Annette Curtis Klause

Author profile

born

in Bristol, England, The United Kingdom

January 01, 1953

gender

female

website

http://humanoddity.blogspot.com/

genre

Science Fiction & Fantasy

About this author

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Annette Curtis Klause broke new ground in young adult literature with The Silver Kiss, a book that is at once "sexy, scaring, and moving," according to Roger Sutton writing in the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. A vampire love story, Klause's first novel is a darkly seductive thriller with heart and message.

Born in Bristol, England, in 1953, Klause became fascinated with grisly things at an early age. "My mother read and sang to me," Klause explained. "But my daddy used to sit me on his lap and tell me the plots to gangster and monster movies. I knew all about Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Jimmy Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson before I ever saw any of their movies." Her father also let her speak to Willoughby, an imaginary little...more Annette Curtis Klause broke new ground in young adult literature with The Silver Kiss, a book that is at once "sexy, scaring, and moving," according to Roger Sutton writing in the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. A vampire love story, Klause's first novel is a darkly seductive thriller with heart and message.

Born in Bristol, England, in 1953, Klause became fascinated with grisly things at an early age. "My mother read and sang to me," Klause explained. "But my daddy used to sit me on his lap and tell me the plots to gangster and monster movies. I knew all about Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Jimmy Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson before I ever saw any of their movies." Her father also let her speak to Willoughby, an imaginary little boy who lived down his throat.

When she was seven, Klause and her family moved north to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She recalls that her first experience with creative writing occurred when she was incapacitated with a twisted ankle at age eight or nine. Klause wrote a poem about her mother ironing and decided from then on to save all her poems in a notebook. Soon she was writing and illustrating her own books, mostly about a cat and the kittens she has. At age ten she and a neighborhood friend began making up plays and performing them on a tape recorder. "The plays usually involved some kind of humorous mistake," Klause recalled, "like a woman calling up a plant nursery instead of a nursery school for her child."

It was also about this time when Klause wrote her first (unpublished) bit of horror, The Blood Ridden Pool of Solen Goom. Each of the chapters ended with ". . . and more blood flowed into the blood ridden pool of Solen Goom." Increasingly she read fantasy and science-fiction books, in addition to Mark Twain and, as she got older, the beatnik books of Jack Kerouac. "I wanted desperately to be a beatnik," she remembered. She also read her first vampire book at age fourteen: Jane Gaskell's The Shiny Narrow Grin, which was Klause's initial inspiration for her first novel many years later. "I was smitten by the pale young man who appeared in a few suspenseful scenes," Klause related, "and became mesmerized with the whole concept of vampires." Initially, Klause responded to this fascination by writing poetry, which she described as "a pretentious, over-written, dreadful sequence of poems interspersed with prose called The Saga of the Vampire[also unpublished]." These early writings would later become invaluable for Klause when she set out on the journey of her first novel.

Klause's life was distinctly changed when she was fifteen and her father moved the family to Washington, DC, for career reasons. In high school Klause continued writing poetry. After finishing college in 1976, Klause went on to graduate school in library science. She took poetry workshops in college, but poetry was soon replaced by short stories once she graduated and started working in libraries. Klause began sending her work out to magazines, collecting numerous rejection letters. Several of her poems and a short story were published in anthologies and small magazine reviews, but it took several years of concerted effort to find her voice and her audience.

"I finally took a writing workshop with Larry Callen, a well-known children's writer," Klause noted. "I knew I wanted to write for young people. I'm still working through my own adolescence, so it seemed appropriate. I continued with further ones. I still go to the writing group Larry Callen introduced me to, and often chuckle about how an idea or action will affect the people in my group even as I am writing." Klause soon graduated from short stories, and with the help and encouragement of Callen, set to work on a novel. "I wanted to write for teenagers, so I thought back to what I liked to read at that age. In a way, I stole from myself with The Silver Kiss, because I looked at my old writing notebooks and found the vampire poem I had written as a t(less)

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Annette Curtis Klause's Blog

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Magick 4 Terri

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Annette Curtis Klause's Books

Average rating: 3.71 · 35,317 ratings · 2,626 reviews · 7 distinct works · Similar authors

	Blood and Chocolate 3.76 of 5 stars 3.76 avg rating — 23,101 ratings — published 1997 — 27 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Silver Kiss 3.6 of 5 stars 3.60 avg rating — 9,849 ratings — published 1990 — 25 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Freaks: Alive, on the Inside! 3.68 of 5 stars 3.68 avg rating — 667 ratings — published 2006 — 7 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Alien Secrets 3.38 of 5 stars 3.38 avg rating — 377 ratings — published 1993 — 12 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Welcome to Bordertown by Holly Black (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Terri Windling (Goodreads Author) (Contributor), Cory Doctorow (Contributor) 4.05 of 5 stars 4.05 avg rating — 1,014 ratings — published 2011 — 10 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Restless Dead: Ten Original Stories of the Supernatural by Deborah Noyes (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Herbie Brennan, Nancy Etchemendy 3.5 of 5 stars 3.50 avg rating — 333 ratings — published 2007 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sideshow: Ten Original Tales of Freaks, Illusionists and Other Matters Odd and Magical by Deborah Noyes (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Aimee Bender (Goodreads Author), Matt Phelan 3.49 of 5 stars 3.49 avg rating — 75 ratings — published 2009	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Annette Curtis Klause

“I'd like to give you my heart, but since that might be inconvenient, I've brought you someone else's.”
― Annette Curtis Klause, Blood and Chocolate

tags: threat

168 people liked it

“Why me?" she asked, holding on to him.

"Because you cared," he whispered. "You cared so much for your people, it broke your heart to see the pack in ruins. You cared so much for your mother, you risked your life for hers. You cared enough to save someone who wanted you dead. And because you walk like a queen.”
― Annette Curtis Klause, Blood and Chocolate

tags: desire, love, reasons-why

116 people liked it

“He was raw and sharp and rich and throbbing with life. He was sweet blood after a long hunt. How could she have mistaken Aiden's kisses for this? They had been delicious and smooth like the brief comfort of chocolate, but they had never been enough.”
― Annette Curtis Klause, Blood and Chocolate

tags: completion, desire, love

78 people liked it

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Polls

What books do you want to read in February 2009?

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause

3 votes, 37.5%

Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassotti

2 votes, 25.0%

Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear

2 votes, 25.0%

Crimson City by Liz Maverick

1 vote, 12.5%

Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold

0 votes, 0.0%

8 total votes

2 comments

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