Interview & Giveaway with Nancy Holzner

Nancy Holzner Intro:

Hello everyone!  LITERAL ADDICTION and Book Monster Reviews are very happy to welcome Nancy Holzner to the site today!  

Nancy has a nice bio on her website so we thought we’d borrow it for today’s Event:

“Nancy Holzner grew up in western Massachusetts with her nose stuck in a book. This meant that she tended to walk into things, wore glasses before she was out of elementary school, and forced her parents to institute a “no reading at the dinner table” rule. It was probably inevitable that she majored in English in college and then, because there were still a lot of books she wanted to read, continued her studies long enough to earn a masters degree and a PhD.

She began her career as a medievalist, then jumped off the tenure track to try some other things. Besides teaching English and philosophy, she’s worked as a technical writer, freelance editor and instructional designer, college admissions counselor, and corporate trainer. Most of her nonfiction books are published under the name Nancy Conner.

Nancy lives in upstate New York with her husband Steve, where they both work from home without getting on each other’s nerves. She enjoys visiting local wineries and listening obsessively to opera. There are still a lot of books she wants to read.”

Nancy’s the proud creator of the DEADTOWN series. 

DEADTOWN has 4 installments – “Deadtown”, “Hellforged”, “Bloodstone” and “Darklands”, which will be released on 7/31/12. 

For those of you that haven’t heard about Nancy’s DEADTOWN series yet, here are the blurbs to get you up to speed:

“Deadtown”, Book #1:

If you were undead, you'd be home by now...

They call it Deadtown: the city's quarantined section for its inhuman and undead residents. Most humans stay far from its borders-but Victory Vaughn, Boston's only professional demon slayer, isn't exactly human.


 “Hellforged”, Book #2:

A demon is stalking Vicky's dreams-just as several of Deadtown's zombies are viciously attacked and become really dead. And when Vicky realizes she is the only connection between the victims, she suspects that the demon is somehow working through her dreams to become Deadtown's living nightmare.


 “Bloodstone”, Book #3:

Boston’s diverse South End is known for its architecture and great restaurants, not its body count. So when mutilated human corpses begin turning up in the area, the entire city takes notice. The killer—dubbed the South End Reaper—uses a curved blade for his grisly work. And even though there’s no real evidence pointing to a paranormal culprit, the deaths are straining the already-tense relations between Boston’s human and inhuman residents.

As the bodies pile up, Vicky, her formidable aunt Mab, and her werewolf boyfriend Kane investigate, only to find that the creature behind the carnage is after something much more than blood…

 “Darklands”, Book #4:

COMING 7/31/12

They call it Deadtown: the city’s quarantined section for its inhuman and undead residents. Most humans stay far from its border—but Victory Vaughn, Boston’s only professional demon slayer, isn’t exactly human…

Boston’s demons have been disappearing, and Vicky’s clients are canceling left and right. While fewer demons might seem like a good thing, Vicky suspects foul play. A missing Celtic cauldron from Harvard’s Peabody museum leads her to an unwelcome conclusion: Pryce, her demi-demon cousin and bitter enemy, is trying to regain his full powers.

But Pryce isn’t alone. He’s conjured another, darker villain from Vicky’s past. To stop them from destroying everything she loves, she’ll have to face her own worst fear—in the realm of the dead itself.

They sound wonderful, right!!?  Before you go and hunt them down from your favorite bookseller, let’s learn some more about Nancy and her books.

LITERAL ADDICTION/Book Monster Reviews:  Hi Nancy!  We’re very happy to have you here today and are thrilled to let the world know about your DEADTOWN series.  Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with us.

NANCY: Thank you for inviting me! I'm very happy to be here.

LITERAL ADDICTION/Book Monster Reviews:  We always start by getting to know our guest author a little bit better.

Q1): Can you tell us 3 things about yourself (no matter how random) that we couldn’t find out easily on the Internet?

NANCY: My middle name is Lynne (which is also the middle name I gave my daughter). Both sides of my family are New Englanders going back to the 1600s. I have an irrational (and yet to my mind, perfectly sensible) fear of cable cars.

Q2):  What are 3 things that always make you smile?

NANCY: A phone call from my daughter. A chilled glass of rose on a hot summer day. The season's first snow flurry.

Q3):  If you could spend the day with anyone – alive, dead, fictional, etc – who would you want to spend it with and why?

NANCY: I would have LOVED to have been there on the night that Percy and Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori tried to out-scare each other with their horror stories in Switzerland. Such fascinating, creative people, and FRANKENSTEIN is one of my all-time favorite novels.


Q4):  What do you enjoy doing when you’re not writing or taking care of other author business?

NANCY: Sitting in front of a computer all the time makes me want to move around, so I try to take a walk every day. I'm also an opera fanatic, so I'm often listening to, watching, or arguing about opera. (My favorite composers are Verdi and Mozart.) I can't listen to opera while I write, because the music demands attention.

Q5):  How has your road to publication been so far?

NANCY: It's been a good ride. My agent sold the first novel I completed, a mystery called PEACE, LOVE, AND MURDER, to a small press. Then we sold the first two books in my Deadtown series. I recently signed a contract for books 5 and 6 I love urban fantasy, and I'm really enjoying writing Vicky's stories.

Q6):  Are there any specific authors or titles that you feel have inspired you to become the writer you are today?

