Fantasycon 2017 is delighted to

announce Guest of Honour:

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Nancy Kilpatrick

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Award-winning author Nancy Kilpatrick has a wide catalogue of publications including nineteen novels, over 220 short stories, seven collections of her stories and has edited fifteen anthologies.

Recent original short works are included in: Nightmare's Realm; Black Wings 6; Black Wings 5; Searchers After Horror; The Darke Phantastique; Zombie Apoclaypse: Endgame!; Blood Sisters: Vampire Stories by Women; The Madness of Cthulhu 2; Innsmouth Nightmares; Stone Skin Bestiary.  Two new graphic novels are: Nancy Kilpatrick's Vampyre Theater and her story "Heart of Stone" in Tales From the Acker-Mansion. Thrones of Blood is a new novel series. Volume 1, Revenge of the Vampir King, is available in print or ebook on amazon.co.uk.  Volume two, Sacrifice of the Hybrid Princess will be a autumn 2017 release.

Reading Nancy Kilpatrick

Nancy is an author who has crossed the boundaries of genre many times, so I was looking forward to experiencing her writing. Reading through her credits, I noticed she’d worked on As One Dead, a novel set in the roleplaying game world of Vampire: The Masquerade. I grew up with White Wolf’s World of Darkness mythos, so anyone who worked on that is instantly a hero of mine. 

A Crazy Mistake is one of Nancy’s stories from The Madness of Cthulhu Volume 2. It’s a first person narrative from a film researcher called Kim who is trying to find interesting historical accounts of matriarchal societies for a film project. Kim tracks down a collection of leads, that all seem to fit together, revealing a disturbing conclusion about the true origin of humanity.

The writing is light and chatty, reflecting the character of the narrator and this is a refreshing change from some Cthulhu works. However, the necessary components are all here. A careful piece of detective work allows the story to build a platform on which to project depth into real history. After all, we all see patterns and links between ancient societies that couldn’t have possibly been talking to each other.

 

Or could they?

Madness is a theme of the anthology and Kim’s personal descent into a breakdown is all part of learning the truth. At the end, her obsession is not dimmed and you get a sense that her quest for proof is not over.

In one of Nancy’s most recent books, Revenge of the Vampir King which is the first book in the Thrones of Blood series, we see her return to the Vampire archetype. Nancy’s understanding and writing on vampires is extensive and detailed, her title Canadian Queen of the Vampires is well earned. 

The book is set in a world divided between Vampirii and Sapiens, where kingdoms of Humans and Vampires are at war.  It is interesting to see Vampires as a settled community when they so frequently appear in fiction as isolated groups or individuals.  Much of the story is set in the Vampirii kingdon, so the reader has a real opportunity to explore this area.  Perhaps a little predictably the capture of the princess from the neighboring kingdom leads to a Romeo and Juliet type situation but the plot turns that follow bring new surprises.  

 

I am really excited to meet with Nancy and get her take on how or if the market and audience with regards to genre and sub-genre has changed the the last few years.  She classifies her most recent novels as Erotic Horror, but have expectations changed with the relatively new label of Supernatural Romance with all its post Twilight baggage compared to the more traditional expectations of readers of Horror or Fantasy?  Does the gender of author and characters, sexual or relationship content or even the gender of the readership move where the books sit in the bookshop?  I certainly feel that her books sit quite comfortably on my shelves alongside L K Hamilton, Charlaine Harris and Lynsey Sands (to name but a few).  
 

Nancy has a website & blog and can be found on Twitter and Facebook.   

Many of her books can be found on Amazon and a list with some of Nancy’s work appears at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
 

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