Featured Interview With Author Rebecca Holmes
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I live in the city now but had a country upbringing. Thought I wanted to be a veterinarian, ended up building a career in ecommerce and writing fantasy on the side. I am very lucky to have my dog, Piper, as the most well-behaved and joyful canine companion I could possibly wish for. She is a 9-year-old papillon – an ex show dog who still looks the part.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I read a lot as a child/teen, sampling a lot of different material because I hadn't found my niche yet. School encouraged me to keep a reading journal throughout the year and record as diverse a mix of books as possible. When I went to university, I found I couldn't read for pleasure alongside all the textbook and study guide reading. Looking at more words on a page was the very last thing I wanted to do after spending all evening studying scientific papers. I didn't read books at all for a few years until I moved somewhere with a bigger library and had the freedom to start exploring.
I always knew I was a decent writer because I won several awards for creative writing at school and had a few pieces published in the school magazine. I was editor for a club newsletter in my teens (printed, not emailed!) and would write web content for blogs and such. The first few words of the novel that eventually became my first published book were written on a flip phone when I was bored at work. Yes, the kind of phone where you had to press each key repeatedly to get the letter you want. I copied all of this stuff into a Google Doc later, but it didn't amount to much. I gradually progressed to writing isolated scenes whenever they came to me, often without much context around them. This went on for years. Eventually, I collected enough of them that I started to join them together into a coherent story, and that's when I had to make some big decisions about how to develop actual characters and plot lines from this to turn it into a book.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I read fantasy almost exclusively, with the occasional diversion into pure science fiction or historical fiction. Reading is all about escapism for me. I don't want to read about real life with real world problems; I want to forget all of that and get lost in another time and place. That said, I like authors who put a lot of thought and detail into their world building and do their historical research where applicable.
Katherine Arden's Winternight Trilogy was a huge inspiration to me because of how authentically she brought Russian folklore to life. It's so real, you can almost forget you're reading fantasy. There are moments in those books so tender it physically hurt to read. That's what I look for in a book: authenticity, immersion, emotion.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
I wrote Beyond the Gloaming Pass because as a reader I was hungry for something different. You don't often see mature characters with adult problems and adult relationships as the focal point in fantasy. I also wanted a setting somewhere between the classic medieval time period that we see most commonly, and the recognizable modern day settings used in urban fantasy. Lastly, I'm heavily inspired by video games and I wanted my world to feel lived in, the way an RPG open world feels lived in with NPCs going about their lives alongside – or in spite of – the main quest.
The result? A down-to-earth adventure where two women's struggle with the challenges of "adulting" spirals rapidly out of control and throws them on opposite sides of a bitter conflict with high stakes. There's magic with limitations and consequences. The rich and powerful will bargain, threaten and manipulate to get what they want, often at our heroines' expense. There's a cast of complex characters with distinct personalities and a dry sense of humour.
Oh, and that barren, supposedly cursed land everyone's afraid of? It's inhabited. Sophisticated. They're doing just fine, and they're tougher than you.
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