Combining her early passion for fantasy and science-fiction literature with the insights into human behavior that developed due to her own introspective nature, Annette Curtis Klause has written several acclaimed novels for teen readers. Interweaving a seductive vampire and a strong dose of grisly goings-on into the plot of her 1990 debut novel, The Silver Kiss, broke many of the rules of writing for young adults, and Klause's more recent books have continued in that same vein, combining romance, horror, science-fiction, and even mystery genres in unique ways. Her readable, flowing style and ability to draw readers into complex philosophical issues in a non-confrontational way have also contributed to Klause's growing reputation as a writer of unique, quality YA fiction. "I find I often deal with the positive aspects of difference," she once told Something about the Author interviewer J. Sydney Jones. "Difference is good. People contribute to life and society in different ways, but everybody has something to contribute."
As a child, Klause was weaned on offbeat stories, many told to her by her father, a science-fiction buff who was also a fan of American monster and gangster films. Born in Bristol, England, Klause played in the ruins of homes destroyed during the Blitz, the bombing raids flown over England by the Nazis during World War II. At age seven, she and her family moved north to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where Klause embarked upon a lifelong love affair with books and reading during one of her first visits to the local library. The stories of such authors as C. S. Lewis, with his "Chronicles of Narnia" series, fascinated her, and she also began to do some writing of her own: self-illustrated stories about cats and kittens, poems, and even plays that she performed with her schoolmates.
From Pulp Fiction to Poetry
Klause's early exposure to fantastic literature--via the pulp novels and science fiction magazines collected by her father and scattered in piles around the house--gave her imagination a rather horrific bent. One of her first longer written works, which actually reached several chapters in length, was The Blood Ridden Pool of Solen Goom, a story that involved gallons of blood. Her first exposure to vampire stories came when Klause read Jane Gaskell's The Shiny Narrow Grin, at age fourteen. The Shiny Narrow Grin would serve as a major influence when Klause plotted her own debut novel, The Silver Kiss, many years later.Klause spent her high school years in the United States, where her family moved due to her father's career. Now living in Washington, D.C., she had left prose and now concentrated on writing poetry about the things most teen girls ponder: namely, boys, love, and how to acquire both. A naturally shy person, Klause had been an outsider in England; in the United States she was sought after as a friend due to her fellow students' fascination with her British background. "It's the British accent," Klause once explained. "It made people want to find out about me."
Poetry can be one of the most accessible mediums for adolescent writers, and Klause certainly found it so. "I wrote poetry because it could be short and I wanted instant gratification," she explained to Authors and Artists for Young Adults (AAYA). "It was especially important to an emotional teen because poetry cuts right to the emotional nub. You don't have to waste time with the frills, you can get right to the agonized point." Looking back at her early writing, she also reflected that poetry can be good training for most writers, "since it teaches you to hone down to the exact words you want, and to use startling new images that make your reader see commonplace things with new eyes." Klause attended the University of Maryland, earning her bachelor's degree in 1976 and an advanced degree in library science two years later. Despite attending several poetry workshops during college, studying and attempting to establish her career as a librarian made finding the time for writing next to impossible. But once Klause graduated, married, and established herself as a professional in the Nontgomery County, Maryland library system, she was able once again to explore her gift with words. Becoming frustrated with the quality of her poetry, she gradually switched to writing prose; "I realized I could apply all I loved about poetry to prose and not worry about iambic pentameter," she recalled to AAYA. It was while attending a writer's workshop led by children's author Larry Callen that Klause decided to challenge herself: she would write a full-length novel.
Deciding to write her novel for a young adult readership rather than for adults was one of the easiest aspects of her future book for Klause to plan; as she told J. Sydney Jones, like many adults, she's "still working through my own adolescence, so [writing for teens] seems appropriate." Thinking back to some of her favorite books during her teen years, she remembered her fascination with The Shiny Narrow Grin, and the seeds of her first novel took root. Klause reread the poems she had written while under the influence of Gaskell's vampire story, and was happy to discover more than a few good ideas and well-turned phrases within those notebook pages. In a way, Klause would later admit, it was kind of like plagiarizing herself.
The Silver Kiss Wins Kudos
In The Silver Kiss, seventeen-year-old Zoe finds her whole world in chaos as she watches her mother slowly die of cancer and her father withdraws into both his job and his sorrow. To make matters worse, her best friend and confidante is moving away. Even with her personal turmoil, Zoe remains aware of the things going on in her community--including a series of unsolved murders involving young women whose throats have been savagely cut and their bodies drained of all blood. Unafraid, she continues her evening walks in a nearby park, where she first catches sight of Simon, a handsome young man with silver hair, who turns out to be a three-hundred-year-old vampire.Simon is not the vampire responsible for the evil that has befallen Zoe's community, however; that is the work of his younger brother, Christopher, who Simon is attempting to stop. Simon feels drawn to the attractive, melancholy young woman he sees walking alone in the dark, and he and Zoe ultimately become friends, their relationship based on both a strong physical and emotional attraction. Through their friendship, Simon and Zoe help each other come to terms with their inner turmoils and fears.
