OMINOUS 13 DARK FICTION AUTHOR
INTERVIEW SERIES: CHANTAL NOORDELOOS
Hi Chantal, thanks for appearing
on Ominous 13! Just for the record, I love your work. You’re a star in the
making. With a lucky break, you could be a household name. With that out of the
way, let’s dive right in!
Your first full length novel
offering, Coyote, the Outlander, a
well-received steampunk/sci-fi novel, follows a sexy female bounty hunter
chasing alien bad guys, and coming to grips with her own personal issues,
especially with her father. What can you tell us about this story, without
spoilers, that would convince readers who’ve never heard of you to buy and
read?
Argl, so I can’t just rely on my blurb? Darn, I’m a terrible sales person.
I guess what I could point out that Coyote is a story with a difference? For
one the book is accompanied with a second screen experience, in which we hope
to pull the reader more into the world. I would tell you that I’d like to think
Coyote is a very character driven story, and though it’s a steampunk novel (or
technically Dustpunk) it’s the story that truly counts and will still be very
accessible for readers who have no affinity with Steampunk. And then I would
probably have to tip my hat at you, and mutter something about this being one
hell of a deal sir / little lady… and give you my best smarmy car salesman smile.
With the success of Coyote, how
far and what direction do you plan to take this fantastic story?
You flatter me, sir! (there’s that hat tipping thing again… I can’t
seem to stop) There will be five books. I’m hoping to add a second screen to
all of them. The first book was quite short, but I have a sneaky suspicion the
second book will be a lot longer (since I already surpassed the word count of
book one, and am about half way in the story.) I have a general idea where I
want to go, and I already have the title for the second book, which will be
called: “The Clockwork Dragonfly”.
Though you write in different
genres, horror seems to be your specialty. What drew you into the world of
horror writing?
I’m a big fat coward… and that may sound silly, but that actually
helps. Everything scares me, so it’s easy to come up with a horror plot. It’s
funny, because I never pictured myself as a ‘horror writer’, though I could
have known. I’ve been a role player for a great many years (almost 22) and when
I started being the dungeon master (or games master) the games got a bit of a
dark side. I became quite infamous for my horror games, and I guess I just
continued that in my writing. It all started when I wrote for anthologies. The
first one I wrote for was called ‘Hell’. I really love using angels and demons
in stories, so this felt like a perfect fit. I wrote a little tale called ‘Only
Forgotten’, and that was the first thing I published. I won’t bore you with the
long story around it (it ended up somewhere else first), but in the end I wrote
more short stories for the same publisher. And because of that, I rolled into
the horror world. I do other things, but horror feels like my ‘go to genre’.
You’re from the Netherlands, but
you’ve have made quite a splash across the great pond, in America. Was this a
conscious decision on your part, or did America discover your impressive
talents by sheer good fortune?
I have a guilty confession to make: I have NO affinity with Dutch
writing. It’s not just the language, but the type of writing is so different
from what I enjoy to write (or read really). I always knew I wasn’t going to
write for my own people (I sound like an alien, I am aware of this… Chanti
phone home) To me the US or the UK market are the same. They’re both not in my
country, and I love them both… but I’ve noticed that I happened to get more of
a ‘following’ (if we can call it that) in the US, and that stuck more. So I
decided to write my work in US English (though I would naturally write UK
English, since I went to college there). I love the American audience, they are
such enthused readers and that really boosts the ole writer’s ego.
How difficult is it, being the
mother of a young daughter, to delve in and out of the real world for her and
your family, and the imaginative worlds that you create?
When she’s at school, I have no problems. We treat writing as my job,
so I get a lot of space to write. When Elora’s home, it’s more difficult,
because she’s quite… ehm… present? In other words, she’s always making a lot of
noise, and I’m one of those horrible people who needs silence. When she goes to
bed I tend to work a little bit more, so I get long work days after all. In
this house we do have a rule: Work hard play hard, so my husband doesn’t mind
that I make 9-12 hour days on average, as long as we do fun things too, and I
give my all to the family as well as the writing.
Your latest offering, a short
story anthology entitled Deeply Twisted,
has quite an interesting cover, which I love by the way. Tell us about the
concept of the cover and what makes your anthology so ‘twisted’?
The girl on the cover is Judit Smits, who is a friend of mine. She did
a photo shoot and this picture (and the one on the back cover) were part of
that shoot. I fell in love with the pictures and she introduced me to the
photographer Marc Price.
I was thinking of bundling all my short stories for quite a few months,
and this was the perfect excuse. I had some stories that were previously
published and a few stories that I was still working on. Instead of sending
them out, I decided to use them for my own collection. When I saw the picture,
I changed one of the characters from a Dutch story I had, from an old hag to a
young woman. It was a bit of a challenge for me, to change a character so drastically
and I had to rewrite it quite a bit because I kept going back to the ‘hag’ I
had in my head. In the end I wrote another story with the same character, which
I called Deeply Twisted, to tie the cover in with the book. It was a lot of fun
to work on.
