Taylor Victoria Holcroft
Biography
All the important dates... not to mention girlfriends, of course.
Welcome to my digital biography, the online sanctum of Taylor Victoria Holcroft, where the stories are wild, the characters are wilder, and the only thing that's not running wild is my ability to keep track of dates, when some of you have indeed better things to do. Here, in this corner of the internet, you'll trip over tales of the degenerate creator of Charlotte Kominsky's cunning exploits or the misadventures of Elizabeth Pudeator, with a few unexpected detours along the way. Along with other characters. This is for the 30 first years of my life. So get ready for another psychotherapy.
But wait, there's more! Because there's a lot. From the moment I was screaming and pissing off my parents because my teeth were growing to the moment I grasped a pen with the ambitious intent to change the world and the discovery of this crazy little thing called reality, to the labyrinthine journey through my imagination and other exploration of the heavens, every character, every plot twist, has been a stepping stone in my own epic saga. And let's not forget the unsung hero in this adventure: my psychologist. With years of dedicated sleuthing (and dealing with my creative chaos), they've helped me chart the chronology of my creative exploits, ensuring that every significant date is as meticulously catalogued as my collection of quirky characters and weekly nightmares when I'm not peeing in bed.
No, I'm joking. Anyway, ready?
All right... showtime!
January 9th, 1995
Montpellier, France
👶🏻 A French (and later also British) writer was born at 11.15 in a clinic of the centre of Montpellier. Nowadays this clinic does no longer exist. Back in the days, I was the son of a young worker and my mother was unemployed. You'll understand later why I said "back in the days..." - Oh... And that was a Monday. In case you guys care about that...
1999
Montpellier, France
👨🏻🎓 My very first time (as for what I remember) of me going to school. and I was quite good at it. I loved geography, and I've always been kinda studious. I mean, aged 4, you usually just like watching cartoons... but personally I loved encyclopaedias.
April 2001
Montpellier, France
🚗 In a red car, my father had a car accident on his way back home. A serious accident bringing him to hospital. So, that's my father, yes, but still: this still led to a trauma. Trauma that led the kid that I was to the path of creating stories. In the outcome of this, my father started to have drinking problems and this led to many, many conflicts at home. I'll certainly talk about this in the blog soon, as my father suffered from bipolar disorders.
Spring 2003
Montpellier, France
📓 My very first story was written. In fact, this was not a fiction, but it was the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a sort of mini-biography (I always loved Mozart... For the reason that... you remember the trauma I mentioned above?) that I wrote as part of a school project. I didn't publish it (I mean, it was barely three pages - because in France we count by pages and not by words) and this was what triggered my passion for writing
2006
Montpellier, France
👩👩👧👦 My parents separated. Or, at least they started talking about divorce but, it was periods of separation and coming back together. Most of the problems came from the fact that my father was drinking and... well, funny old days.
Fall 2010
Montpellier, France
🙋🏻♂️ 📚 ❤️ 💔 I was 15, nearly 16, and... Well, my teenage years weren't idyllic at all, far from it. With two parents sleeping on the job, my mother resigning completely and my father torn apart in his mental health issues, I started having girlfriends (and boyfriends too) and I wrote by then my very first story. I will certainly publish it one day, as I need to revamp it, but it was in fact the story of the ancestor of Charlotte Kominsky, taking place during the French Revolution, one of my favourite period in history. During this period I was also painting. I needed art to get over my daily mess at home.
January 2013
Montpellier, France
👩🏼 Charlotte Kominsky was born on January 24, a few days after I personally turned eighteen. The story that was written would be published, removed and republished, but was initially called The Blue of Your Eyes before being rebranded years later.
April 2013
Montpellier, France
👩🏼 The first draft of The Blue of Your Eyes was completed. At this period, what was later to become All the Battles I Have Lost was in fact the first part of the manuscript, whilst The Sum of All Our Fears was in fact the part 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the manuscript. But, the manuscript that was still handwritten from January to March this year was incomplete and I started typing it on my computer.
May 2014
Totnes, United Kingdom
👩🏼 Charlotte was already one year old, and the manuscript of The Blue of Your Eyes, initially written in French, was completed. It was more than 290,000 words, and was in fact the first draft of what would be later the two first opuses of Free Expensive Lies, merged into one manuscript. I started rereading the manuscript around this period. And this moment, when I resumed the manuscript all the way to zero, was the moment when I made my first path in the United Kingdom. It was also at that period that I made a decision: The Blue of Your Eyes will not be a standalone, but a series.
