The Write Stuff Featuring Mutli-Genre Author and Poet, Stephenson Holt
Interviews with Amazing Authors!
G. LAWRENCE IN THE BOOK NOOK
MAY 27th 2026
Welcome to The Write Stuff, a feature on Substack offering you a chance to get to know new authors and understand more about some of your favourites too. This week we are chatting with Multi-Genre Author and Poet Stephenson Holt who has kindly agreed to share his time with us as we talk about how it all began for him, as he offers some excellent advice for budding authors and chocolate lovers, and he answers a question we never thought to ask!
Author and Poet, Stephenson Holt
So, let’s do the part that makes all interviewees uncomfortable… Stand up, please, and introduce yourself to the class!
My pen-name is Stephenson Holt, and I’m an addicted Author.
I had to look it up to find out that I started writing ten years ago, while I was still working as a Building Surveyor, and retiring has not made me more prolific in writing as I’d expected, because of various grandparent duties. I’m now seventy-two and have thirty-three books self-published under my pen name (a hundred and thirty-seven if you include translations into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and German,) including mainly novels but with two collections of poetry and shorts.
I’m a proud Welshman (rugby fan, but then we all are,) who not only loses themselves in writing, but I can also lose myself in reading, and with freshwater fishing on lonely, country ponds with my grandson. A keen photographer (amateur) I have over two thousand shots logged with an international agency, (Alamy where I’m known as Clive Thompson,) and love to see the world through a camera lens. (All photos at https://bit.ly/4bHCWRW)
Great introduction! so what’s your latest project?
I tend to jump from project to project as the mood takes me. My latest, published novel is “There Must Be Daffodils,” with its subtitle of ‘a cozy, clean, strangers-to-lovers-novel’ which I found difficult to write as ‘cozy-clean’ which probably says a lot for my other novels that mainly involve witches, vampires, and succubus (or is it Succubi?)
The main female role in ‘Daffodils’ was Ashley and so her best friend Cam was the obvious subject for book two in that series, and that book two now sits, half completed, in a metaphoric top drawer.
Also in that top drawer, to keep Cam’s story company, is a half-completed steampunk version of Macbeth, following the success of my Steampunk Romeo and Juliet. In that half-version of Macbeth the three witches are vampire hags that see futures and have high value bets on certain outcomes.
Half written as well, but not my fault this time, is a follow up to “Newbie Anglers” which follows the first year of angling for my grandson and me, the second year being only half completed. I think you might be now learning that I’m a multi-genre author who likes to experiment in new things.
All of these novels can be found on my website at www.StephensonHolt.com including pages on the German versions, Spanish versions, reviews of novels that I’ve enjoyed, and a blog about writing, fishing, and health. The health blog is about the promotion of men testing with PSA tests for prostate cancer, and follows another of my novels (Sea Fishing Lures For Prostate Problems,) which chronicles my week in Cornwall, sea fishing, shortly after finding out that I had terminal prostate cancer and my extended family holidayed in Greece while I was treated at home.
I must add here that I greatly admire someone having the courage and honesty to write about such a personal subject.
What book is on your bedside table at the moment?
The book I’m reading at the moment is called Dear Elliott by Ari Burton. Ari Burton is an author who recently changed pen-names and is an Australian male/male writer who I admire greatly. Although not that way inclined myself, I find that Ari (female) is so descriptive and gets into your head so easily that I read everything she writes as soon as it comes out. This particular novel is a bit ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ type of thing with a male reporter interviewing a male murderer.
Sat underneath that book is a completely read “Some Unexpected Vacation Baggage,” by an American novelist, D. S. Kinahan. It follows a holiday romp of a thrown-together couple touring part of America and, yet again, everything she writes is eagerly sought out by me as soon as it’s published.
Tell us about a favourite book or piece of work you’ve written.
The book I got most pride in completing was Romeo and Juliet, the Steampunk Version. That might sound surprising at first because the story was already written by ‘Our Will’ and I was adapting it. It has all the original dialogue in my story, but translated into modern speech so that it’s more understandable, and took a year’s worth of research to find out and amplify the nuances that Shakespeare’s audience would have recognised and we, a modern audience, would see going over our heads.
