A Q&A Interview with Holly Race

Holly Race’s debut novel Midnight’s Twins is a complex, inventive fantasy adventure set in a mirror world populated by dreamers who are protected by knights. Fern King enters this world at the same time as her twin brother to train as a knight. Soon she is facing a deadly enemy bent on taking over the world of Annwn and making it his own.

Holly answered our questions about Midnight’s Twins.

Can you tell us about the inspiration for Midnight’s Twins?

I’ve always had very vivid nightmares, and I started to wonder what would happen if those nightmares were somehow real. Following that train of thought, I started to imagine a dream world where if we are killed by our nightmares, we die in the ‘real’ world too. Everything else stemmed from that.

You make the dreamworld of Annwn really vivid. How big a dreamer are you?

For as long as I can remember I’ve been prone to having extremely intense dreams and nightmares – the kind where you wake up and have to remind yourself that it was just a dream. Obviously not everyone dreams in the same way though, so when I was shaping Annwn I tried to honour the common dreams a lot of us have (like teeth falling out, for instance) while trying to make the world feel as exciting as possible. I also wanted to make Annwn somewhere that people would want to visit and explore, despite its dangers!

Do you feel that during lockdown dreams have become a bigger part of all our lives?

There’s been a lot of press about people having more vivid dreams, hasn’t there? I suppose that’s not really surprising, as most of us have had more time to think as well as more tension in our everyday lives – particularly at the start of lockdown. Personally, I’ve found it quite difficult to sleep over this period, but I have spent more time re-evaluating my dreams for the future. The things that I had thought were important to me have shifted slightly during lockdown.

Midnight’s Twins draws on Welsh mythology. What is it about Welsh legends that so appeals?

To be honest, I drew from Welsh mythology partly for quite a superficial reason; I love the language! I mean, I still can’t really pronounce anything correctly, but I’m getting better! I’ve always been fascinated by mythology in general – I used to spend hours poring over the web of connections between different world folklores. But Midnight’s Twins is set in the UK, so that’s why I wanted to draw on Welsh and Celtic mythology to bring this version of Annwn to life. I’ve been studying a lot of lesser known Arthurian legends and Celtic folktales over the last few months, and I’m excited to introduce them into book two.

This is your debut novel. What was the biggest challenge you faced writing it?

The biggest challenge by far was the fear of failure. I spent a long time planning the book and building the world. While that was useful, it was definitely a form of procrastination, to put off actually writing. I was frightened of how big the story is, and how much I wanted to say with it. It’s still a struggle to accept that I won’t ever be able to write exactly what I want to write, because I’m still a fledgling writer and even the most experienced writers always have something to learn.

What is your favourite scene in the book and why?

I can’t say too much, because this scene comes at a climactic point in the book, but about half-way through, Fern enters the main antagonist’s fortress to rescue someone, and ends up biting off more than she can chew. It’s kind of a classic ‘innermost cave’ moment (for anyone who hasn’t read Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey; the innermost cave usually marks the midpoint of a story, where the hero faces their greatest challenge yet), but it also introduces one of my favourite characters, as well as showing Fern exactly what, and who, she’s up against.

You used to work in TV and film script development.  How has that shaped your writing for young people?

My readers have said that they find my book quite filmic – I do write a lot of action, which definitely stems from my film and TV experience. I think working as a script editor has also helped me when I’m plotting my story, although it can be a bit of a drag, because I’m constantly editing myself as I write! I find readers of MG and YA tend to prefer pacier books, and with TV we tend to look for a big twist at least every ten minutes (I’m generalising massively here, by the way!), so I think having that mindset already did help when I was writing.

This is part one of a trilogy. Have you planned out the whole series?

Yes, the whole trilogy was planned before the first book was published, although I’ve tweaked some elements in the wake of editing book one! One character who was going to die has had a reprieve, but two who were going to survive are getting the chop…

Midnight’s Twins is published by Hot Key Books, 978-1471409165, £7.99 pbk