Nancy Kilpatrick - Interview and Contest

It is truly an honor to welcome Nancy Kilpatrick to Patricia's Vampire Notes. Her fiction is well known to vampire and horror fans. In March Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead, an anthology of fiction by Canadian authors was published by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. Nancy is the editor of this terrific collection which includes stories by such writers as Kelly Armstrong and Tanya Huff. [see contest info at end of interview]

Nancy, thanks so much for taking time from your busy schedule for this interview!

PVN: What besides the vampire theme bring the stories of Evolve together? What are the new Undead?

Nancy: The new undead take the vampire as we see him/her presented today in movies like Twilight, TV shows like True Blood, The Vampire Diaries and Being Human, and in any number of books. This is the vampire that is now living among us.  No one is saying anymore: “There’s no such thing as a vampire.”  The writers in Evolve start from there and imagine where the undead can go in the immediate future.  To find out how they envision the evolving vampire, you’ll have to read the book!

PVN: What is the process in putting together an anthology such as this one? For example: How do you choose the contributors and the stories.

Nancy: I edited last year a horror/dark fantasy anthology with David Morrell, Tesseracts Thirteen.  David doesn’t favor supernatural stories and as we made selections we both agreed on, that book veered away from the supernatural.  There were 7 vampire story submissions I thought were excellent which we didn’t use.  With David’s blessing, I managed to talk the publisher into doing another anthology, all-vampire, which I edited alone.  

The base of the anthology was those 7 stories, complimented by another 16 stories and a poem.  I found writers who I know do exceptional work and asked them to contribute.  I think readers will be impressed by the quality of the writing and also by the innovative ideas.

PVN: You first came to my attention when I read (and loved) three Power of the Blood books which have recently been reprinted.   Do you have plans to continue this series? Would you mind telling PVNs readers about this series?

Nancy:  Actually, there are four Power of the Blood books:  Child of the Night; Near Death; Reborn; Bloodlover.  I have a 5th book I would love to sell but the market is odd right now and selling a #5 in a series is difficult.  The original 4 were each published by several publishers, beginning with Pocket Books and culminating with Mosaic Press, which has reissued all four.  So yes, I have a 5th book.  It’s Michel’s story.  I have fans all over the world clamoring for this book but I need to find a publishing house that will take it on.

These novels are set in a world I created which presented more modern vampires, as in the last 100 years or less. There were 3 male vampires who, against all odds, became friends. The first three books are their stories and they appear in a major or minor way in one another’s books.  

The fourth book, Bloodlover, is a kind of flashback book; it begins in the 1960s.  One of the ‘old’ vampires in the original three books and who plays a pivotal part here and there is Julien, who turned out to be a very popular character.  Bloodlover is his story, and the story of Jeanette.  If you’ve read the three books, you’ll know who they are. If not, well, you can always read the three and find out. The novels are available on amazon and in bookstores.

PVN:  I would really like to know what attracts you to vampires?

Nancy: I’ve ALWAYS been attracted to vampires, since childhood. They were my favorite movies as a kid, and Horror of Dracula was my favorite movie as a teenager. I began collecting vampire books, movie posters, toys, etc. etc. and joined many vampire organizations about 30 years ago.  I have to say that of the nearly 2000 titles in my library, about 10% are mind-blowing, another 10% are utter crap, and the rest fall in the middle. When I wrote the Power of the Blood books, I knew what had been done before and nothing like what I’d written was out there. I believe the same is true with Evolve, that nothing like this is out there right now. The contributors to Evolve have peeked into the future and passed through my expertise on the subject; readers can see where the vampire can go in the next 5-10 years.
   
PVN: What were some of your favorite books as a young reader?

Nancy: The first book I read on my own was The Little Witch.  The school took our class to the big public library downtown to see how it worked and we were allowed to take out 2 books each.  Before that, books were bought for me, or were part of school work. I actually hunted down The Little Witch a few years ago and bought an early copy. I discovered it has a huge fan-base and had been reprinted for 40 years, it was so popular. The author worked in a school library, I believe, and this was her only novel, although I think she wrote a book or two of poetry. Anyway, I digress.  You can see from the title that I had an early interest in the supernatural. I’ve always loved the dark side in fiction. 