Tell us about your favourite book/s by other people.
My favourite book by another author is easily, “The Ten Thousand Doors Of January,” by Alix E. Harrow. It’s a novel that I got lost in and read over a couple of days on my Kindle. I keep meaning to purchase a paper copy to re-read but life is hectic at the moment as any retiree will probably tell you.
Share a book that you’ve always wanted to read but haven’t yet.
I once started reading Zola’s Rougon-Macquart Cycle (in English) where each novel drops down one stage in a family’s family tree. I believe I got about half way through something like thirty novels and wish I’d had time to complete the series.
Also, anything by Jean Paul Sartre, because “Nausea” greatly inspired me, as a teenager, and pushed me to read more by Sartre, including a trilogy, but there’s a lot more out there that I haven’t read. In fact, now that I think about it, a quote from Sartre’s partner, Simone De Beauvoir, inspired the writing of my third novel “Behind Greek Doors,” where the female protagonist is pushed down by a cheating husband and is left a copy of Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex,” after a diner at her taverna works out what is happening.
Share a classic you tried to read and just couldn’t finish.
The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer. It was on my book shelf for years and I dipped into it now and again thinking it would inspire me, or somehow make me more knowledgeable, but it was just too big a task and got ditched eventually. Maybe for others it’s War and Peace which I also started and couldn’t finish.
Tell us about the best, or worst (!) research trip you’ve taken.
I don’t travel far for research trips. When I was a sole trading building surveyor, working as a limited company, I asked my accountant if I could holiday on a small Greek Island as background to my next book and he told me, emphatically, no.
One trip that gave me lots of research answers though was a trip to Cyprus with a day trip to Northern Cyprus (not officially recognised by anyone except Turkey). Our tour guide was the lady that gave Victoria Hislop background for her novel “Sunrise” about the Sunrise Hotel. We toured with this guide and even stood on the beach to see the once beautiful hotel resort of Varosha with its bombed buildings and Turkish soldiers eyeing us suspiciously. Having written “Greek Island Vampires” and “Greek Mainland Vampires,” the third book “Greek Cypriot Vampires” was inspired by that day out.
What’s the hardest thing about writing?
Some, or even most authors will say editing, I think, but I enjoy it. The hard part of writing for me is to complete a novel and then put it away for a month or two, so that I can edit with fresh eyes. I write using Scrivener and back up to MS Word so once I’ve edited a few times in Word, I will use the Speech function in Word and close my eyes and listen on headphones for anything that is either plainly wrong or clunky.
What’s the easiest thing about writing?
What I find easiest and also most enjoyable, is writing late on in the day, sleeping and dreaming, and then waking the next morning with the next chapter somehow in my head. Because I’m mostly a morning writer, things then start to flow after a night’s sleep in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way.
And what’s the best thing about writing?
I would say getting a review, no matter how good or bad that review is. I know that avid readers finish a book and then move onto their next choice, but if someone stops to write a short review after reading one of my novels, it means the world to me.
How did you start out?
I’ve wracked my brain over this question and cannot come up with an answer. I have no idea what inspired me to write my first novel, “Waiting For Kitto,” and didn’t know at that time that it would become a trilogy.
What I do remember succinctly, to partly answer a question you didn’t ask, was what inspired a later trilogy about Greek vampires and how that started. I’ve already mentioned that trilogy and the first novel was started while sat at a hotel swimming pool on a small Greek Island. I was reading on an iPad when two Italian women, one much older than the other, sat on the adjoining sunbeds, even though the rest of the pool was unattended. My head whirled around these two Italians being female vampires that wanted to recruit me, that recruitment was through a triple action of love making being extended by biting, and that I’d already been bitten once by a former lover. Reading quickly turned to writing and the first three chapters were hurried off that day and a rough draft completed by the end of the holiday week. The following books in the trilogy were harder to write though.
(I love people answering questions I didn’t ask!)