May 2015
London, United Kingdom
🇬🇧 Precisely on the 10th of May 2015, I moved to London, alone. It was a challenging time, especially considering the issues I faced (if you want to know more about this, I wrote this in He Fell from Venus) and at that moment, even though I started blogging about my life in general in French in a blog named Unforgotten, and I stopped working on The Blue of Your Eyes for several months. Several things changed in the manuscript: the first part remained the same whilst some details changed (the role of Kelly in the series was in fact taken by Claire, as she was not Charlotte's girlfriend yet in the creative process I followed, and Clarisse was in fact Charlotte's best friend and not her twin sister) but lack of time, mainly because I was focused on settling in the UK, ghosted my creating process for a while.
January 2016
London, United Kingdom
👩🏼 Charlotte was three years old, and was now by far the longest ever literary project I ever worked on. At this period, several big changes came on the manuscript: the manuscript will be in five parts, and started the final rereading. The announced publication of the manuscript was be for 2017. At this period, compared to today's actual state of the series, what was written paved the way for the actual series. The Part 1 was the full story of the future All the Battles I Have Lost, even though the ending of this part was in fact completely different, whilst The Sum of All Our Fears was a sort of merger between Part 2 and 3 (that became the Part 2 of the actual manuscript) and the Part 4 becoming the Part 3 - Part 5 was a sort of aftermath of the actual Part 3 but this has been unpublished.
June 23rd, 2016
United Kingdom
🇬🇧 🌍 Brexit Referendum day. What is it doing here? Ah... You'll understand this soon enough!
December 2016
London, United Kingdom
👩🏼 🌍 📚 Following the Brexit day, I decided to temporarily return to France, eyeing a potential move-out to Dublin, Ireland. At that time, I intensified my work on Charlotte, making a manuscript of over 320,000 words, which was the longest ever version of the book that has ever been written. But the idea of publishing the story in two parts came: I decided to publish For the Blue of Your Eyes (Part 1) separately from Free Expensive Lies (Part 2) which would be a merger of the parts 2, 3, 4 and 5. At this period, the first illustration came, and I decided to make the first part available for free on Smashwords before publishing the last parts and working on the third opus.
April 2017
Montpellier, France
👩🏼 📚 The Blue of Your Eyes (Part 1) was released somewhere in April. At this period, only the ebook version was available and, following the fact that new ideas came to me for the remaining Part 2, 3, 4 and 5 that were set to be published under the name of Part 2. The Blue of Your Eyes (Part 2) was, however, never published.
May 2017
Dublin, Ireland
🙋🏻♂️ 🙋🏻♀️ Now, if you read He Fell from Venus, you should know what happened at that period. Remember the story at the Ha'Penny Bridge?
September 2017
Montpellier, France
🏳️⚧️ Here was the time that my transition started, or at least the moment I started taking hormones. Some of you may have started to see my real name, Ophelie Victoria Blaudez, and this was the name I chose to be called from this moment of my life. I must say, perhaps the happiest moment of my life, but it had its lots of challenges since, returning back to France, and having had to live with my grandmother (sporadically as I had a boyfriend back in the days abroad) and my father was in "the final phase" of his bipolar disorders.
February 2018
Montpellier, France
⚰️ My father passed away aged 42 in prison. So this was something I covered in He Fell from Venus, but I may write one day a blog on what happened during that day as this was by far, the most challenging times I ever lived. This bring to a full stop all projects I was working on, including Charlotte, for at least a year. All projects, yes, by the fact that I was also working on the draft and the story timeline of a story that would later be known as The Mysterious Life and Death of a Millennial and draw the story of Elizabeth Pudeator, Charlotte was also temporarily stopped during this period. But one book, an old biography I planned to write, was ojn my desk.
April to June 2018
Montpellier, France
📖 He Fell From Venus was written, initially in French at this period. This was, at this moment, a project I was working on by email that I sent to a few friends (the days you guys have read in there), but the project was finished during the summer and wasn't scheduled to ever be published, it was just me writing because I needed to.
March 2018
Montpellier, France
👩🏻❤️💋👩🏻 I met Saveria, the woman who was to become my wife.
July 2018
Montpellier, France
👩🏻❤️💋👩🏻 Saveria and I got engaged.