I think the twisted part is that I like to write stories that are not
as they seem. Now some of the stories are more ‘surprising’ than others, but
because twisted has so many meanings, I believed it would be the most suitable
description for my collection.
I read a conversation between you
and one of your fans on your website, where you stated you were afraid of
poodles. Besides their gnashing, gnarling teeth and growl, why in the world
would you be afraid of them?
Hahahaha, that wasn’t me! Not that I will start the Poodle fan club any
time soon (I’m more of a cat person, and I prefer large dogs over small ones)
but no particular fear. My phobias are quite bland, heights, spiders… scary
little girls. The latter fuel a lot of my writing fear.
You seem to very fond of drawing.
What kinds of subjects draw your attention in the area?
At the risk of sounding cheesy… I like drawing people. Especially
women, but that’s because I find them easier to draw and I have a weird
fascination for drawing breasts… (don’t ask, I can’t tell you why)
I draw all sorts of things, but cartoons / comic book style have my
preference. I do a lot of drawing for Coyote, but that character really
inspires me.
Being an incredibly creative and
driven person, how do you handle the times when you, for one reason or another,
circumstances prevent you to be able to write or draw or create?
You picked the absolute right timing for that question. I haven’t
written in about a week at the moment due to holiday madness and this crappy
virus that has been terrorizing my house for days.
It’s been driving me up the
wall. I hate not writing, it makes me very on edge and grumpy. I need an outlet
for my creativity, or I go a bit funny (not funny, ha-ha… more funny, back away
and avoid eye contact)
Before I started writing fulltime, I had this creative ‘hole’ to fill.
So I would organize about 4 larp events in a year, and would do all sorts of
little projects to keep me entertained. Writing has been very fulfilling, and
my life turned a bit more boring after that. I think my husband is relieved,
because we don’t have people over at our house every weekend anymore, like we
used to… and he is no longer subjected to all the crazy plans I came up with in
the name of creativity.
Being your friend on Facebook, I
often see your real life stories of grown up game nights. I am amazed at how
seriously you and your friends take the games and how much fun you have. I’m
not saying that game playing isn’t big over her in the States, but you gals and
guys seem to take the intensity of the games to an entirely new level. Is this
part of the culture of the Netherlands?
Ehm… I don’t think it is. Only with a small group of people (who happen
to be my friends) We like to role play a lot, but board games are also fun.
Especially co-op games. I know there are a few game conventions here, but I
think it takes a particular ‘kind’ of people to really enjoy gaming.
You also seem to enjoy playing
LARP games. For those of us who don’t know, that is Live Action Role Playing.
Tell us a little about what kinds of games your play and what drew you into
that sub-culture?
I started to take Larp serious when I lived in the UK. In the
Netherlands I went to a little indoor event, and I liked it, but in the UK I
was dragged to ‘the Gathering’ by some of my friends, and I attended a couple
of smaller larp events too. When I came back to the Netherlands, I decided I
was going to organize my own fantasy events, and I did so under the name Moonblade.
When I got pregnant with Elora I stopped for a while. But I missed it, though I
was ready for new things. We decided to move away from the standard ‘mediaeval
fantasy’ settings, and moved towards… you guessed it… contemporary horror. Much
more my genre *grin*
I saw a picture of one of you
LARP games in which you dressed as a lady vampire. It looked very realistic and
scary. Have you ever thought of using your experiences with LARP into an acting
career?
I’ve received quite a few compliments on my acting skills, and people
have invited me to join their theater groups, but to be honest, I don’t think I
would do well with acting. I suck at remembering lines and I’m too hyper for
studying. I was in a few plays when I was younger (my favourite was the
Gingerbread Lady, by Neil Simon) and I always had good grades in Drama, but I
prefer to improvise. I also love playing the bad guy. I’m not dainty princess
material, I rather strike terror in the hearts of my ‘players’.
What can we expect from Chantal
Noordeloos in the future?
I’m a busy little bee, so I hope a lot. Right now I’m working on
several projects for 2014. The first (of seven) installment of my “Even Hell
has Standards” series, called ‘Pride’ (which is the rewrite of Only Forgotten).
I’m working on the second Coyote book, and am outlining the third. Another
project I want to finish for 2014 is the first novel in my Celestials series. I
actually wrote that book about 3 years ago, and am rewriting it now. I’m about
89.000 words in, but other things have been getting in the way. First I’ll need
to finish the current project, which I started for NaNoWrimo, a dark fantasy YA
novel called Alleria. Quite a challenge that one, because it’s out of my
comfort zone, but this story has also been haunting me for years. Lastly I want
to write a haunted house novel. And yes… all this by the end of 2014.
Thanks again Chantal, for
answering our questions and allowing us to take a peek into your personal and
professional life. If you would be so kind as to send along a few pics,
especially the darling one of you dressed as a vampire that would be great.
Also, please add links to your sites here:
Thank you so much for this Paul. This was a wonderful interview! I love
how personal you made this.
