#loreen carver

[hollyand-writes]

Eight People I’d Like To Know Better

Thanks to @mhandersmyheart and @gremlinquisitor and @gothkimmyschmidt for tagging me! ❤️ 

Name/Alias: Holly or Hollyand (not my real name, but it’ll do!) 

Birthday: End of September! 

Zodiac Sign: Libra 

Height: 159cm (just under 5 foot 3 inches)

Hobbies: Dragon Age 2, writing, editing, lifting weights, karaoke/singing, watching and yelling at football (soccer, for the Americans among you), petting all the kitties, long walks, partying in Ibiza, travelling the world 

Favourite Colour: Green or purple 

Favourite Book: Probably “Pride & Prejudice” by Jane Austen...? However, special mentions for (among others): “Persuasion” by Jane Austen, “Cold Comfort Farm” by Stella Gibbons, “Matilda” by Roald Dahl, “An Inspector Calls” by J B Priestley, “The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga, and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde (plus an obscure non-fiction book about Dutch football LMAO) 

Last Song I Heard: “Euphoria” by Loreen. Quite aside from being a Eurovision Song Contest winner, it’s just a really uplifting clubland Eurodance track. I love it. Makes me so happy when I hear it.

Last Film I Watched: Like T, I don’t watch a lot of movies. It’ll be something I watched either on the plane or on the rare occasion I download a movie to watch at home. I can’t remember what I last watched. It might have been the 1996 movie “Emma”, based on the Jane Austen novel of that name...

Inspiration for my muse(s): I’m not really sure? I get inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. My main problem is having the time or motivation to write all the ideas I have! Especially when it comes to Carver/Merrill... you guys have NO IDEA how many fic ideas I have jotted down for them that’ll never see the light of day because I have no time to write them all!

Dream Job: Honestly, something similar to what I do now, which is professional writer and editor. I’ve been very lucky that I’ve been able to make a living out of this -- i.e. pay my mortgage and bills from this career -- for the past decade or so. Self-employment / freelancing definitely comes with its own challenges, and you have to be so, so disciplined and adaptable, and comfortable with discomfort, but I love it. It suits me much better than being a full-time employee ever did. 

Meaning Behind the URL: OH MY GOD -- I picked the dumbest URL/username for my fandom life and I’ve regretted it ever since 😂 So, here’s the thing: I’ve never had an online presence before that wasn’t under my real name / for work purposes?!?! Like, I was in my early 30s when I wrote and posted my first-ever fanfic -- and as I was signing up to Archive Of Our Own (it was around Christmas 2013) I realised I needed a username (for some reason it never occurred to me before LOL). So without much thought or consideration, I plumped for “hollyand” because the Christmas carol “The Holly and the Ivy” was playing, and I thought “hollyandivy” might be too long, LOL. I’ve regretted this dumb username ever since BUT WHAT CAN I DO NOW 😂  (Another dumb username story: it genuinely never occurred to me that people would start calling me Holly because of my username, or that people would think my real name was Holly because of it. Like I said, I really didn’t think this through. I embraced it when I set up my fandom twitter account though -- it became the basis of a pen-name of mine.) 

I tag the following 8 people: @tortuosity-writes, @aban-asaara, @dorianpink, @barbex, @ayantiel, @norageonlypancakes, @andrew-blackthorn, @natsora