| Tanya Huff | |
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Tanya Huff at Ohio Valley Filk Festival 2005 |
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| Born | 1957 Halifax, Nova Scotia |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Genres | Fantasy & Science-fiction |
Tanya Sue Huff (born 1957) is a Canadian fantasy author. Her stories have been published since the late 1980s, including five fantasy series and one science-fiction series. One of these, her Blood Books series, featuring detective Vicki Nelson, was adapted for television under the title Blood Ties.
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Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Huff was raised in Kingston, Ontario. Her first sale as a writer was to The Picton Gazette when she was ten. They paid $10 for two of her poems. Huff joined the Canadian Naval Reserve in 1975 as a cook, ending her service in 1979. In 1982 she received a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree in Radio and Television Arts from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, Ontario; she was in the same class as noted science-fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer; they collaborated on their final TV Studio Lab assignment, a short science-fiction show.
In the early 1980s she worked at Mr. Gameway's Ark, a game store in Downtown Toronto. From 1984 to 1992 she worked at Bakka, North America's oldest surviving science fiction book store, in Toronto. During this time she wrote seven novels and nine short stories, many of which were subsequently published. She was a member of the Bunch of Seven writing group. In 1992, after living for 13 years in downtown Toronto, she moved with her four large cats to rural Ontario, where she currently resides with her wife, fellow fantasy writer Fiona Patton.[1][2] Her current pet population consists of six cats and what she describes as an "unintentional chihuahua".
Huff is one of the most prominent Canadian authors in the category of contemporary fantasy, a subgenre pioneered by Charles de Lint. Many of the scenes in her stories are near places where she has lived or frequented in Toronto, Kingston, and elsewhere. This author frequently uses as character names the names of people in her circle of acquaintances. A prolific author, "she has written everything from horror to romantic fantasy to contemporary fantasy to humour to space opera."[3]
She appeared in a 2009 documentary Pretty Bloody: The Women of Horror.
Claire is a Keeper, charged with keeping the fabric of the metaphysical universe together, who inadvertently finds herself in charge of a Bed & Breakfast with a hole to Hell in the basement. There is often comic relief from her sidekick Austin, a large elderly talking cat and witch's familiar. Claire's love interest, Dean, is a mortal. Claire's sister, Diana, plays a large part in the books as well. In the second book, Diana acquires a familiar of her own—a talking cat, which was an angel until helped (by Diana) to reconfigure as a cat and which, like Austin, provides comic relief.
Describes a world where musicians (or bards) create magic and an invasion from a neighboring country threatens the land. Many of the bards travel to carry their magical skills, as well as news, throughout the kingdom. The first book focuses on a bard who happens to be the king's sister and who has been forbidden to have a child. When she finds herself pregnant after a wild night of passion with the duke of a border duchy, she fears reprisal. The second and third books focus on a brother-sister pair of assassins. The fourth book primarily takes place in a new land and continues the story of Bannon, the brother portion of the assassin pair from previous books.
This series pairs a detective with a vampire. The first book introduces Vicki Nelson, a former police officer with failing eyesight due to Retinitis Pigmentosa and Henry Fitzroy, a vampire and writer of historical romances—which is natural for him as he was an illegitimate son of Henry VIII before he was seduced by a vampire. She is known to her police colleagues as "Victory Nelson" for her successful record of investigations; her mother calls her by her legal given name, "Victoria". Henry's protégé, Tony, is also introduced, as well as Vicki's hard-boiled former partner on the police force, Mike Celluci. Vicki's failing eyesight disqualified her from street work and she resigned rather than take a desk job, and, at the start of the first book, is working as a private detective. Together Vicki and Henry stand against a number of supernatural threats. The series is set in Toronto, Canada and uses familiar landmarks. This series was adapted for CBC television under the title Blood Ties and also aired on the Lifetime channel in the US.
A follow-up to the Blood Books, featuring Tony Foster as the main character with his work in syndicated television on a show about a vampire detective.
Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr's aim is to keep both her superiors and her company of space marines alive as they deal with lethal missions throughout the galaxy.
The CBC television series Blood Ties was based on Huff's Vicki Nelson novels, and also aired in the United States on Lifetime. It was produced by CHUM Television and Kaleidoscope Entertainment. It was not picked up for a second season (which would have been the third season in the US).