Everyone, please welcome Helen Keeble, debut YA author of Fang Girl!
Hi, Helen! Congratulations on your debut novel. I already said this in my review, but I think it is brilliant! How does it feel to have your first book out in the world?
Rather unreal – it’s taken two years to go from signing the contract to seeing the book go on sale. I still can’t believe that people are actually going to be able to read it at last!
Two years may sound like a long delay, but it isn’t unusual in the publishing world; the idea is to give the debut author time to write a second book, so that it’s ready to release within a year of the first one coming out. I’ve just handed in the final draft of my second novel, another paranormal comedy that’s scheduled to be released September 2013.
Yes, it really does take an entire year for publishers to prepare a book for release. There’s a lot of proofreading, copyediting, layout and design to be done, not to mention the marketing.
Oh my! That's what (hopefully) awaits me once I finish my novel. I've always said that working toward becoming a published author is both terrifying and exciting. What about you? Did you always know you wanted to be a professional writer?
Oh my! That's what (hopefully) awaits me once I finish my novel. I've always said that working toward becoming a published author is both terrifying and exciting. What about you? Did you always know you wanted to be a professional writer?
Nope! My day job is designing industrial software for factories and power plants. My dad, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all engineers in various fields, and I never really thought of doing anything else as a career!
While I was at university, I began writing tales for my awesome roleplaying group, which turned into posting fanfic online… which made me realize that writing was my real passion in life. Nearly ten years and many, many terrible short stories later (they aren’t kidding when they say you need to write a million words of crap before you get to the good stuff), here I am.
I’m not quitting the engineering any time soon. Quite apart from the fact that it pays my mortgage, engineering is awesome.
Roleplaying will always be something I wish I'd done. Alas, there was never an opportunity for it. Though I guess writing is its own king of roleplaying. One just sits down and gets lost in another world. Is there anything you must have when you sit down and write? Coffee, Music, Cookies?
A computer. I need to write on a keyboard. Give me a pen and paper and I’ll just end up filling page after page with random doodles. I don’t think my editor would like to receive 300 pages of squiggles instead of my next draft.
Maybe if they're story related squiggles...LOL. What sparked the idea for Fang Girl?
Fang Girl is a vampire romantic comedy. Besides the paranormal, what else has influenced your writing?
Twilight and its many imitators, really. I wanted to write something which poked affectionate fun at the genre, without making fun of the people who like it. And it struck me that in all these vampire books, the female characters hardly ever seem to have actually read a paranormal romance themselves. Which, when you consider how popular they are now, is… odd. So I started to wonder what would happen if someone who was a big vampire fangirl found herself starring in her very own paranormal romance…
Fang Girl is a vampire romantic comedy. Besides the paranormal, what else has influenced your writing?
Fandom and feminism! I adore the whole online fandom culture, with people taking something that they love and remixing it in new forms to share. I think it’s become a huge part of many teenagers’ lives, yet it’s not something I see written about in novels very often. So I really wanted to write about fandom. In Fang Girl, the main character Jane is a very active member of an online vampire fangirl community, and the critical thinking skills she’s learned from analyzing her favourite shows and books come in handy, even though everything she thinks she knows about vampires turns out to be wrong.
The feminism comes in because I get really irritated by the media dismissing teenage girls and what teenage girls like. There’s a lot of sneering at Twilight and other paranormal romances, and I think it often turns into “anyone who likes this trash must be stupid”. Which is insulting to all the perfectly intelligent girls who do like this stuff! So I made the protagonist of Fang Girl a huge vampire romance fangirl… who’s also smart, snarky, and full of common sense. Just like many of the real-life fangirls I know!
I think you've done a great job of showing that fan girls can be quite awesome and kickass themselves. My book has post-its on almost every chapter because there were so many awesome Xanthe moments. What is your favorite scene?
Probably the scene where Van Helsing, grumpy teenage vampire hunter extraordinaire, gets drugged and consequently starts babbling every thought that crosses his mind. As far as reserved, serious Van is concerned, this is a fate worse than death.
He’s my favourite character, which is why so many dreadful things happen to him throughout the book.
Oh! I remember that scene. I LOLed so hard! Poor Van. That is some tough love, but he's tough. He can take it ♥ Haha So, maybe you've already answered this with the above, but if you could spend an afternoon with one of your characters, who would it be, and what would you do for fun?
Oh! I remember that scene. I LOLed so hard! Poor Van. That is some tough love, but he's tough. He can take it ♥ Haha So, maybe you've already answered this with the above, but if you could spend an afternoon with one of your characters, who would it be, and what would you do for fun?
Oh dear. Considering that I’m almost twice as old as most of my characters, I don’t think most of them would want to hang out with me! So I’ll have to pick Ebon, who as a vampire is at least older than me (the fact that he looks rather good in leather trousers is a plus). We would play Rock Band and geek out over science fiction books.
A Rock Band night with Ebon would be a blast. He's awesome!
Now, to sum it all up, if you could describe Fang Girl in five words or less.
Anything else you'd like to say to your fans and future readers?
Now, to sum it all up, if you could describe Fang Girl in five words or less.
Vampire fangirl becomes real vampire (Hijinks ensue!)
Yes, I am working on a sequel! But in the meantime, look out for my next book in September 2013, which does for angels what Fang Girl does for vampires...
Thank you so much for stopping by! I'll be eagerly waiting both for the sequel and your angel book ;)
Thank you so much for stopping by! I'll be eagerly waiting both for the sequel and your angel book ;)
Fang Girl
Publisher: Harper Teen, 2012Genre: YA ParanormalThings That Are Destroying Jane Greene’s Undead Social Life Before It Can Even Begin:
1) A twelve-year-old brother who’s convinced she’s a zombie.
2) Parents who are begging her to turn them into vampires.
3) The pet goldfish she accidentally turns instead.
4) Weird superpowers that let her rip the heads off of every other vampire she meets.(Sounds cool, but it doesn’t win you many friends.)
5) A pyschotic vampire creator who’s using her to carry out a plan for world domination.
And finally:
6) A seriously ripped vampire hunter who either wants to stake her or make out with her. Not sure which.
Being an undead, eternally pasty fifteen-year-old isn’t quite the sexy, brooding, angst-fest Jane always imagined....
