlds and ignited a desire to create worlds myself.
Me: What is your writing process? How do you stay focused on writing?
NK: I have a lot of self-discipline and always have had so I don't need a schedule to drive production. Also, I'm an emotional writer, meaning, feelings propel my writing and I feel my way through stories for the most part. I daydream a lot and then sit down and write something that may or may not directly relate to that daydream or night dream or nightmare! I write when the mood swells and that, fortunately, is often. It works for me, though that's not common, I think. It's the discipline that assures me I'll finish most projects, whether commissioned or ones I'm doing on-spec. Or even just writing for the total pleasure of writing, which is simply for my own enjoyment.
Me: Having edited various anthologies in your career, what skills do you look for that helps writers for their future projects? Do you enjoy putting these together more or sitting down for an original story?
NK: I have phases and at points enjoy editing anthos more and at other points, I am more engaged by my own writing. Occasionally, I work on both at the same time.
When I've edited anthologies, I haven't been looking for skills for future projects for the writers who submit work. I tend to invite some people and leave spaces for the work of others that are not known writers but maybe I've read something they've written or, they just submit a story cold turkey. I have to a) love a story to put it in an antho, and b) it has to fit. Anthologies often have themes and as stories come in that I adore and accept for the book, the theme is re-shaped and expanded upon. I might have begun with an idea, but the theme might encompass a lot of different angles that open the theme into related but unanticipated directions.
Me: What is the general process for getting involved in these projects?
NK: I don't think I have one process since various books and stories have different routes. For example, regarding my own writing, I've written two short stories that were dreams. One is "Memories of el Dia de Los Muertos". I dreamed it, got up and wrote it. I think I might have changed three or four words in the editing process. It's about Day of the Dead as celebrated in Mexico. I may have read or heard something of that holiday, I don't know, but at the time of the dream and the story, I didn't believe I had run across this before. That story has been published several times. I've had teachers from Mexico and Spanish teachers in the U.S. use the story in their classrooms because they felt it depicted the holiday very well, and also because it's horror and young people like horror stories. Years later, I went to Mexico to actually experience the festivities myself.
That's one example. Another is my current novel series which came out of a 1 month trip alone in Florida to get some warmth one winter about fifteen years ago. I took my laptop with me and just started writing without a clue where I was going. I was writing just for fun. 100,000 words later, I had the first draft of a novel. By the end of that month, I also had a 60,000 word draft of a related novel, and 40,000 words of another related novel. I had no idea I was going to write these multi-genre-crossover vampire novels. I called them 'The Unpublishables' on Facebook, and people said, well, why not publish them? So, I jumped into the editing stage, knocked out many of those genres, leaving the essence of what I wanted to write intact. I felt my way as I went, as per usual.
If you're asking about editing anthologies, I always pitch an idea to an editor at a major publishing house who, if they like the idea, will sell it in-house. If I pitch to a smaller independent publisher, the editor/publisher will buy it. Luck is often with me. For example, Thomas Roche and I wanted to co-edit an antho and came up with a theme that was something I was very interested in and which also engaged him--Gargoyles. I pitched the idea to Ginjer Buchannan when she was a senior editor at Ace/Berkley and it turned out she was also a huge fan of gargoyles. We were contracted and then approached authors whose work we knew and loved and the writers who accepted the invitation were really excited about penning a tale for In the Shadow of the Gargoyle.
I'd say every book I've written or edited and every short story and comic and graphic novel I'm responsible for has come about differently. There's no real pattern, it's being adaptable, flowing with the current cultural stream in publishing (which, I admit, is not, for me, a conscious awareness, but more a subconscious knowledge), and presenting an idea that has become numinous for me.
Me: How did you settle on the plot for your novel series Power of the Blood? Did the concept change over the course of writing or did you find yourself staying true to the original outline you had planned?
NK: Power of the Blood wasn't a series to begin with so I had no plan. It was one novel, published by Pocket Books. I had 2 other vampire novels I'd written. Characters did appear in each other's stories but I didn't yet twig to the idea they were series-related as I then understood what a series entails, which was: a main character(s) that stars in each of the books. That's not what I was doing. My stories are related, different main characters in each book, while the other characters from other books appear to a greater or lesser extent in the main characters' stories.
Later, when the second vampire novel was out, and then a third I was asked to write, I was stitching them together, realizing they were, in fact, a series with an escalating overarching plot. Eventually, a fourth book fit the series as a flashback, with two of the important characters who had appeared in each of the other three novels. Bloodlover had actually been written years before the others. So, series? No plan there, just strangely the four novels hung together 'of a piece'.
Me: Was there any part of you injected into the characters?
NK: I think bits of me are in every character and every plot, not directly, just an amalgam of everything I've experienced in my life so far being a kind of subconscious ideas-well from which to draw. But, there are things I myself have not done, places I've not seen, etc, but I've run across these, and I've researched from the kernels I know from experience.
Me: Once it was finally written, what was the process to having it published?
NK: Actually, it's like a lot of my life in general and also my career as a writer. Unanticipated. Fluky. Chaotic.
