Interview with Nancy Kilpatrick Live from The World Horror Convention

Welcome Nancy. Thank you for joining us today live from The World Horror Convention.

It’s a pleasure to meet with you, Roxanne.

Q: You are at The World Horror Convention where you’ll be launching the worldwide release of EVOLVE: Vampire Stories of the New Undead tomorrow. That sounds so exciting. What will you be doing at the convention to promote the book?

We had a reading yesterday (Thursday) with 10 of the 23 authors reading who are attending the World Horror Convention. The cover artist is also here, and me. We’ve done a special invitation for convention goers which has an insert--vampire money! People will bring that to the launch tomorrow and get a discount on the book. Cold Tonnage is carrying the book in the UK and has the trade paperback and the signed-by-all trade paperback for sale in the dealers’ room. We also have wine and individual bags of candies & bats for those who come to the launch, and door prizes, for instance, a blood bag, bottles of Vampire Wine, and one of the special editions, a hardcover copy of EVOLVE signed by everybody, wrapped in silk and in a wood coffin, which is worth $250/£161. We’re also doing interviews with different media. It’s very exciting to be here with all this happening.


Q: I see a few author names that are familiar like Tanya Huff, she’s one of my favorite vampire authors, any others that have been writing about vamps for awhile?

Kelley Armstrong doesn’t write vampires specifically but she has filtered them into her writing. Gemma Files, Michael Skeet, Natasha Beaulieu, those are a few authors who have written about vampires. Tanya Huff’s fans will want to know that she contributed a brand new and original Vicky story in EVOLVE!


Q: What was the approach to vampires you were looking for when editing this book? Old myths reworked? New breeds? Classic approach with a new twist? Are all the stories similar in style or does each piece in Evolve have its own unique voice?

I wasn’t looking specifically for myths revamped, if you’ll excuse the pun, but I was open to those as well as classic ideas and new breeds of vampire, as long as they progressed, moving the vampire forward. My idea was to help the authors get familiar with classic vampires to gain a sense of what’s been done so far, and what is the current fad in the vampire sub-genre--which includes the Sookie Stackhouse books and the TV series True Blood, The Vampire Diaries on TV, Twilight (books and movies), Being Human, the terrific BBC series which has a vampire as a lead character, modern versions of the undead like those. EVOLVE isn’t a young adult book or romance per se, though you’ll find some, but I’m sure YAs would love it too. Every story has its own voice and style and the new approach to the vampire you’ll see in the stories is fascinating.


Q: Can you tell us a little more about Evolve, the stories and its authors?

The authors of the stories in EVOLVE worked very hard to try to figure out where the vampire is going in literature. Books are always ahead of film and TV. I wanted to create a path where the authors could push themselves to be inventive. If we had this in the past and we have this now, where do you think the evolutionary process will take the vampire in the immediate future? They did some amazing stories for this book addressing just that question.

EVOLVE tries to live up to the publisher’s mandate, which is to gather writing from around the country. We have a writer up in the Yukon. A writer who is Canadian but lives in New England. Stories are set all over the world, in Japan, in the Middle East. It’s an intriguing range geographically and the stories are certainly unusual and speak to the future.


Q: Is this your first visit to The World Horror Convention or do you often attend. Tell us a bit about your plans while you’re there.

I’ve been to many World Horror Conventions and was Writer Guest of Honor for the 2007 WHC.

At the 2010 WHC, I’ve been leading a workshop over two days on writing vampire fiction. I’m also been on panel discussions about vampires and about horror in general. And there’s the launch tomorrow. Besides all this, and the media interviews, I’m doing some private critiques for people, attending the Bram Stoker Awards banquet tomorrow night, the autographing session tonight, and a bunch of other unusual events, like the ghost walk, an afternoon tea and a few parties. It’s an action-packed 4 days and as I’m flying home on Monday, I expect I’ll be asleep for the entire time on the plane!


Q: Do you attend a lot of horror conventions, events?

I used to attend more conventions and events. I’ve been to Horrorfind Weekend in Baltimore as a Writer Guest of Honor, and conventions in France and Chicago as a GOH. I’ve also been an editor GOH in Arizona. I’ve attended Festival of Fear run by Rue Morgue Magazine as a GOH and again last year to be on the vampire panel. I’ve also been to quite a few World Horror Conventions, a couple of Worldcons, which are mainly science fiction and fantasy with a touch of horror tossed in, and some goth conventions like Conversion and Celebration of the Undead. I regularly attend Word on the Street in Toronto and have been to other book fairs. I will probably be at the BEA in NY this May.


Q: You are described as Canada’s “literary queen of the undead”, you have numerous books, stories, and awards associated with vampires and other creatures of horror- what pushed you into writing and editing horror?

I’ve been a big horror fan since childhood. The first book I read (of my own selection in a library) was The Little Witch. I used to watch the old b&w movies on late night TV whenever I was allowed to stay up that late. All through childhood and teen years and then into adulthood I loved horror films and books. It was natural for me to write horror and out of my writing came editing. But, even though I say it was natural, initially I believed my writing should be literary. My frist novel was a kind of lit/commercial book loosely based on my life (fictionalized). I had a high-powered agent but the novel didn’t sell. It’s just as well, really. During that time, I ended up writing a short story that was a runner up in a major newspaper contest and it was a kind of implied-abusive-childhood story, literary, but as I reread it in the newspaper where it was printed I realized that this was a horror story and so I revised it as such, submitted it around, and “Root Cellar” has been published several times, including in a Year’s Best collection. At that point I knew that my natural inclination to write darkly, and particularly to write in the horror and dark fantasy genres, had won the brief internal battle.


