Holli is the flaming dragon princess of Melenoria, secretly disguised as a mild-mannered Tennessee girl. Her skills lie primarily in writing, holding massive press conferences with public figures and saving us all from Dark Lord Lashrell.

ALSO…Holli is a grammar Nazi. She spends much of her spare time sneaking around halls, waiting to catch a misspelled word or a sentence fragment. Many is the person who has been lulled into false security by Holli’s mild-mannered alter ego. But, oh, what a surprise when she swoops in and zaps their poor, grammatically-impaired psyches into repentant, quivering, little blobs of obedient grammarians.

Because she is modest beyond all expectation, it was incumbent upon me, the other writer, to describe her for you. Probably she does not even know this post is up. If she did, I would be running. You don’t mess with flaming dragon princesses.

Accomplishments:

Winner of Melenoria’s 2017 Writer’s Challenge

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Here are a list of questions I have written for Holli, that her readership might better know her. I will try to guess a few of her answers. That way I can demonstrate how badly I know my own friend. Here goes.

What three authors do you most admire? 

ET’s guess: John Donne, C.S. Lewis, Jane Austin?

Holli: You’re right about C.S. Lewis. I admire him most for his non-fiction–absolutely LOVE the way he thinks. The other two would probably be Tolkein for his imagination and L.M. Montgomery for her ability to create real, intriguing, lovable characters. Jane Austen could probably be a close fourth for her insight into human nature and morality.

What first made you interested in writing? 

ET’s guess: It was the day she met J.K Rowling, James Patterson and Steven King outside a gas station in New Brunswick. They saw her and said they just sensed she was the next great writer. Till then Holli had never written a paragraph in her life. After that time, it was her favorite hobby.

Holli: I don’t remember. I started keeping a journal when I was about 8 because my mom did, and I think I probably started trying to write stories about the same time. I love stories, and I used to lie awake in my bed every night, imagining my own. I think writing presented itself naturally as a means to share my stories.

Does music help you write? What kind? 

ET’s guess: Absolutely. Holli relishes music. Especially weird atonal John Cage or Arnold Shonberg stuff. She is also into heavy metal with lots of head splitting shrieking and weird incomprehensible sounding lyrics. OR not. It’s just a guess.

Holli: Music may help me get into a mood, but it doesn’t help me once I’ve actually started to write. At that point, it’s either a distraction or I’m completely oblivious to it.

What do you feel is your best writing medium? What is your favorite? 

ET’s guess: Holli’s favorite would be (and I’m totally spitballing here) novel writing. She would say she is currently best at…poetry?

Holli: My best, yeah, I think it’s poetry . . . since I rarely finish anything else. 😦 It’s probably my favorite, too, because it’s pretty easy, relatively. I LOVE planning novels, but writing them? I get frustrated trying to think of details.

If you could meet one literary character who would it be? 

ET’s guess: Elizabeth Bennett or Mr. Darcy. Probably Mr. Darcy actually.

Holli: Except that he never smiles . . . how intimidating. I could probably handle Lizzie, though, but I’d rather meet Sir Percy Blakeney.

If you could have one skill you do not have, what would it be? 

ET’s guess: Holli would be a great artist.

Holli: I’d really like to be able to compose music. Being an artist is on my list too, just not as high up. And I would also really like to be able to build furniture … which is kind of random until you actually look at furniture prices.

What time period do you wish you could live in? 

ET’s guess: Victorian England? No idea.

Holli: the present? 🙂 It’s hard to wish to live in a time period in which we already know all the bad things that happened and which would render me dead or ridiculously old right now. But if I had to choose, probably WW II … or pretty much any time period that includes awesome dresses. 👗

What do you feel is the best work you’ve written? 

ET’s guess: Her Emmanuel sonnet series.

Holli:  The Emmanuel series is definitely my favorite topic, but I don’t think all of them are high quality poetry (though I wish they were). I think my best poetry would include the Sun is Setting and The Unmapped Ways. Maybe? Although now that I’ve had to analyze them, none of them seem very good. 🙂

READER QUESTIONS

Do you have questions for our esteemed authoress? Feel free to write them and I will see if I can convince the usually moody and highly volatile Holli to consider answering 😉