Yeah, the whole family knows. It's no big deal. One night at dinner I said, 'Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for Kirk? Well, me too.' It was easier for her to understand that way.

Holly Black

Categorized in : Night Mom Forbidden Love

I loved Anne Rice's 'Interview with a Vampire' and 'The Vampire Lestat'. I found a copy of 'Interview' when I was in seventh grade at a garage sale for 25 cents. It had a crazy cover.

copy loved vampire crazy

The problem with faerie gifts is that they always come with a price, which is why they are made by the desperate and the foolish.

price why always problem

Someday I would like to be the kind of writer who barrels through a draft, but I can't even seem to barrel through an interview like this, so I imagine I have a long way to go.

go like long way

I am not very good at sticking to outlines, and I double back all the time to revisit scenes and change things.

i-am good change time

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.

better social-media work positive

I'm not a fast writer, and I find the process of writing a first draft to be painful and frustrating. Usually, I start with a character, a premise, and some image that gives me a particular feeling.

feeling start me character

I revise a lot while I'm drafting, often going back to the beginning again and again to revise because I've changed massive things about the story. By the time I get to the end of a first draft, I've been through the beginning lots of times.

end story beginning time

I think there's a reason that horror appeals to teens. There's a lot of useful lessons to take away from reading horror. We get to be scared in the comfort and safety of our own homes. We can put the book down if we get too scared, and no one will ever know if we decide not to pick it up again.

down think reading book

I read 'Sabella or The Blood Stone' by Tanith Lee, which was hugely influential to me. I love Tanith's writing. She's just really lyrical, beautiful use of language.

me language beautiful love

There's never really been a time when vampires weren't so over that you would be crazy to write a vampire book, or so huge that you would be crazy to write a vampire book. I'm not sure there's ever going to be a time. We went from Anne Rice to Buffy to 'Twilight.'

you crazy time book

I really love being a weirdo who writes a lot of different things for a lot of different ages. I have been considering doing a guide on my website so that a reader who liked one of my books could find the other books that he or she might like, because I know some of the books are really different from the rest.

rest doing know love

Can you write 200 words a day? 100? 50? In six months, 50 words a day is 9,000 words. That's 2-3 short stories. If you did 200 words every day, in three months that's 36,000 words. That's half a short novel.

every-day words day you

When we talk about good books, we often talk about good sentences, but what we rarely talk about is reader pleasure. Yet it is reader pleasure that is going to make a book break out into the kind of success that makes it into a household name.

name good success book

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.

doctor kid you different

'Doctor Who' rewrites your brain because at first when you watch it, you think, 'That doesn't make sense.'

doctor think you brain

I really love the idea of the poetically mad - the character that is imbued with the romantic madness. Like River from 'Firefly' or Drusilla from 'Buffy.' Someone dangerously unhinged, where you're really not sure they're going to be reliable minute-to-minute.

you love romantic character