Q: Have you always been attracted to “the dark side”?

I have. One can look at a childhood and see a draw, I think. In my case, there was much darkness in my household and that’s given me a bleak approach to writing. Recently I was at Sleuthfest, a mystery convention in Florida, and David Morrell was a GOH. David and I co-edited Tesseracts Thirteen, a horror/dark fantasy anthology. During David’s luncheon speech, he said that he believes that everyone has a dominant emotion in their life and that writers need to work with that dominant emotion. I completely agree with that statement. I think that emotion is archetypal for an individual. Consequently, there’s a positive and a negative side because archetypes have both. You can’t allow yourself to get sucked down by the negative and an art form is an ideal way to work with it that is ‘safe’, in that the form siphons the emotion out of you (temporarily) and puts it onto the page through craft. Of course, some writers are overwhelmed by the negativity of their dominant emotion. The poet Sylvia Plath is, sadly, a perfect example.


Q: What was your first encounter with the paranormal that made you fall for it? Was it a certain movie or a book? Perhaps an experience?

I saw a witch when I was a child. I was in the bed of my grandparents. I slept with them sometimes. My grandmother was a saint, so it wasn’t reflecting her. Anyway, I was alone in their big bed, awake, looking out the windows. They had two windows side by side. It was very dark out. I saw a witch fly by on a broom. Black cape, pointed hat, the whole enchilada. She just flew past slowly and looked in the windows at me, as if acknowledging me. I wasn’t afraid at all but I thought, so witches DO exist.

I have had a few paranormal experiences in my life. For instance, I will suddenly, out of the blue, start thinking of someone I haven’t thought of in years and years. Then, usually within a month, often less, I find out they died recently. The night my mother died (I was 16) I was staying with my aunt’s family and my cousin and I were lying in bed playing word games as kids do. The phone rang and instantly I knew my mother had died. She wasn’t sick, it wasn’t expected. I just knew. But that’s not so unusual, I think.

One of the more intriguing experiences I’ve had I wrote about and have published in a couple of books. My ex-husband’s mother was dying and he’d gone to the town she lived in to be with her. One night, I was alone in our apartment in the city, writing a ghost story. Behind me in my office were tall bookshelves that went up to the extremely high ceiling. On the top shelf was a Raggedy Anne doll a friend had given me years before and that doll had sat there perfectly happily (and undusted) for at least two years. Gradually, I began to feel tense and afraid and normally I do not feel this when writing, even the creepiest stories. All of a sudden I heard a huge crash behind me and jumped a mile. Raggedy Ann had fallen onto a table of sea shells, head first, by the look of her position. Quickly I checked the time because I felt this event was significant. The next morning I talked with my husband and he told me that the night before his mother had fallen into a coma. I asked if he knew when and he knew the exact time because the home nurse had recorded it. The time was the same time I had noted for Raggedy Anne’s fall. By the way, his mother’s name was Anne.


Q: Why did you go beyond being just a writer and move into editing? Do you plan to continue being both a writer and editor?

I wanted to try editing to see how I’d be good at it and also to see if I liked it. I’ve been told I have a good eye.

I’d written what ended up to be seven erotic horror novels, pastiches really, humorous and sexy, based on horror classics, like Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, etc. I approached that publisher, Masquerade Books in NY, and suggested I edit an erotic vampire anthology. They gave me a contract for Love Bites. I then did another 4 anthologies for them and was able to include some of the biggest names in the horror field. I enjoyed doing those books. I’ve also co-edited two major anthologies with Thomas Roche and one with Nancy Holder, plus the previously mentioned Tesseracts with David Morrell, and now Evolve alone. Editing uses a different part of the brain than writing does. I thoroughly enjoy reading the work of other people and bringing stories together to meet a vision. I hope to edit more books, perhaps even another EVOLVE.

But I’m also writing. In the last two years I’ve written and published about fifteen short stories. I’ve also been writing two new novels. Sadly, my time for writing is scarce now, as I do a lot of other things, like teach, and edit! But I’ll have more time soon and can move the novels along.


Q: Have you always been a major vampire fan or has the new wave of vampire popularity found you revisiting an old love?

I’ve always been a vampire fan, from the early Hollywood movies with Bela Lugosi and Gloria Holden, through Christopher Lee as Dracula, and all the Hammer films, from the avant garde first films by Murnau and Dreyer to the modern and sexy vampires that dress in stylish black leather and utilize martial arts. I’ve searched out books for many years and have close to 2000 vampire titles in my library, most fiction. I was totally into vampires in the 1980s and early 1990s and still am, but am not as much of a completist as I once was with books, films, posters, magazines, etc.

I’m always amazed when people think that Anne Rice started vampires. Not true by a mile. There is a long and rich literary history in English but also in other languages. Also, the mythology is old, and spans the world. Almost every culture has a myth about vampires and the earliest recorded record of the undead is in the Epic of Gilgamesh, 2500 BC, which makes the vampire at least 4,500 years old.


Q: Where do you see the vampire going from here? Will the popularity last or will vampires once again be forced into darkness until years, perhaps decades from now “new blood” brings them back into the spotlight once again?

I think we’re good for another few years with the current spate of books/TV/films. By then the Twilight movies will be finished on screen and the True Blood series might be waning the way a TV series does after 4 or 5 years. The vampire has ebbed and flowed quite a bit and I think we can expect that there will be a shift to something new. To get a hint of that, readers should check out EVOLVE!

www.vampires-evolve.com

Well thank you for joining us today and good luck with the international launch of Evolve at The World Horror Convention. Enjoy your time there.

Thanks for having me, Roxanne!