Any advice for budding authors?
I’ve learned a lot over the years on self-promotion and shy away from those on Fiver and the like that will promote for a fee. I wrote a blog-post on this at https://bit.ly/4lcbopk called Promoting Your Book Yourself For Free, where I pass all these tips on. One big thing I would say though is if you are writing your first book, do it for the love of writing and not to become a rich best-seller. For most of us, it isn’t going to happen, even if you eventually get an agent.
Now on to the important questions…
In your opinion, what is the best biscuit/ cookie/ snack in the world?
Chocolate, and I mean real chocolate with no palm oil. Current favourite is Tony’s but I also like dark eighty-percent cocoa chocolate. Buy it, keep it in the fridge, break off an occasional square while you are writing and if you see chocolate on your fingers, then put the bar back in the fridge.
What drink do you prefer when writing?
Surely it can only be coffee. Tea is nice but not enough of a stimulant to aid writing. Coffee when writing, tea when relaxing, hot Oxo as a treat.
Silence or music whilst you write?
Silence, and I’ve never understood those that write with music on in the background. When I’m writing I’m in my head, not in a room, and if music tries to get into my head, then it’s a distraction. I once had a conversation with an author who picked music to play to suit what he was writing, and for dark scenes, or battle scenes, he would listen to Mahler! The very worst that I can imagine is playing music with words to accompany it. Surely the lyrics would interfere. I would end up going off-script and writing down the lyrics.
Describe your writing area
I write remotely, from a Macbook Pro, so have no fixed place to write. It could be sat up in bed with a cappuccino in the morning, sat on a couch during the day, annoyingly taking up valuable space in a coffee shop (writing and listening to conversations,) or taking notes on my phone. One thing I dropped, years ago, was writing longhand and then transferring that to a manuscript which I found tiresome.
And lastly…
Where can we find you?
My Amazon Author Website is at https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B071KGPSSS?ingress=0&visitId=18f742d0-984e-40ef-aa94-b48ba30b3d09&ref_=ap_rdr&ccs_id=4e9a10d7-dfe7-46f5-90d5-22c5abd61ddb but that would only give you my novels written in English.
My website, which includes those novels written in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and German is at www.StephensonHolt.com and is far more comprehensive.
I used to have a large Twitter following but got banned for some reason best known to X and nobody else, so …
My Bluesky is growing slowly at @authorstephenson.bsky.social where I spend an hour each day. Reposting those that have reposted me – which is possibly what X didn’t like.
I have a presence on Facebook where I used to lean heavily on groups but don’t seem to have the time for that now. I still post around twice weekly at https://www.facebook.com/Stephenson.Holt and enjoy interacting there.
LinkedIn seems to be a growing thing among authors and anything I post on Facebook, usually gets added to LinkedIn at the snappy address of https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenson-holt-38b52416b/
Instagram sees posts of my books, my fish caught, my grandson’s fish caught (which are always bigger) and his links to his Lego Star Wars stop-motion site. All of these are at https://www.instagram.com/stephenson.holt/?hl=en
I enjoy conversations with other authors on Threads and also advertise books on that site but try to keep a healthy mix of the two things. If that is your thing then you can find me at https://www.threads.com/@stephenson.holt
Wordpress is not a huge site for me but I can be found there and the posts I place there are mainly mirror images of my blog posts on my own website. Anyway, the site is at https://authorstephensonblog.wordpress.com
Looking back on all those links now, it seems that us shy, introvert, authors need a way to be anonymous but out there anyway, and social media is the way to do that.
Where can we find your books?
I’m solely at Amazon and publish through KDP and get the maximum percentage back by being so. Every few years I will remove a book from exclusivity on Amazon and try other sites, find nothing happens and return to Amazon. As my father, when he was alive, once said, you might not like being dictated to by those in power, but you have to play the system. He was talking about Margaret Thatcher selling off council houses and him buying his at a ridiculously low cost, but the same applies.
And Fin! Many thanks to Stephenson Holt for talking to us today and to all my readers I hope you will check out the work of this amazing author!
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