Author Interview: Victoria Schwab

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I love fairy tales, and folklore, and books that make me wonder if the world is really as it seems. I love writing about doors, and places between, and the cracks where reality slips into something darker, stranger, and invariably more interesting.

I grew up on the west coast, but went to high school in the south, an all girls’ prep school complete with plaid skirts I used to doodle on during math.

I went to Washington University in St. Louis, where I changed course SIX times (and would have done it a seventh time, but my family and advisors said you couldn’t switch majors in your last semester). I went from Physics, to Film, to Set Design, to Art History, to English, to Communication Design.

Job-wise, I have been a clerk in a department store, where I met a very nice Erotica writer while re-hanging bras. I have been an assistant caterer and a personal chef. Because of this, I bake some mean chocolate chip cookies, can plate hors d’oeuvres, and know how to make twirling napkin towers. I was a dog daycare attendant for a few summers, and have the scars to prove it. In college, I worked in a bookstore, where I never made ANY money because I spent every check feeding my book-buying habit.

And now, I am an author. That’s still really fun to say, and I feel like I need to fact-check myself just to make sure it’s true.

I’m repped by the fiercely awesome Holly Root of Waxman Literary, and my debut novel, The Near Witch, will be released by Disney*Hyperion in August 2011.

Near Witch has such a great moral in that we should learn about someone before judging them. Have you explored other cultures very much?


I've explored fairy tales and folklore and fables, and the way those worlds work. One of the classic elements in fables is the moral, and I thought it would be fun to have one, but in a very twisted way. This is no "And the moral is..." tale, but a darker, more sinister example of what happens when we do judge, and the costs of fear. But it's certainly not meant to be preachy (that is common in classic fables and lore, and I did NOT want that), but rather one element in the larger narrative.

Near witch has such a eeriness about it, that I was pulling the covers a little tighter. Do you like ghost/horror stories?


I get asked this a lot, and I always laugh because I am the BIGGEST scaredy cat. Like, I cannot watch scary movies, especially not if I have any plans of sleeping. My imagination will take the smallest spark and run with it.

I love watching your YA Rebels vlogs. How do you feel behind the camera? Getting comfortable?


At first I was SOOOO nervous, and it showed. But over the last year and a half, I've become much more comfortable with the camera. I quite enjoy vlogging now! It's a nice way to mix things up, and lends itself, for me, more toward spontaneous posting, like the Nimbus the Narwhal post.

What is your current WIP (Work in Progress)? Can you tell me a little about it?


My next book is called THE ARCHIVED (Disney*Hyperion). I am not supposed to say much about it because it's still a ways out, but oh my love for this book. I first started playing with it almost two years ago, while waiting for my first round of NW edits, and am now in edits. It's kind of like Buffy meets The Shining meets If I Stay. With a library.

Do you have a favorite place to sit and write? Where is your favorite place to read?


It changes with each book. I tend to favor one place for a book though, if possible, because I start to associate the place with writing. NW was written almost exclusively in a coffee shop in St. Louis called Kayaks between 9 and 11 pm.

As for reading, my favorite place is either on my bed, or walking outside. My ability to read and walk is quite impressive. I only ran into one pole last year.

As a reader do you write in the same genre as you write? What is your current paranormal obsession?


I read across the entire spectrum. Right now, for instance, I'm reading a non-fiction on getting lost. Before that, I read an upcoming dystopian, Legend. So. I do enjoy fairy tales, and books with an oddness to them--The Book of Lost Things, Neverwhere--and I will say that I lean toward the supernatural, but only because I read for escapism, and I have a major weakness for magic. That said, two of my favorite books of the past year were realism--Between Shades of Gray, and Stolen.

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The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children.

If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company.



And there are no strangers in the town of Near.


These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life.

But when an actual stranger—a boy who seems to fade like smoke—appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true.

The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion. Still, he insists on helping Lexi search for them. Something tells her she can trust him.

As the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi’s need to know—about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the history of this nameless boy.

Part fairy tale, part love story, Victoria Schwab’s debut novel is entirely original yet achingly familiar: a song you heard long ago, a whisper carried by the wind, and a dream you won’t soon forget.

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