PVN: When and how did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

Nancy: I don’t think I decided.  I’ve never had a career plan, probably to my detriment. I’m one of those people who just went with the flow of her life and I flowed this way. The first novel I wrote was Bloodlover, in 1975.  Anne Rice came out with Interview with the Vampire then and I mistakenly thought the world would be open to my vampire novel.  I had to write three more books in the Power of the Blood world that were published first, beginning in the early 1990s.  Bloodlover was finally published in 2000.

When I wrote Bloodlover in 1975, it was on a typewriter and it took me 9 months.  I shared a house with 2 women.  One moved out. One went to Mexico for months with her boyfriend, and then returned.  I didn’t notice.  I was absorbed by working on this book, which back then was set in 2003, so it was futuristic. My obsession turned to utter disappointed when only 1 out of 35 publishers I wrote to even wanted to look at sample chapters.  And that publisher lost the manuscript and went out of business.  The world was, as they say, not ready.  For Anne Rice, yes. Not for me.  Not yet.  Timing is everything and it’s not something most writers have any control over.

I wrote a lot of short fiction and other novels. Basically, after such an initial sharp blow of rejection from so many publishers, I picked myself up off the floor and kept going. I’ve always seen life as this: you live, or die. If you get out of the womb, you have the ability to live. Life is precious and it’s worth the fight, even in the midst of despair.  If life is anything that can be narrowed down to one word, that word is: change. I always hang onto that thought: things will change. And they do.

PVN: Do you find the same fulfillment as an editor that you do as a writer?

Nancy: It’s a different fulfillment. Writing comes from one part of me, editing is from another. I like to edit books because it gives me a chance to form an overview of a subject. In the case of Evolve, that would be vampires and how they are evolving. I find it fun and exciting to receive stories that match my concept. Of course, all stories don’t, and they don’t get into my books. I’m pretty much a purist about that. But the stories that do make the cut, they thrill me. 

There’s a lot more work to editing than just accepting stories, but that part is one of the big kicks for me.

PVN: You recently traveled to the UK. Would you tell us a bit about the fun dark places you visited?

Nancy: One of my big interests is Danse Macabre artwork from the Middle Ages and England has some.  Not much, but then there’s not much left in the world.  Rosslyn Chapel just outside Edinburgh and the not-too-far-from-there Hexham Priory have some.  Norwich has a DM glass panel in St. Andrew’s Church.  I’m also a lover of cemeteries and the best ones (besides the 7 original garden cemeteries in London which I’ve seen) are the Glasgow Necropolis, modeled on Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and also an original garden cemetery in the UK, and Edinburgh’s creepy Greyfriar’s Cemetery. 

Besides those interests, I went to the Pitt Museum in Oxford, which has lovely real shrunken heads and about 300 skulls.  And the natural history museum adjacent has mummies, another interest of mine.

Of course, there is Whitby, the abbey ruins, which I’d not seen before.  And other abbey ruins in Glastonbury, Kirkstall Abbey in Leeds and Rievaulx Abbey near Helmsley.  I don’t think there is anything more beautiful than the ruins of Gothic arches.  Even the intact Gothic churches can’t compare.  Something about the beauty of the past, still standing, despite the erosion by man and by time...

One of the big adventures was visiting Temple Newsam, a huge estate just outside Leeds, which my ancestors owned.  I traced my family history a few years ago and, God, I would have been a Vicountess if all had gone well!

PVN: You taught a workshop on writing vampire fiction. What were some of the basic points you covered?

Nancy: There is basic writing info but a lot of it is to try to get writers to come up with a unique vampire. Too many writers are replicating Edward. Or Lestat. This becomes fan fic, really. Finding a new vampire, YOUR vampire, is the idea. That’s what sells. That’s what readers want to read.

PVN: Would you please tell us about Amarantha Knight, and her "younger sister" Desirée Knight?
 
Nancy:  Amarantha is my pen name for hardcore erotic fiction.  I edited 5 anthologies as Amarantha and wrote 7 novels in The Darker Passions series, which are pastiches of horror classics:  Dracula; Frankenstein; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; The Picture of Dorian Gray; The Fall of the House of Usher; Carmilla; The Pit and the Pendulum. These are extreme erotica with a lot of S&M.  Each sticks to the plot of the original story as much as is possible, retain the characters, and generally is meant to be a fun, erotic read, humorous and sexy.