October 2018
London, United Kingdom
🇫🇷 🇬🇧 👩🏻❤️💋👩🏻 Saveria and I moved back to the UK
April 2019
London, United Kingdom
🙅🏼♀️ The Blue of Your Eyes (Part 1) was unpublished. The reason was because I had other plans for Charlotte, and I wanted to start working on it. Unfortunately, settling in London had its cost was time consuming, which prevented me from working on the book for another few months.
April 2020
London, United Kingdom
😷 🦠 The Covid-19 pandemic started and the United Kingdom declared a lockdown. Confined at home, I resumed working on Charlotte's story, out of boredom, and started drafting a new storyline for this: The Part 1 will be published separately, whilst the Part 2, which has been completely revamped, was now the remnants of The Blue of Your Eyes' part 2 and 3 and the Part 3 was the former Part 4.
September 2020
London, United Kingdom
📚 Free Expensive Lies is the title chosen for the series, in replacement of The Blue of Your Eyes. The first idea was, however, to use this title as the main title for each opus to come, but each opuses would be named Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and so on. The Part 1 of the first Free Expensive Lies series was set for release in December 2020.
December 2020
London, United Kingdom
👩🏼 Free Expensive Lies (Part 1) is published as a self-published work, and for the first time available in both paperback and ebook. The cover was designed by another illustrator but was quickly updated as other formats were thought for other covers. At the same time, Free Expensive Lies (Part 2), which was later to be known as The Sum of All Our Fears was now on the table, and I was fully focused on, but had this detail: the story of this opus was set in Paris, in the aftermath of the Part 1. The book was published in two versions: A long version and a short version, as the book written was over 290,000 words.
April 2021
London, United Kingdom
📚 🎉 After an article that I wrote for an American website, I decided to publish He Fell From Venus, for the Pride in 2021, translated in English. The title was in fact an idea of Saveria, because I had no idea on how I should name this book. This book was published under my previous author name, Taylor Harding-Jenkins, name that I decided to change ahead of the second edition of Free Expensive Lies.
September 2021
London, United Kingdom
🙅🏼♀️ Following a contract with a publishing company, Free Expensive Lies Part 1, in order to be reedited, was unpublished. The edition will never be published back again following deep changes that were made in the book in order to make it more concise and readable for everyone.
January 2022
London, United Kingdom
🙅🏼♀️ ❌ The contract with the publishing company was broken, as I was globally unsatisfied by the result. Taking, however, some of the ideas that were submitted, I decided to change my pen name on Taylor Victoria Holcroft, and completely restart from zero the series, and shortening Free Expensive Lies (Part 1). At that same period, I decided that the first opus would finally have a specific name, and I also decided that the second opus of the story of Charlotte Kominsky would finally take place in Montpellier and the Part 2 of the second opus would deeply reflect the tragedy that I lived following the death of my father, whilst the Part 3 would show Charlotte facing the main antagonist of the story. Or at least facing one of the antagonists. It was also the first time that I decided to also release in the future a series of podcasts talking about mysteries.
July 2022
London, United Kingdom
🛫 📝 On a personal level, July was the month when I became a pilot, having completed my trial flight and having started my exams, and I was also promoted as a manager in the company I work for. Meanwhile, The Mysterious Life and Death of a Millennial was completed and translated into French.
October 2022
London, United Kingdom
📚 The final reedition of what was set to become All the Battles I Have Lost started. At that same period, the final edition of what would become The Sum of All Our Fears was completed. I needed to proof the opus before publishing. But the second opus was now delayed by the reedition of the first opus. At the same period, the podcasts episodes for the first season of The Mysterious Life and Death were now on the table and I started working on it.
December 2022
London, United Kingdom
🎉 The name of the two first opuses were finally chosen. Free Expensive Lies Part 1 was set to be republished under the name All the Battles I Have Lost (Free Expensive Lies: Act I) and the second opus was set to be published under the name The Sum of All Our Fears (Free Expensive Lies: Act II). This was not pubicly announced as I kept all the project still secret.
August 2023
London, United Kingdom
🎆 The cover for both opuses was now ready and All the Battles I Have Lost entered in its proofing phase. Publication day was set for December 22, 2023.
December 22, 2023
🎉 👩🏼 📚 All the Battles I Have Lost was published.
London, United Kingdom
February 12, 2024
London, United Kingdom
🎉 👩🏼 📚 The Sum of All Our Fears was published, to mark the sixth anniversary of the death of my father. It was released at the precise hour of his death.
March-April 2024
London, United Kingdom
🎙️ The first season of The Mysterious Life and Death is recorded. A trailer was released in the beginning of March...