Taylor Victoria Holcroft
Quick facts
Taylor in July 2024
Born
Ophelie Victoria Constance Charlotte Blaudez
9th of January, 1995 (Age 30)
Montpellier, France 🇫🇷
Occupation
Writer, Content creator, podcaster, model.
Citizenship
France 🇫🇷, United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Residence
London, United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Notable works
Marital status
In a civil partnership
Height
177 cm (5ft 81in)
Eyes colour
Green
Early life
Taylor Victoria Holcroft was born on 9 January 1995, at 11:15 AM in a now-closed clinic located in the centre of Montpellier, France. Assigned male at birth, she was raised in a working-class household, her father occupied various employments in her early years while her mother was unemployed during the same period. Holcroft would later refer to her birth gender in retrospective narratives, reflecting her gender transition in adulthood. Born on a Monday, she often references the symbolic alignment of days and events in her personal storytelling and professional career.
Holcroft began school in 1999, an experience she recalls fondly. She quickly distinguished herself as a studious and intellectually curious child. Particularly drawn to geography, history and mathematics, she displayed a deep fascination for knowledge atypical for her age. Holcroft was always curious about everything, as she recalls, stating that she always needed to understand how everything worked.
In 2001, her family experienced a significant upheaval when her father was involved in a serious car accident. Though he survived, the aftermath left lasting scars. The event marked the beginning of a turbulent period, as her father developed alcohol dependency, and conflicts at home became frequent. Holcroft later disclosed that her father suffered from bipolar disorder, which contributed to instability within the household. These experiences would serve as formative emotional material for her later creative work, pushing her towards writing as a means of processing trauma.
Holcroft wrote her first story in 2003, a short biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for a school project. Though only a few pages long, this marked the beginning of her lifelong passion for storytelling. The choice of Mozart as a subject reflected both her admiration for classical music and her need to find beauty and brilliance in the shadow of early hardship.
In 2006, when Holcroft was 11, her parents began separating intermittently. Their separation was not immediate or final but rather marked by repeated cycles of reconciliation and conflict, largely due to her father’s drinking habits. This period marked Holcroft's issues catching up with school and led her to a deep depression.
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Holcroft started writing what would later become the Free Expensive Lies series in January 2013.
A decade later, on 10 May 2015, aged 20, Holcroft relocated to London, a move she made entirely on her own. This period proved challenging, both personally and creatively. While she began blogging in French with her first blog titled Unforgotten, she put her fiction project Free Expensive Lies on hold. The manuscript changed during this time as characters and relationships evolved. However, the pressures of adjusting to life in the UK temporarily stalled Holcroft’s creative momentum. After a year and a half in the UK, Taylor moved to Ireland and later Switzerland.
In April 2017, Holcroft publicly came out as a transgender woman, and by September 2017, she had returned to France to begin her hormonal transition.
In February 2018, her father died at the age of 42 while in prison, an event she has described as one of the most challenging moments of her life. The tragedy caused a full halt in her writing projects, including the Free Expensive Lies series and the initial drafts of The Mysterious Life and Death of a Millennial, which explores the fictionalised life of Elizabeth Pudeator. Despite the emotional toll, she kept an older, planned biography manuscript on her desk, a symbol of her enduring commitment to writing, even in the face of personal grief, later to be known as He Fell from Venus.
By July 2022, Holcroft had achieved several personal milestones. She completed her first pilot flight and currently pursuing her Private Pilot Licence (PPL) training, passed her early aviation exams, and was promoted to a managerial position at her workplace. That same month, she completed and translated The Mysterious Life and Death of a Millennial into French, marking a significant return to her creative pursuits. Taylor also started focusing on visual creation, as she started many photo-shooting projects with various photographers worldwide.
Writing activities
As of 2025, Taylor Victoria Holcroft has published four novels, with several more in development. Her work primarily explores psychological themes, often set against complex emotional or societal backdrops. Known for her bold narrative voice, Holcroft’s writing style features sarcastic, fearless, and unapologetic characters, with a strong emphasis on female leads. Her protagonists are often direct, sharp-witted, and unafraid to confront uncomfortable truths, mirroring the author’s commitment to storytelling that is raw, honest, and unapologetically human.
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Most of the novels are linked with the character of Charlotte Kominsky, the lead protagonist of the Free Expensive Lies series.
Free Expensive Lies is the main series Holcroft works on.
