Kiwi bestselling author Steffanie Holmes, whose new book, Fangs for Nothing, is out now.
Kiwi bestselling author Steffanie Holmes, whose new book, Fangs for Nothing, is out now.
As a child, Steffanie Holmes was “always writing novels”. Now 40, she’s since published more than 40 books – but becoming a writer wasn’t always the plan.
Holmes is a trained archaeologist who once dreamed of being a museum curator.
“I struggled a lot with finding a job, in largepart because of discrimination, because I am legally blind,” she tells the Herald from her home in South Head.
“Basically, people thought I couldn’t be trusted around artefacts, or I was a health and safety risk, and all this stupid stuff. And I was too young and too naive to really push back on it.”
Holmes also has a rare condition called achromatopsia, meaning she has no colour vision.
Steffanie Holmes (left), pictured at a Wild and Windy West book event in Phoenix, Arizona, is a Kiwi fantasy writer who has sold more than a million copies of her books.
“I didn’t really know how authors made a living or anything like that, so I started doing copywriting and content writing for people. At the same time, I was writing novels and pitching them to traditional publishers and getting a lot of rejections.”
The rise of self-publishing and the gift of a Kindle – “I loved it, because you could make every book large-print and it’s so light” – led Holmes to publish her first fantasy series independently.
“It did terribly, but I loved it – I loved the whole process.”
A pivotal moment came when she found herself discussing with a friend the then-recently released 50 Shades of Grey, which she admits she’d “tried to read and hadn’t loved ... I was rubbishing it just a bit”.
In response, her friend teased her saying she was “too innocent” to write something similar.
“I thought, well, challenge accepted,” Holmes says with a laugh.
“So I went home and in three weeks I wrote a 30,000-word romance novella, a paranormal romance about a fox shapeshifter. I paid someone $50 to make a cover for it and published it under a secret pen name.”
She thought in a few months’ time she’d tell her friend about it and they’d “have a laugh”. Then it sold 1000 copies in just one week.
“That was 2015, and I’ve basically been publishing a book roughly every two months since then.”
In order to write, Holmes wears coloured prescription glasses with polarised lenses to cut out glare, and uses a large, curved screen very close to her face.
“I use a large font and I reverse everything, so I have a black background with white text instead of the other way around. I usually have the curtain closed in my office, and my office itself is quite dark.”
She’s since sold more than a million copies of her books and signed with Simon & Schuster in December, following her “best year ever” in 2024.
Kiwi bestselling author Steffanie Holmes.
Her success comes amid the resurgence of fantasy and “romantasy” – a blend of the fantasy and romance genres – as readers look for an escape from the everyday.
“I’ve been in the industry long enough, writing similar things, that I’ve seen a few ebbs and flows,” Holmes notes.
“One thing we notice is that when the world is in a bit of turmoil, two things tend to happen – really dark, grim books get really popular, and also the escapist, fun books get really popular. I feel like we’re seeing that at the moment."
The demographic of romance readers has also grown in recent years, thanks to social media.
“It’s been really interesting seeing this new group of readers come up, mainly through TikTok and that generation. When I started writing romance, we always talked about [how] romance readers are, generally speaking, women aged 35 to 55. And a lot of them are in the South and Midwest of America.
“Now when we talk about romance readers, we’re talking about people in their 20s, from all over. It’s become much more cool and much more mainstream.”
Holmes draws on elements of the genres she loves, from thriller to crime, and on her own experiences. Her Nevermore Bookshop series is one of her favourites, perhaps because it reflects her own story.
“The heroine Mina is going progressively blind throughout the books. In the first book, she loses her dream job – people think she can’t do it anymore because she’s going blind – and she ends up back in her small English village and gets a job at this local bookshop. Unbeknownst to her, the bookshop is magical, and it brings infamous villains from classic literature to life.
“They’re very fun books. There’s a lot of humour in them, but it’s a really personal story as well, so that’s probably why it’s my favourite, and it’s probably why it’s readers’ favourite as well.”
Her newest book Fangs for Nothing, which was released on Wednesday, is set in the same universe. Holmes hopes it will breathe new life into a well-worn genre.
“It’s one of the very first books I’ve written about vampires, which are my favourite supernatural creatures – I can’t believe it’s taken this long,” she jokes.
“There was a big vampire phase, but it basically ended when Twilight ended. I have been waiting for vampires to come back, and they have finally.”
The book’s main character, Winnie, is a professional organiser hired by Alaric, a vampire who needs help decluttering his castle so his mother can host a ball.
“He’s one of those people who I think many of us relate to or are, who has obsessive hobbies. The problem is he’s 500 years old, so he has filled his castle with the remnants of every single one of these hobbies that he’s had or obsessions that he’s had ... it’s just this really fun concept.”
For Holmes, it’s key to ground every fantasy narrative in reality: “In order for them to resonate with people, there has to be some core human story in them, and I try really hard to bring that out.”
Her advice to aspiring writers is to shut out the noise and “finish the book first” before worrying about how to get published.
“I had published four or five books before I found the genre that I was meant to be writing. I published 33 before I had a book that was what we would consider a hit,” she shares.
“So if you really want this, you have to keep going. Don’t quit before the miracle happens, because it could be right around the corner.”
Fangs for Nothing (Atria, $37.99) by Steffanie Holmes is on sale now.