Highly praised by critics almost before it was released to bookstores, The Silver Kiss was based more on Klause's imagination than on her personal experiences. "My mother is still very much alive," she told AAYA, "and no one I know has gone through the experience of losing their mother to cancer while I've known them. The situation of Zoe's mother dying was suggested by a question my writing workshop teacher asked me. (The same person who talked me into writing a novel in the first place.) I told him my idea of a romance between a girl and a vampire, and he asked me, `What would make a teenage girl so lonely and isolated that she would be susceptible to the charms of a vampire?' Once I decided that a dying mother and a friend moving away were both perfect answers, I discovered that the sub-plot leant all sorts of shadings to Zoe's relationship with Simon."
Calling Klause's debut novel "a unique contribution to the [vampire fiction] genre and to YA fiction," Voice of Youth Advocates contributor Samantha Hunt enthused that The Silver Kiss "raises larger issues such as the nature of good and evil, and the acceptance (or denial) of mortality" within its entertaining, horror-novel format. Commenting on the sexual aspects of the novel, Roger Sutton stated in a review for Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books that Klause's take on the "darkly erotic" traditional vampire story is "evoke[d] without over-the-top exploitation." And Wilson Library Bulletin reviewer Cathi MacRae contended that The Silver Kiss "marries every surefire ingredient of YA appeal with literary vision and graceful style. Gut-wrenching horror, spine-tingling suspense, a romance of impossible longing, and realistic challenges all probe a sympathetic teen heroine into new growth and insight."
Takes Aim at the Stars with Alien Secrets
While Klause had a solid grounding in vampire lore before she began The Silver Kiss, her second novel would take her into the unknown--the world of science fiction. In Alien Secrets, which was published in 1993, readers are introduced to thirteen-year-old Puck, a girl from Earth going to join her parents on the planet Shoon in disgrace, having just been kicked out of school due to her bad grades. During her space voyage, Puck meets Hush, a Shoon native who is attempting to discover who robbed him of a valuable statue that has great spiritual value for his people. Puck and Hush soon become fellow sleuths, helping each other work through their personal issues while they jointly uncover the perpetrator of the robbery.Because its mystery unfolds on a spaceship, Alien Secrets required more than the usual mystery novel's amount of preliminary research of its author. To construct her fictional world, Klause explained: "I did a certain amount of astronomy research. Which stars did scientists think might have planets around them? How far away were they and in which direction? If you were going on a trip, in which order would you go to them?" While the novel is less "hard" science-fiction--or SF--than an entertaining mystery story with some truly unique characters, Klause found that the answers to such technical questions were necessary before she could get the story off the ground.
Unlike the scientific aspects of the story, the futuristic elements of Alien Secrets were brainstormed rather than researched; Klause took the facts she had gathered, peppered them with the SF conventions she has been picking up since the fifth grade through her science-fiction reading, and then "tried to give things my own twist." In fact, she found that constructing the mystery was far more challenging than constructing the future world that frames it. "There were plenty of times I became stuck or wrote myself into a corner," Klause admitted to AAYA. "I had to make sure I planted enough clues and red herrings so the conclusion would never be obvious but would be perfectly logical and believable when it arrived. The technology and plot may not be fact, but the behavior of individuals must ring true no matter what the circumstances, else the reader won't believe the story. A writer must always be consistent and remain true to the rules of the universe she creates."
Alien Secrets "demonstrates Klause's versatility and affirms her talent," declared Voice of Youth Advocates contributor Donna L. Scanlon. Praising the novel's well-constructed plot and engaging characters, as well as its author's "mastery of the English language," Scanlon went on to note that Klause "maintains the suspense throughout and keeps the reader guessing until the very end." While Roger Sutton's enthusiasm was more restrained for Klause's second effort, he characterized Puck as a "plucky heroine" and praised the novel's non-stop action. Also praising Puck for a resilience and determination comparable to teen sleuth Nancy Drew, School Library Journal reviewer Susan L. Rogers added that Puck's "experiences with alien friends and enemies provide lessons applicable to the changing relationships between races and ethnic groups here on Earth."
"Sci-fi is a term usually used by people who don't read science fiction," Klause explained to AAYA regarding one of her favorite fiction genres and the type of person attracted to it. "It's often sarcastically applied by SF fans to bad science fiction movies. I have told the concerned parents of adolescent SF readers that they should celebrate. The young person who reads SF is often smarter than his or her schoolmates, has made the leap to abstract thought earlier than his or her colleagues, and is now engaged in exercising newfound powers of imagination and reasoning. Young SF readers have a greater ability to make leaps in perception, and the twists and turns of good science fiction are like brain candy to them. This doesn't mean they are always socially well-adapted if they spend too much time inside their heads, but many people strike a good balance. I'm sure there must be a research paper in what personality traits keep a person reading SF, but part of it is the need for adventure and a sense of wonder at the universe. While many people who read SF also read horror, I think different psychological needs are involved, and a person who loves one genre doesn't necessarily love the other. I think one of the unconscious reasons to read horror is to develop coping skills, to put a face on the fears we all have inside and fight them in the open."
