Author Interview With Samantha Holloway

Today, I’m so happy to introduce you to the latest author taking part in my interview series: Samantha Holloway.

So, what exactly do you write?

I write a lot of stuff! Mostly, I write fantasy–the current trilogy, Wisewoman’s Daughter, Sister to the Sun and Goddess’s Hand, which together are the Books of Light: Married to the Wind, is Epic Fantasy, and the next book, The Sound of Birds, Singing, is a Fairytale sort of thing, and then after that is an Urban Fantasy called Beacon. I also write a little science fiction, and some speculative-fiction poetry–I just published a book of 100 Weird Haiku that just make me smile every time I see them. I’ve been known to do some academic work on scifi and fantasy themes, too!

Less specifically, I write stories about girls who get to go on adventures the way boys always do in their books–adventures that require strength and skill and determination. I write stories that interact with and sometimes reshape genre tropes–Married to the Wind is an Epic Fantasy in a new way, where the misogyny is taken out and the problems are addressed from a more feminine point of view. That makes it sound weird; it’s really just an adventure with an equal number of female main characters as male!

How would you describe yourself in a short third person bio?

I’ll give you the one I use on Amazon:
Samantha Holloway is unfit for anything but writing expansive fantasy and the occasional science fiction story, so she does it full time. She’s the author of the upcoming epic fantasy novel Married to the Wind, and has published dozens of book reviews, TV reviews and a few short stories. In between writing and thinking about writing, she lives in North Carolina with an aptly-named cat called Ninja, wears too much jewelry, runs a home made nail polish company for a lark, and subsists mostly on tea.

What made you initially want to write? Has your motivation changed since then?

The very first thing I wrote was a poem when I was eight, but I honestly can’t remember what made me write that. I know my mom kept it, and that’s the only reason I know that it ever existed! I started writing stories when I was twelve, because I’d discovered Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books and I’d read through all the ones on my dad’s bookshelf, and I wanted more. I didn’t immediately start writing fanfic, but I took the stuff I liked–adventure, dragons, love stories–and I started writing stories that featured those things. By the time I was in high school, I was writing actual stories that were more than three pages long, and featured such things as plot and character development.

I supposed I always wanted to tell stories–when I was maybe five, I’d make the neighborhood kids play out these elaborate epics I had in my head–but I didn’t really think about it until that day when I was home sick, I’d finished all the Pern books, and I had this restless need to just get a story down. I think that’s still my motivation. I have stories in my head and a compulsion to write them down, and, lately, this idea that maybe other people want to hear them. So far, people do!

What do you think is the most important part of writing?

This is going to sound sarcastic, but I mean it–writing is the most important part of writing! Like, there’s that saying that everyone has a novel in them, but how many of us actually write it down? Not many. It’s the actual writing of it that changes a person from someone with a story to a writer, and everything else, the editing, the revising, the publishing, everything, it all hangs on having written a book.

It took me a long time to accept that first drafts are always crap, no matter how hard I try, but that’s been freeing–allowing it to suck allows me to write down the story, and then I have something to work with. I can’t fix what I didn’t write, and I firmly believe that anything can be fixed and made better.

What is your favourite part of writing?

I love when it’s working, and things are flowing, and I aim for my usual four pages a day and wind up writing, like, twelve, and the characters are doing things I didn’t expect and the sentences are coming out all artistic and poetic–that’s what I like best. That’s always in a first draft, when things are really hitting a stride and making sense. That’s how I know that the thing I’ve been chipping away at is actually a good thing, a novel and not just a story, something fuller than just an idea. I’m not a fan of editing and revising; they’re the hard part, and it annoys me constantly that those are the part that make a novel into a book–something that has a beginning, a middle, an end, no loose strings that aren’t supposed to be there, an consistency of everything. All that consistency doesn’t come from my favorite flow!

Tell us an interesting fact about you.

I grew up overseas! When I was a kid, I lived in Turkey, Italy, Japan and Scotland, and I think that’s where my imagination comes from–having been exposed in such a closer way to so many disparate societies all before I hit puberty and I was all impressionable. At the very least, I never would have found some of my favorite books if I hadn’t lived overseas where they were!

Do you have a day-job, (other than writing)?

I’m a part-time nanny for my sister’s kids, and I run an Etsy shop! I make geek, science, and literary-themed nail polish colors, mix them, and sell them through the shop. All of them are based on my personal synaesthetic impressions of the things they’re named for!

I also spend far too much time on Twitter and Tumblr talking about TV as if it’s my job, because it used to be–I used to review TV for three different websites, and even though no one pays me to do it anymore, I still love television, and I’ve made so many great friends through talking about it!

Do you prefer a physical book or an ebook? Why?