NANCY: I began my career as an English professor, and I like to think I learned something from each book I've read—whether I loved it, hated it, or was bored to tears by it. I initially got excited about urban fantasy when a friend recommended Laurell Hamilton's first Anita Blake novel, Guilty Pleasures. My excitement built as I discovered Kim Harrison's Hollows series,followed by works by Kelley Armstong and Jim Butcher. These authors all made me want to try my own hand at the genre.

Q7):  What are the best and worst parts of writing for you?

NANCY: For me, the biggest battle is getting started, and I fight it every day. In the mornings, I tend to want to take “a few minutes” to read the news before I get started with writing, but if I let myself do this the day is half gone by the time I get down to business.

The best part is when the writing is going well and I'm completely immersed in the story. After I finish the scene, I look up, blinking and not quite sure where I am, because what I just wrote is so real.

Q8):  What is a typical writing day like for you?  Do you have a routine that you follow, specific things that you have to have with you to get the creative juices flowing, unique writing quirks you must adhere to, etc?

NANCY: Coffee is essential. As I said above, if I go on the Internet in the morning, I'm in trouble, so I make myself wait to check the email and scan the headlines. If I get past that hurdle (and I'm not always successful), I usually have a good writing day. Occasionally, if I'm having trouble focusing, I'll take out a notebook (the old-fashioned kind, with paper) and write several pages longhand. For me, the trick is letting myself get into the world of my story. When I can do that without distractions, I'm good to go.

I'm also lucky to have my own office in my house. I can go in there, close the door, and write without interruption for several hours in the morning. As Virginia Woolf knew, that's essential to a writer.

Q9):  What type of scenes (dialogue, action, sex, etc) do you enjoy writing the most and why?

NANCY: I love writing dialogue, which gives me a toehold in a new scene. If a scene is starting slowly for me, I try writing just the dialogue. Then, I go back and layer in other details—what the setting looks like, what characters are thinking and doing as they speak. For some reason, once I can hear the characters talking, the rest of the scene becomes clear to me.

Q10):  Was there any specific inspiration behind the creation of the DEADTOWN series?

NANCY: I used to follow an agent's blog, and sometimes she would post things that from writers' query letters that were turn-offs to her. One of these turn-offs was the phrase “So-and-so wrestles with his own personal demons.” She didn't like that phrase because, really, who'd wrestle with your personal demons besides you? When I saw that question, I thought, “Hmmm...” And Vicky was born.

Q11):  How many books do you have planned for the series?

NANCY: I currently have six books under contract with Ace. Book 6 will complete the story arc that began with DEADTOWN, so I might end the series there. If readers want more, though, I love to ask, “So what happens next?”

I'd also like to write a DEADTOWN prequel that tells the story of Boston's zombie plague. That project would be novella length (as opposed to a full-length novel) and independently published, so I've created a project on Kickstarter for it.

Q12):  What were some of the challenges in bringing the series to life?

NANCY: It took me a while to decide on the mythology I wanted to use for Vicky's background. I knew that I wanted her to be something other than a run-of-the-mill werewolf or vampire, and I searched for several weeks for a good fit. When I hit upon The Mabinogi, a medieval collection of Welsh myths and legends with its tale of the shapeshifters Ceridwen and Gwion Bach, I knew I'd found what I was looking for.

Q13):  What are you the most proud of with regards to your career thus far?

NANCY: I'm very proud to be writing a series for a publisher (Ace) whose books I love to read. It's a dream come true. I'm also proud to have earned a Ph.D. in English from Brown University. It was a lot of work, but I loved it. Graduate school represented some of the best years of my life.

Q14):  What’s up next for Nancy Holzner?  What do you have going on in the next couple months that your readers might be interested in?

NANCY: Well, there's my Kickstarter project, TALES FROM DEADTOWN. If my project is funded, I'll write the Deadtown prequel and package it with several short stories set in Deadtown's world. One of the fun things about the project is that supporters will have some input into what I write. I'm encouraging questions they'd like answered about Deadtown's history, for example. In addition, I'll be writing some additional short stories and soliciting ideas from supporters about which characters they'd like featured or storylines they'd like me to pursue.

Q15):  Is there anything special that you’d like to say to your readers while we have you here today?

NANCY: Just THANK YOU for reading my books! It's both thrilling and humbling to know that readers enjoy my novels.

LITERAL ADDICTION/Book Monster Reviews:  Nancy, thank you so much again for being with us today.  We’re very happy to help you promote and celebrate the release of “Darklands” and hope that we can turn some new readers on to your DEADTOWN series.  We’d love to have you back to promote your next big release if you’d be interested.

NANCY: Thank you so much! I'd love to return. Book 5 in the series (the working title is HELLHOUND, but of course that may change) will be out next year.

If you want to keep up with Nancy, you can find her here:

Website:  http://nancyholzner.wordpress.com/ 

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/#!/NancyHolznerBooks 

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/#!/search/users/nancy%20holzner

GoodReads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2184228.Nancy_Holzner

Nancy is graciously offering up a signed copy of any book in my Deadtown series (winner's choice) to a winner from LITERAL ADDICTION and a winner from Book Monster Reviews. 

To Enter, fill out the Rafflecopter widget for Nancy’s Event, follow the directions, take action, and mark as ‘Done’.

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GOOD LUCK!!!

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