Desirée, on the other hand, writes more mild erotica.  I’ve published two novels using this name: Mercedez: Day of the Dead (based on the Vivid Girl, Mercedez) and Hunted, for Orion Publishing in the UK.  Hunted features a character with a mobster boyfriend who sets her up when another mobster is killed, so she’s on the run, joins a diabolical circus of sex-crazed performers and gets involved, all while hiding from the Mafia.  The sex in these books is mainstream playfull, nothing too extreme.

PVN: What is the Tesseracts Series?

Nancy: Tesseracts is a series of mostly science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction anthologies.  Number 13 came up and the publisher thought it would be fun to do horror and dark fantasy stories, so this book is an anomaly.  He asked me to edit number 13 and I asked David Morrell to co-edit--most Tesseracts anthologies are co-edited.

    Tesseracts Thirteen: Chilling Tales of the Great White North
    Nancy Kilpatrick (Editor), David Morrell (Editor)
    EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing; 1 edition (July 30, 2009)

PVN: On your website you describe yourself as a Horror Writer. How do you define Horror Literature?

Nancy: Well, I had to say something, so that’s what came up!  It’s an easy way to classify myself.  But in fact I write a lot of different things. I’ve got 2 books in the Jason X world where the movie character Jason is in space, so those are science fiction.  I’ve published mystery stories, fantasy, erotica, you name it.  I will write anything that interests me.  My site was set up by my friend Caro Soles many years ago and I’m kind of inept with sites so I’ve learned how to update it which I don’t do nearly often enough.  I need to do a new site but that’s a learning curve I don’t have time for right now.  Maybe I can find a tech slave!

PVN: What projects are you working on now?

Nancy: I have two novels I’ve been writing for the last 2 years and they are going slowly because I’ve edited these two anthologies, I’ve promised and written dozens of short stories and had a few more writing commitments.  I also teach writing courses online for George Brown College so, depending on my course load, teaching can take up a lot of my time.  And from time to time I have private students I tutor, or private editorial work.  I’ve also written a few articles and been on a couple of committees in the last while. 

For me, it’s a bit frustrating because I’d love nothing more than to just sit down and finish these novels. But there is the reality of eating.  And I do love to travel—travelling feeds my soul like nothing else. Travelling, of course, requires money.  Then there are the mundane parts of life like food shopping and laundry.  I try to have a social life too and, oh yeah, exercise three days a week!  I’m busy all the time and when I can snatch time for working on the novels, I do, but sadly any writing time I find goes into the short stories I’ve promised. I have three on my schedule now, and another three in the distant future, as in the end of 2010 or 2011.

This is not how it used to be for me. I wrote the three Power of the Blood books (and other novels) when I was married, and my ex-husband was a writer too.  Living with someone, sharing expenses, having your significant other within reach—and a writer- simpatico SO--all this contributes to a life that allows for a lot of writing time and space, if that’s how you’re wired.  Now, I have to work harder to make money, to see my boyfriend, etc. etc. 

PVN: Where can readers find you on the web?

Nancy: Well, there’s my website, badly in need of an update: www.nancykilpatrick.com
 
And recently I took my faceless/profileless Facebook self and jumped in with a wall of my own.  There’s also an Evolve wall set up by the publisher, and I have a fan wall set up by my Italian fans on Facebook; I check all of that daily. 

PVN: Anything else you would like to add.

Nancy: I believe the publisher has extended the deadline for the lower prices for the special editions of Evolve.  There will be a trade paperback in stores as of April but the special limited editions are only on the Evolve website
 
There, you can find a trade paperback signed by all the authors and me, and the authors include Kelley Armstrong, and Tanya Huff, who contributed an original Vicki Nelson story.  (limited to what remains of the 300 printed)
 

You can also find a hardcover, unsigned. (limited to what remains of the 50 printed)
And the big special edition is a hardcover signed by everybody, wrapped in silk, and packaged in a wooden coffin!  Very cool!  (also only 50 printed, and I would imagine few remain).



[Note: The book is available for pre-order in the US now, but will be available in August.  Evolve publicist says, "We would love to see people having their own Evolve launch parties in vampire attire..."]

NOW FOR THE CONTEST

Nancy is offering one copy of Evolve to a US or Canadian resident.
 
Ask Nancy a question: One chance

Make a pertinent comment: One chance

You may also:

*Link to this contest on any of the social network sites, including Twitter, or your own web page. Let me know the url:  One chance for each link.
 
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*If your email is not associated with your ID, please put the address in your response.

This contest closes April 9, 2010