Blood and Chocolate
Like The Silver Kiss, which contained "gruesome bits" that Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books contributor Roger Sutton deemed "viscerally effective, . . . with their well-spaced restraint and . . . controlled discretion," Blood and Chocolate contains more than a dash of violence. In an update of the werewolf legends, Klause spins a story of a beautiful young woman named Vivian, who can turn from woman to wolf at will. Living among others of her kind in a suburb of Maryland, she finds her affections caught between the virile Gabriel--a werewolf like herself--and the sensitive human Aiden, a "meat-boy" to her carnivorous companions. Meanwhile, pressures within her wolf pack force Vivian to come to terms with her dual nature--part socially acceptable human and part uninhibited wild animal.If Klause "cooled her vampire's Silver Kiss for the puberty set, . . . she allows her werewolves all the unbounded heat and urgency of prime adolescence," in the opinion of Horn Book reviewer Lauren Adams. Remarking on the intense sexuality of the novel's protagonist, Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books contributor Deborah Stevenson stated that Klause's story is both "powerful" and "sexy", its author "reveling in the ferality of her characters and the overtones of legend." In Voice of Youth Advocates, contributor Beverly Youree maintained that young women in particular would empathize with Vivian's "desire for popularity, her rebellion against . . . other adults, her feeling of invincibility, and her wish to be part of a group." Booklist contributor Stephanie Zvirin also had high praise for Blood and Chocolate, calling Klause's book a "totally convincing" story "that can be read as feminist fiction, as smoldering romance, as a rites of passage novel, or as a piercing reflection on human nature."
Brings Feminist Sensibility to Writing
Like Zvirin, several other critics have commented on the strong female characters that appear in Klause's stories. "I've often been able to relate to the way that guys look at things," the novelist stated, responding to the label. "I've never been much of a `girl' girl either--none of that stereotype frills and make-up stuff for me--so perhaps that accounts for the idea that my writing is feminist. I just write about the sort of strong girls I would like to be, and I think my female readers want to be." Klause's ultimate aim is to create characters that she wants to spend time developing; although the "feminist" label pleases her, it is not something she consciously set out to acquire. "It especially pleases me that young men like my books," she stated. "I love it that I am breaking that stereotype that boys won't read about girls. They will if the girls are those they can respect." Of her ability to convincingly express a male character's viewpoint, she noted that "people are people, they just have different personalities that come into play. I've always gotten on well with guys and have had many male friends. Maybe that helps."
An Eye on Her Readership and a Jury of Her Peers
Working in a library setting has allowed Klause to not only stay close to her potential audience--kids who read books--but also to the kind of books being published for the young adult market. While she noted that the majority of teens prefer a quick read, "there are those who will tackle books of enormous length if they discover an author they love. There is plenty of rubbish out there and kids gobble it down the same way adults consume their own fluff, which doesn't mean they won't read `good' books, too. . . . Young people are assigned plenty of classics by their teachers so I have no fear of them missing those; I worry more that they will hurry on to the adult section too fast and miss some of the brilliant books being written for teens. There are some truly excellent writers of young adult books that are much better writers than those writing many of the best sellers."If her career as a librarian has exposed Klause to the wide range of new writers publishing in the YA field, her continued participation in a local writer's group has helped her career as a writer immeasurably. "It helps to know that there is a group of people eagerly awaiting what you have written and will help you out of jams when you're stuck," she acknowledged. Being in such a group "means trusting the people you are working with and not taking critiques personally," explained Klause, characterizing her own group as "tough but caring." Klause advises those who wish to start a writers' group of their own to seek out a number of people "writing at about the same level that are willing to listen to each other and not hog the limelight. People must be honest but not cruel. Some people pass out copies of their work for people to look at as they read aloud, others just have the group listen. Members can take turns reading aloud their work then listening to comments. Comments can be given by anyone jumping in, or the group could go around the circle one at a time." She recommended soliciting members of a new writing group through a local school, library, or by enrolling in a creative writing class at a local adult education community recreation program.
Klause, who resides in Maryland, is currently at work on her fourth YA novel, which she would only describe as having "a weird setting, a strange love story, and bizarre characters." While her books have continued to appeal to primarily a young adult market, she looks ahead to someday writing a picture book or, at the other end of the spectrum, books for older adults--"when my inner voice grows up." "Some of my poetry has been published in the past," she also admitted, "but I don't mention Cat's Magazine to serious poets." The most gratifying aspect Klause finds about being a novelist? "When teenage girls write to me and tell me they read my books over and over. Wow!"
Born June 20, 1953, in Bristol, England; came to the United States, June, 1968; daughter of Graham Trevor (a radiologist) and Mary Frances (a homemaker; maiden name, Kempe) Curtis; married Mark Jeffrey Klause (a library assistant), August 11, 1979. Education: University of Maryland, B.A., 1976, M.L.S., 1978. Politics: "Sometimes." Religion: "Never." Hobbies and other interests: "Reading science fiction, fantasy, and horror; messing around with my computer; and listening to rock music."
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