Annette Curtis Klause (born 20th June 1953) is an English-American author. She was born in Bristol, England and was initially raised in the UK before moving to Maryland, United States, where she resides to this day with her husband. She writes young adult fiction, including science fiction and Paranormal Romance. Her best known novels are The Silver Kiss (her debut novel) and Blood and Chocolate, both of which won or were nominated for several awards. Blood and Chocolate was adapted into a film, although it deviated heavily from the source material and Klause herself had minimal involvement. Klause also works as a librarian for Montgomery County Public Libraries.
Works with their own pages:
- The Silver Kiss (1990)
- "The Summer of Love" (2009)
- "The Christmas Cat" (2009)
- Blood and Chocolate (1997)
Other works:
- Alien Secrets (1993)
- Freaks: Alive on the Inside! (2006)
- "Kissing Dead Boys" from The Restless Dead (2007)
Tropes found in or associated with Klause's works include:
- Author Appeal: Annette seems to have a thing for cats, poets (Zoë in The Silver Kiss, Aiden from Blood and Chocolate) and painters (Anne from The Silver Kiss, Vivian from Blood and Chocolate). And Vivian means "lively" and Zoë means "(eternal) life", in what might be a lampshade hanging.
- Birds of a Feather: In Alien Secrets, Puck and Hush bond over them both being unaccompanied minors on a spaceship and both having screwed up in a way that risks shame from their families; Puck has been expelled from boarding school while Hush has lost an artifact sacred to his people.
- Boy Meets Ghoul:
- Freaks: Alive on the Inside! features a human boy falling in love with a mummy girl.
- The Silver Kiss provides a gender-flipped example; it has a human girl falling in love with a Romantic Vampire Boy.
- Interspecies Romance: A recurring theme in her books, though it doesn't always end well.
- The Silver Kiss has human girl Zoë falling in love with vampire boy (well, he looks like a teenage boy) Simon. They ultimately don't stay together; Zoë cannot stomach being a vampire (which is depicted as a rather melancholy existence) and Simon decides to commit Suicide by Sunlight to finally be at peace. Although saddened, they're both accepting of this decision and ready to move forward.
- Blood and Chocolate revolves around a werewolf girl having a romance with a human boy, although he initially doesn't know she's a werewolf. Things go downhill when he does find out.
- Historical Fantasy: Freaks is a fantasy romance set in 1899.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: The protagonist of Alien Secrets is named Robin Goodfellow, but she usually goes by her nickname of Puck.
- Seductive Mummy: Freaks centers on a living mummy called Tauseret, who has a romance with the protagonist Abel.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Although they do have idealistic elements and tend to have Bittersweet Endings as opposed to straight-up Downer Endings, Klause's books tend to be a bit more tragic and cynical, especially compared to many other supernatural romance books aimed at teens. Her stories often deconstruct things like being a supernatural creature and/or humans romancing such creatures: in The Silver Kiss Zoë and Simon don't get to stay together because Zoë realizes how much being a vampire sucks, and Simon decides to commit suicide to finally be at peace after centuries of torment; in Blood and Chocolate Aiden brutally rejects Vivian when she reveals she's a werewolf and she realizes that their relationship would never have worked out, especially as they were both more in love with the idea of each other than who they actually are.
- Two-Hit Wonder: She's mostly remembered for writing The Silver Kiss and Blood and Chocolate in the 1990s, which were acclaimed bestsellers and retain fanbases to this day (the latter was enough of a hit that it got made into a movie, though it was an extremely loose adaptation and wasn't well-received). Klause has had four novels published, but the other two are generally forgotten. Klause hasn't released any new works since 2009 and those were two short stories involving characters from The Silver Kiss included in the novel's 2009 reissue.
- Write What You Know: Klause has drawn upon her own experience of moving from the UK to the US as a teenager for some of her novels; it's especially noticeable in The Silver Kiss, where Zoë struggles to come to terms with her best friend moving away (and to a more extreme extent, her mother's impending death), and Blood and Chocolate, where Vivian has been forced to move to a new town after her old home was burned down.