I like actual paper-and-cardboard books, because they’re my preferred decor as well as how comforting it is to have them around. But I also like how I currently have about five hundred books in my purse because of my Kindle, and all through school, I was reading almost exclusively on digital surfaces because they were cheaper, lighter, I was probably never going to read most of them again, and came with a way to organize notes and quotes. I don’t really think it’s an either-or sort of thing. I like books, and if they’re digital books, that’s fine, and if they’re actual books, that’s also fine. I like seeing stacks of books I’ve read, but I also like not having to pack fifty boxes of heavy-ass paper-and-cardboard every time I move! So it really depends on the situation, which I like better.

Are you an indie author, or did you get your work published the ‘traditional’ way?

I am definitely an indie author! I tried traditional publishing, but after I’d been turned down a lot–I think because I was writing EF when everyone wasn’t really looking for it–I decided “why am I doing this when I can do it myself?” and I started publishing on my own. I’m still new at it, still figuring it out, but it’s so satisfying! I’m independent by nature, and I never really liked waiting on and depending on others to get my own stuff done, so it suits my personality to publish what I want when I want to, and to have the final say in everything.

I’m not against traditional publishing, though, I want to make that clear. Doing it this way is a lot of work and only has as much exposure or reach as I can manage on my own, which is still limited since I’m not Amanda Hocking or someone, and it would be nice if I had a large marketing department to handle all that for me! I think once I prove I have an audience, I could be tempted to go a more traditional route. So long as they let me maintain control of my work!

Tell us about your latest book.

Here’s the back-cover blurb for Married to the Wind Pt 1: Wisewoman’s Daughter:

Everything she thought she knew was wrong.
Annissa of Yorra knew she was the Wisewoman’s daughter. She knew she was to be married in just a few short months. She knew her tiny village near the Wall was unimportant. She knew her country was safe, the sacred homeland of the First Lady’s Chosen People. And she knew her life would be unremarkable, though such quiet left her restless.
She didn’t know destiny had so much more in store for her.
When she rescues a boy who falls from the sky the same moment an impossible evil returns from Over the Wall, everything changes. Soon, she must make a choice–safety, or the truth?

It’s about a girl who discovers, mostly by accident, that she isn’t who she always thought she was, and instead of running from that, she goes out into the world to find out what it all means, and while she’s there, she finds out that the world is bigger and stranger and much more complicated than she previously thought, and she’s part of the solution to the problems her people face. I wrote it as my thesis for my MFA in Writing Popular Fiction, and I just love this story so much! These characters are so special to me, and I’m so glad people can now read their story.

So, how long does it take you, on average, to complete a first draft?

Married to the Wind took me over a year. Like, it took forever. There were times when I thought it was never ever in a million years going to get finished! And it took almost as long again to edit and revise it. On the other hand, Beacon took a month to write, and has been in revisions for over a year, because while I was forcing the story out, I missed like half the plot, so I’m sort of in a second round of first draft!

I do like to get as much of the story out as possible as quickly as I can before I get distracted by another project, but reality keeps getting in the way, and I’m prone to burnout. So I usually aim for four pages a day, four days a week, and call anything over that bonus. It comes out to about a thousand words, and it doesn’t take too long to write most days, and when it’s really bad, I allow it to be spread out over more than one project–because any progress is better than none, right?

Which projects are you working on at the moment?

I’m getting ready to publish Part 2: Sister to the Sun at the end of June, so I’m making sure that’s presentable and make sense and breaks in an organic place and so on. I’m also working on the cover and trying to get it up soon enough beforehand that people can pre-order it if they like, which I didn’t do with the first one.

I’m writing a lot: I’m writing a scifi novel called Fracture on Wattpad to see if I like public writing, and to hopefully get more people aware of my existence. I’m editing Beacon, and finishing the writing of The Sound of Birds, Singing. I’m writing my next trilogy, called Ember, Sparks and Burn (collectively called The Mars Trilogy, unless I come up with something better), and it’s being harder than Married ever was, but is just as rewarding so I keep going. I think I’ll write another book of poems later in the year. And I have a whole list of other books I’m going to work through as soon as these are done!

How do you come up with the titles for your stories? And do you have the final title before completing your book, or after?

I usually start with the title. I like an evocative one–Married to the Wind starts with a boy falling from the sky, and when I started writing that’s really all I had: the name, and the image. Beacon is about a woman named Jessamyn Beacon who is a literal shining light for supernatural beings, so there’s that cheesy double meaning, and I like that, too. Fracture is about literal cracks in time, but also about broken people coming together.

I don’t really know how I come up with titles. It’s not really a conscious thing. I’m not like, “well, this book is done, what should I call it?”, and then go looking for a name. The name comes first, and it’s part of the original idea, and it’s all up to my subconscious. I will say though that my novels usually have short names (with a few obvious exceptions), and my short stories usually have long names–the last one I published was called “The Grass Where I Was Laid”, which is a line from a Brighteyes song, and I have another one called “Down the Wazeri River on the way to Garra Pomor”. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just contrary!

How has writing changed your life?

