Holly Black
About Author
Holly Black is the author of bestselling contemporary fantasy books for children and teens. Some of her titles include The Spiderwick Chronicles and the Curse Workers series.
She has been a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award, a finalist for an Eisner Award, and the recipient of the Andre Norton Award.
She currently lives in New England with her husband, Theo, in a house with a secret door.
Author link
Interview
THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN
INDIGO
SEPTEMBER 2013
Holly Black, author of the Spiderwick Chronicles series as well as the Modern Faerie Tale series and other books for children and teenagers, has now turned to vampires with her own vampire book, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown.
The novel is set in a world not unlike our own, except that here, vampires have made a come-back. Having reached an uneasy truce with ordinary humans, vampires now live in 'Coldtowns', parts of cities that have been isolated from other communities. But every now and again, that truce fails....
We asked Holly Black why she wanted to visit this realm, and some of the ideas behind The Coldest Girl in Coldtown.
Q: Why did you want to write your own 'vampire' book?
A: For me, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a love letter to all the vampire books I obsessed over growing up.
I was a little intimidated to write one, though, since there have been so many great vampire books and so many beloved vampire books that it's hard to know if my story will add to the conversation. But I decided that I really wanted to write the book, so I was going to do it.
Q: Was it all plotted before you started or did the characters take you along?
A: A little bit of both. Usually, I start with a character, a premise and an image that I think of as the heart of the story, something that I want the entire work to evoke. From there, it's about finding the path that feels right.
I do plan, but sometimes - okay, a lot of times - those plans go awry and I have to come up with new and better stuff. I revise a lot, so by the time I get to the end of a first draft, I've been through the beginning many, many times.
Q: If you met a vampire, would you want it to be Gavriel?
A: If I had to meet a vampire, Gavriel would certainly be a convenient one to meet since I could thoroughly freak him out with my knowledge of every single thing that's ever happened to him in his entire life....
Q: How important for you is finding the right name for a character?
A: Gavriel's name is a varient of Gabriel. Coming up with the exactly right name is one of the difficult things about starting a new book. I can't write much until the names are right. It seems like such a small thing to be tripped up by, but it really does bother me until I have them. Once I do, though, I feel like I immediately understand the characters better.
Q: Was your lead character, Tana, inspired by the heroines of some of the vampire stories you'd read?
A: With Tana, I thought a lot about the way that boys in teen books, especially the romantic leads, often have these tragic backstories that make them a little broken and a little hard. I wanted to give a story like that to Tana.
When Tana was a little kid, her mother was bitten and went Cold. Not knowing what else to do, Tana's father locked his wife in the basement to try and wait out the infection. If she had no human blood for 88 days, Tana's mother wouldn't turn into a vampire. She'd be fine. But 88 days is a long time. Tana's mother would call up to Tana through cracks in the door, pleading to be released, promising she was all better, crying and begging and screaming. Finally, Tana -- who was a little kid at the time -- opened the door. She was attacked by her mother and nearly died; her mother died too, killed by the father before she could become a vampire.
Now, as a teenager, Tana is haunted by mother's death and she carries the burden of her guilt with her. It's made her into a person who is a little bit self-destructive, but also unwilling to let anyone else die when she can save them. That made for a really interesting character and one that I loved tormenting.
Q: How long did it take to set up this world and the Coldtowns?
A: Because I wrote a [short] story set in this world before, I knew a lot about how it worked going into the novel, but there were lots of things I elided in the story that I couldn't elide in a longer work. It took me a little over a year to write the book and I was fiddling with details up unto the last moment.
Q: The story pits 'modern' vampires against the 'old school' vampires, why did you want to present both our notions of vampire - legendary and contemporary?
A: My mandate for the Coldest Girl in Coldtown was to try and stuff it as full of all the things I love, so having both modern and old school vampires was part of that.
But also I wanted both young and old vampire, because I think the tension between the two groups is really interesting. There are these old vampires, who have power, but not nearly as much power as they think they do, and certainly not as much power as they once did. And there are these young vampires who are reinventing what vampirism means, but who are naive about the consequences of eternal life and eternal hunger.
The young vampires are rule breakers, sometimes without knowing there were rules in the first place. The old vampires want things to go back to the way they were, without realizing that that will never happen.
Q: Through the twins Winter and Midnight, who are obsessed with the images they see from Coldtown, you explore our ideas of fame and celebrity. Do you see our current celeb culture as very destructive?
A: I think Midnight and Winter are drawn to Coldtown because it's dangerous. While they have convinced themselves it won't be as dangerous for them as it is for other people, the danger is absolutely part of its allure.
We, as a culture, are drawn to danger. During rally car races, spectators used to stand so close to the tracks that if cars spun off, they got hit. And cars spun off a lot. But rather that deter fans from getting so close, fans grew to see their proximity to the track as proof of fanship. Getting a bone broken by a famous rally car driver was a point of pride. And even though people died from cars plowing into the crowds, it took a change in the regulations to force spectators away from potential collision sites.
I was interested in our drive toward danger and I was interested in the way we can see something awful happen to someone else, we can watch it on television and online, and instead of being warned off, we can become interested in having that experience ourselves.
I think fame is tangled up in there - fame makes terrible things seem even more alluring, but I don't think the drive is only about fame. I think what dangerous about our current celebrity culture is the distance we feel from the things we watch.
Q: How would you cope in a 'Coldtown'? And would you want to.....?
I wouldn't want to be sent to a Coldtown, but if I was forced to go, I would take up urban homesteading. I would bring in my own goats, learn to make cheese and trade it for coffee, gel pens, and whatever I needed to keep my laptop up and running.
Q: Will you revisit Tana and Coldtowns in future books?
A: THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN is a stand-alone. Right now, I'm not planning on writing another book set in that world. Maybe at some future point I will come back and write more, because I love the characters and the setting and I'd love to explore what happens next, but first I have to finish the new book I'm working on now.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am currently working on a new faerie book for teens, another stand-alone, called THE DARKEST PART OF THE FOREST, which is coming out in early 2015.
I'm also collaborating with Cassandra Clare on a middle grade series. The first book, THE IRON TRIAL, will be out next fall.
Q: What are your two top tips for teen writers?
A: I'll give you three!
1. Read absolutely everything. Read nonfiction, read mystery and horror, and literary realism and poetry and biographies and everything you can get your hands on.
2. Write a lot and revise even more. Keep writing and revising, over and over.
3. Find other people who love the same books you love and exchange work. Hearing feedback about your own writing will teach you a ton a lot and critiquing their work will teach you even more.