I had a story in an antho Pocket Books was publishing and they sent around galleys for proofing. At that time, you could actually speak to an editor at a major house and I was instructed to call in corrections if there were just a few. I spoke with the editor, Rebecca Todd, and while I had her on the line, mentioned Near Death (because much of the story is set in NYC and in those days, that was considered a plus). She connected me with an editor who acquired horror novels. That woman said to send the manuscript to her. This is back in the day of photocopying 300+ pages, mailing at great expense, including return postage--email is a financial windfall for writers! Months went by with no word, so I called the acquiring editor, only to discover from the receptionist that she had left the company. The man who took over from her said he hadn't seen the manuscript. He searched but couldn't find it and asked me to re-send to him. I did. More time passed. Finally, I called...he, too, had left the building, as it were. I called Rebecca and she was embarrassed for the company and asked me to send it yet again, to her, and she promised to read it right away. She got back to me within a week and said she loved the story and wanted to buy it. This sounds cheerful and relatively easy, though annoyingly long and frustratingly convoluted, but you have to remember it's not the first book I tied to publish, and rarely has the publication of any novel been straightforward.
Fifteen years earlier, my first vampire manuscript (which eventually became book four in the Power of the Blood series), well,...here's the story of my first effort marketing a novel.
I sent letters to 35 publishing houses in NYC offering sample chapters. 34 said they didn't even want to see that much. And you have to realize this was around the time of Interview With the Vampire. Silly me, thinking that the world of publishing would be open to more vampire novels. It was, eventually, after IWTV became a smash hit. But, not yet.
Publisher number 35 was Manor Books (defunct now), and they wanted the entire manuscript. This was a big deal for me at the time. I was a young, hopeful, a wide-eyed writer, anticipating an open world of publishing. Anyway, two years later, without a word from them, I swallowed my terror and phoned. No one knew anything about my manuscript. And no one wanted to see it. That was depressing. So much about publishing was and is depressing. Writing is not. Publishing your writing too-often is.
Me: How did you separate yourself from this series and your new novel series Thrones of Blood? Did the two styles present any challenges to your writing skills?
NK: The two series are unalike. Different tone, different plots, different sensibilities. I think my perspective on vampires evolved over the years. After all, I did read 2,500 books on the subject! And, of course, both publishing and society have shifted focus.
I call Thrones of Blood "Vampire Novels for Adults" because this is adult material. It's not Power of the Blood. It's not Twilight either.
I think I'm like a lot of writers in that we enjoy challenges. Readers like series and often that means the same characters in a different plot that is in the same genre or sub-genre. Think about Jason, Freddie, Michael, series-killers all. They are always in the story, books and movies, and the plot revolves around them doing what they do best, which is slashing. There are a multitude of examples of the same genres, same characters, different plots. Writers can get stuck on that particular hamster wheel. I know writers who have bemoaned the fact that they are caught in a successful series because it's all that readers want from them and all that publishers want to buy. As a reader, I understand this. For example, I like to read mysteries, and I like series because the same main character(s) is solving another mystery or crime. They are familiar, I get to know them, and I see the character(s) evolve a bit over the series. That's a reader's perspective. But for the writer, being boxed in can become deadly boring and you can see that in the later books of some long series, the tired novels.
I write limited novel series: 4 Power of the Blood; 2 Jason X; 7 Darker Passions; 6 Thrones of Blood.
IMO, creativity is freewheeling, an adventure. Trying to tame it too much moves away from the exciting archetypal energy that inspired the writer in the first place to start writing about this character(s) and turns them into a stereotype. I'm very happy with Thrones of Blood because it has put me on a different path that feels innovative.
Me: What else are you working on that you'd like to share with our readers?
NK: Hopefully book six in the Thrones of Blood world will be the end. I'm working on that now. I have two major overarching plots to tie up and if I can't do it in this book, there might be a book 7. Actually, I started with the idea of 7 novels. We shall see.
The other project I'm working on I'm just finishing. This SF/H novel has been a few years in the making because there are so many discoveries in space that frequently I need to change parts of the story, which affect other parts of the story. It's a tad more difficult to write about space now. When Bradbury wrote about Mars, no one and nothing from Earth had been there. Now, we send probes and research vehicles all over space, even outside our galaxy recently, and our telescopes and sound equipment can detect what's where and give us a hint as to what it's all about. Unfortunately for me, all this current space exploration involves discoveries that force what feels like constant revisions. What is discovered today can't be discovered 70 years in the future--no reader will buy that.
Me: Lastly, being that this is Women in Horror Month, what special message do you have for any women out there looking to join the industry in any capacity? Thank you again for your time!
NK: Publishing has changed remarkably over the last two decades. I'm from the era of traditional publishing, though I've recently dabbled in self-publishing two novellas plus a book combining those. In the past, I just had to write and then do a bit of promo work when the book came out, like show up at a bookstore where a signing had been arranged. Clearly, today writers need to wear many hats. Self-publishing involves everything that a trad publisher did. But, it's a new generation of writers who are used to this. I think they pretty well know what to do and how to do it. But whether you want to self-publish or find a publisher for your work, or do a combination, I will say this: if you want a career as a writer (as opposed to writing as a hobbyist), you will need to work hard at it and not be afraid of the negatives you might face (and there will be negatives). Use those to learn and propel yourself forward.
The other thing I strongly suggest is this: Read! Everything! See what writers have written before you came along. If you're specializing, know your genre and/or subgenre. Everything in life is adding to the store of what already exists and taking it just a tiny bit further than it has gone before. You can do that! But in order to do that, you need to know the history so you can write something innovative. That, to me, is holding your work and yourself in high esteem as you contribute to literature as a whole.
To follow her work, check out her official site:
This interview ran as part of our Women in Horror Month celebrations. Click the banner below to check out all of our reviews and interviews about the occasion:
Comments
Post a Comment