Holly Black
Holly Black
Holly Black née Riggenbachis an American writer and editor best known for The Spiderwick Chronicles, a series of children's fantasy books she created with writer and illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, and a trilogy of Young Adult novels officially called the Modern Faerie Tales trilogy. Her 2013 novel Doll Bones was named a Newbery Medal honor book...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth10 November 1971
CityWest Long Branch, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
Inspiration comes from everywhere. From life, observing people, etc. From movies and books you love. From research.
I've loved vampires for a very long time. In eighth grade, I guess, my research paper was on vampires.
I don't feel prolific. I feel like I'm plodding along. Each day you sit down, and you hope that you get your work done.
I am not very good at sticking to outlines, and I double back all the time to revisit scenes and change things.
Faeries are associated with wild untamed nature, with art, and with death - so the folklore is rich with different stories to explore.
Everything scares me. I'm very easily frightened. But the thing that scares me most is zombies. I really, really don't like zombies.
'Doctor Who' rewrites your brain because at first when you watch it, you think, 'That doesn't make sense.'
Three hundred words in a day is not a lot. So much of it is thinking before writing. And then there's the cutting. But you do what you do and keep moving forward.
I think there are a lot of really positive aspects to social media for novelists. Even though our work is pretty solitary, through Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook and Instagram and blogging in general, we're better able to connect directly with readers.
'Twilight' passed like a fever through the sophisticated reader and the unsophisticated reader alike. People devoured those books in single sittings, over weekends, with a kind of raw intensity that is rare.
When I was a kid in the U.S., 'Doctor Who' wasn't really on, but you would occasionally catch an episode. Different stations did marathons.
What I've always loved about faeries is the way that they, unlike so many other supernatural creatures, are not human and have never been human. They have different customs and different taboos, and woe to anyone who breaks them.
One of the great things about writing middle-grade books is that it's really a nice break, when you're writing super intense stuff like 'Coldtown', to be able to write something a little lighter - calm down and do something different.
One of my favorite things in books is watching someone make the mistake. You know it's going to happen. You keep thinking: 'Don't do it!' But of course they're going to do it. It's riveting. You learn through them that it's okay. It's the ecstatic fall, where you watch someone make that terrible decision, and there's such pleasure in it.