Well, it’s given me confidence that I never had before. I’m still nervous and shy and easily upset, but I have this one thing that I know I can do well, and that’s been amazing. Because I write, I’ve been able to work through every rough time in my life, and because I write I went to two wonderful colleges and met the people that I would happily call My Tribe for the rest of my life. It’s also because of writing that I never took up any sort of vocational skill, so it’s probably part of why I’m poor, but I wouldn’t trade it just because of that!

Where do you get inspiration for writing from? Do you listen to music whilst writing or have a ‘writing cave’?

I get inspiration from everywhere. Everything is inspiring if you keep an eye out–and I’m actually thinking of writing up a class I can offer people to teach them how to keep an eye out. I have a notebook, and I take notes on everything–lines from books I read, random facts, bits of songs that really move me, titles of things I haven’t written yet, snippets of stories, hundreds of first lines and first paragraphs, memories, dreams, newspaper and magazine clippings, quotes from everywhere…Basically anything and everything that gives me that buzzing feeling of “this is good”. I try to consciously feed my subconscious so it has stuff to chew on–I read A LOT, all sorts of ways and about all sorts of things, I’m online a lot, talking to people, I collect ideas. Inspiration comes when your under-brain, your subconscious, has something to say and says it by connecting up things that were never connected before, and spits out an idea.

I also encourage ideas to come up by periodically just sitting down and having all the ideas I can have, and writing them all down, no matter how silly or small or unbaked, for fifteen or twenty minutes. And then I look to see what these things have in common, or which can be added to whatever I’m already working on, or which feel like they can be brainstormed into actual concepts.

I don’t listen to music when I write, most of the time. When I wrote “The Grass Where I Was Laid,” I had “The Calendar Hangs Itself” on a loop for forty-five minutes and got the whole story down, but usually I close the door and just listen to my head. But as I’m writing, I collect songs that make me feel the way I want the book to feel, and build a playlist that I play while I edit–because that’s when I need to be reminded what the heck I’m even doing. That’s when it gets messy. Married To The Wind’s playlist is mostly Florence + the Machine, because that woman gets me, even though we’ve never met.

Is there a particular form, style or genre that you’d like to have a go at writing? Why?

I want to write everything at least once! Mostly just to see if I can, and partly because I really like stretching myself and doing new stuff. I’m not a linear creature, I want every project to branch in a new direction. I’m thinking of writing a movie in the second half of this year. I love form poems–I’m kind of in love with sonnets about weird things lately. I might try writing songs for the first time since I was a ridiculous seventeen year old. I have an idea for a Mystery that I’d love to write, if I can get to it with all my other projects in line before it. I want to get back to short stories. I would love to have the chance to develop a TV show.

This makes me sound manic, but really I’m just really ambitious!

Favourite book and/or author(s)?

I love so many things. Everything by Neil Gaiman and Robin McKinley. All of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books (I don’t like the way her son, who took over the series, writes). Cassie Clare’s Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices. PC Hodgell’s Godstalker series. NK Jemisin’s Inheritance books, and the two that came next. Peter S Beagle and Charles deLint, like, anything they want to write, I’ll read it. Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files (and I’m so excited for his new steampunk series!). Shelley Adina, who was my mentor at school. Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles. Ray Bradbury. The kid’s books I’ve dragged forward through my life–Narnia, Snow Spider, A Hawk in Silver, Tottie, The Hero And The Crown. I also adore travel memoirs and science books, so I’ll read anything by Bill Bryson, Tim Cahill, Frances Mayes, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson or Michio Kaku.

And I have hundreds of books I haven’t read yet; I’m sure there’s more favorites in there that I just don’t know about yet!

Do you think it’s necessary to have a degree (of any sort) in order to be a successful author?

Not really. I have one, and I don’t regret it or the cost of it at all, because what I got out of it was a pile of friends who can support me and help me write better, and a handful of potentially useful contacts, and a whole lot of training in the skills of sitting down and getting stuff done. The hard part, when you’re newly serious about being a writer, is justifying putting other stuff aside to prioritize your work–and schooling forces you to do just that. It teaches you the history and the context and the words for things, but the talent and the dedication come from you, and if you already have those in place, you might not need to take classes.

What would you say to those who want to become a writer? Any advice?

Write! Just do it, don’t think about it too hard until you’re revising and editing. Forget that “write what you know” shit–write what you want to know and what you feel in your heart, and learn as you go. Don’t fall for perfectionism–first drafts are always messy ugly things, full of holes and gaps and terrible passages; they’re supposed to be that way so you can figure out what you’re really writing about. Don’t sit on your work–as soon as you think someone else might want to read it, start trying to get it published, even if there’s no pay, in those early days. Learn to let go–don’t fuss over something for a decade when you could be writing ten other books in that time. Find other writers to talk to!

Thank you very much for your time.

You’re welcome!

—

Where to find Samantha… 

On Twitter
On Instagram
On her website
On Facebook

And her books:

On Amazon