Q&A: T. Kingfisher, Author of ‘The Hollow Places’

T. Kingfisher is the pen name used by the popular children’s author and illustrator Ursula Vernon when she releases books for adult audiences. Fret not, Kingfisher fans, there isn’t long to wait as her new horror novel The Hollow Places is due out on October 6th!

We had the opportunity to discuss the inspiration behind her pen name, how ADHD influences her writing process, her unusual childhood ambition and hilariously improbable potential cause of death plus much more! Read on for T. Kingfisher’s entertaining and whimsical answers!

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us! Firstly, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Absolutely! Well, I’m T. Kingfisher, which is my pen name when I’m writing for adults. (In my other life, I’m a children’s book author.) I live in North Carolina with my husband, I garden obsessively, I like bugs, heirloom beans, hound dogs, and video games. Also I write books. Fantasy, horror, fairy-tale retellings, that sort of thing.

When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I really wanted to be a Vulcan. (Come to think of it, I still wouldn’t mind.)

What inspired you to begin writing? Can you share what your writing process is like with us?

Despite my early dreams of being a Vulcan, I also wanted to be a writer. Lots of kids do, of course, but I had enough early talent that my teachers encouraged me, so it never occurred to me that I couldn’t do it. Once I was in college, I had a very bad English professor and a very good art professor, so I decided to go into art. Also I thought there would be more money in it.  (Insert rising hysterical laughter here.) Eventually I wound up in comics, and from comics to kid’s books, and then I started taking the stuff I was writing for adults more seriously, and here we are!

My writing process is very much defined by the fact that I have significant ADHD. I’m usually working on four or five different projects at any one time. If I’m working on one and I think of what happens next on another project, I just pull up the Word doc and start writing on that one. I have friends who have to go full immersion in one project and can’t switch to another, and I’m glad it works for them, but I need a bunch of things going (And yes, I do finish them!)

As T. Kingfisher, you’ve explored fairytale retellings in books like Bryony & Roses (my all-time favorite!) and The Raven and the Reindeer. Have you always been drawn to fairytales since you were a child or did your interest in these stories come later in life?

I’ve always read fairy tales! As a kid, I had some very, very old books that my mother picked up somewhere, and one of them was the My Book House series from 1920, which had a couple of fairy tale collections. And I think I had Old Peter’s Russian Tales. I must have re-read them a few hundred times growing up. Once the internet came along, I discovered the D. L. Ashliman folktext archive online. I worked a job for awhile on a streetlight outage hotline, and once everyone else had gone home, there was absolutely nothing to do but wait for calls, so I’d read folk tales for hours. (Interesting job. Some very strange people call about streetlights going out.)

If you were going to tackle another fairytale in the future, which one would most appeal to you and why?

Probably one of the Animal Bridegroom stories. Some of them get very bizarre, but have great imagery. Although I’ve also always loved some of the Russian fairy tales with the talking horses that tell the hero how to save the day. The talking horses deserve a chance to narrate, or maybe just someone to commiserate with about what fools the heroes are.

How would you describe your upcoming book The Hollow Places in one sentence?

Oh god, I’m bad at these. I think my pitch to my agent was “If Algernon Blackwood wrote Night At The Museum.” Uh. Uh. “Newly divorced and working at her uncle’s roadside museum, Kara discovers a doorway to another reality and comes to the attention of unknowable cosmic horrors.” Something like that?

The heroines in both The Twisted Ones and The Hollow Places have a curiosity about the strange and unknown that they often come to regret indulging, though it makes things exciting for us readers! If you were the heroine in these novels, do you think you’d also investigate any bizarre occurrences or would you be more cautious?

Oh, I’d be right there with my phone going “What’s this? And what’s this? Ooooh! Let me get a photo!” I will probably die by falling into a volcano while looking up at a bird. Things are just so interesting! (One of these days, I’ll write a book where somebody opens a portal to another dimension and immediately hires a botanical illustrator to document everything…)

You’ve created some wonderful animal characters in goofy Bongo the coonhound and haughty Beauregard the museum tabby, among others. Which has been the most fun to write?

Bongo the coonhound was an absolute delight to write. He’s basically a genderflipped version of my own hound, who is fearless and good-natured and dumber than a sack of wet mice. And I can never kill off the animal characters in my books, so readers can rest assured that the dog will live. (I make no promises for humans.)

On a side-note, I’ve always wondered what made you choose the pseudonym T. Kingfisher? What does the ‘T’ stand for?

The. Or possibly Terrance.

As for why I chose it…oh, well, a couple of things came together. I love kingfishers. One of the greatest moments of my life was seeing a Giant Kingfisher in the wild. And Ursula K. LeGuin had a story published in Playboy once, and they asked to use her initials instead of her name, because girl cooties. She wrote somewhere that she wondered what on earth they’d think U. K. stood for—Ulysses Kingfisher?

You’ve written a variety of books in different genres aimed at different age groups and even in different mediums with comics and graphic novels! Do you have a preference for one category or medium? Are there particular advantages to one over another?

Heh! Well, I’m easily distracted, and when I see something done well, I usually go “Oooh! I wonder if I could do that!” Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages. Comics take forever to draw, but people seem to get emotionally invested in a comic much faster than they do in a comparable amount of text. I love that. But I also love being able to just write a scene in a cathedral without having to draw the cathedral from seven different angles!

As for genres and age groups…I often say that inside every children’s book author is a horror author waiting to get out. There’s a kind of immediate, visceral quality to writing for children that translates really well to horror. And after about five books, every time your editor says “This is too gory/graphic/weird/surreal/downright wrong for a kid’s book,” all the things you’re not allowed to do pile up and compress down into diamond and one day you snap and yell “Oh that’s it, I’m gonna write something with sex and death and entrails!” (Errr…not all on the same page. I’m not Clive Barker.)

You’re known for your writing and your artwork – do you have any other hidden talents? What is a skill you’d like to develop if you had time?

Lord, there’s tons of skills I’d love to develop, but not many I’m actively working on. I garden. A lot. Lately I’ve been taking a lot of macro photos of insects. Sometimes I think I should have been an entomologist. Does insect identification count as a skill?

Can you tell us anything about what you’re working on next?

Goodness! Well, I’m working on another of my North Carolina horror novels, featuring a herpetologist and some very strange frogs. And I’ve also got the next two novels in my fantasy romance series about paladins in the works as well, and occasionally I noodle around on a little graphic novel hybrid thing about a cute little sheep in a terrifying eldritch wood. So, y’know. Never a dull moment, really.

And finally, what books have you read lately? Do you have any recommendations?

I really enjoyed Harrow the Ninth, but that’s probably been recommended by everyone by now. If you’re a horror fan, John Langan’s The Fisherman is one of the best things I’ve read recently and seemed to go really under the radar.

Will you be picking up The Hollow Places? Tell us in the comments below!