On a quiet morning in Auckland’s South Head, while most of the world is just getting started, Steffanie Green is already conjuring up lovers and murders in the office she fondly calls her “bat cave”. And later? The legally blind author will be upside down on a pole in her bedroom, twisting herself into shapes she never even imagined possible.
“I love music, but I’m uncoordinated, with no sense of timing, so pole dancing works for me,” she laughs.
“Although there is a lot of time spent lying on the floor, shaking my fist at the pole when I’m trying new things!”
The 40-year-old writer – who grew up in Waipawa, Hawke’s Bay – is one of New Zealand’s most extraordinary success stories. Under her pen name Steffanie Holmes, she has self-published more than 54 novels, sold more than a million copies worldwide, and built a successful career from weaving magic and colour into her raunchy romantic fantasy novels – all while living with a rare visual condition that means she sees no colour at all.
Her latest novel, A Grave Mistake, brings her two worlds together. Its heroine, Arabella Lestrange, is a pole dancer who performs in Paris’ underground vampire cabaret until she falls for a handsome human who threatens her afterlife and she has to flee.
Steffanie started pole dancing just after the first COVID lockdown.
Finding strength through movement
“I’d tried it at a hens’ night and something about having a solid object to hold onto resonated with me,” she shares.
“I’d wanted to do it for years and after Covid, I thought, ‘It’s now or never.’”
Sport had never been easy for the author. Growing up with achromatopsia – a rare condition that often requires her to wear night-vision glasses – PE classes were a nightmare.
“I was the bullied kid,” she admits.
“Balls would hit me in the face. It was incredibly frustrating. Mum tried me at all kinds of sports, but nothing stuck.”
Strength-based movement was different. Weightlifting, martial arts, medieval sword- fighting and eventually pole dancing gave her control, independence and confidence. Now she trains three to four days a week and has a weekly private lesson. There’s even a stage pole in the master bedroom of the home she shares with her husband James.
Life, love and heavy metal
“You’d think it’s sexy,” she laughs.
“But my husband mostly just wakes up and stubs his toe on the base of it.”
She met James, 49, a safety inspector, on an archaeological dig 20 years ago – the fact they were both wearing Iron Maiden T-shirts sealed the deal. The couple shares a love of heavy metal, history, museums and medieval pursuits, such as sword- fighting and brewing mead.
Navigating the world differently
Legally blind, Steffanie navigates life using inverted screens, huge fonts and polarised prescription glasses to cut the glare. She does her grocery shopping online to avoid needing to pick up every item to scrutinise it, and sticks to a reliable wardrobe of black, purple, red and burnt orange – colours she’s learnt to trust.
Perhaps it’s no surprise then that Steffanie’s drawn to mythical vampires – creatures of darkness that have heightened senses. Despite always being “a wordy kid”, she never set out to be a romance author. Studying archaeology, she volunteered at museums and dreamed of becoming a curator – until discrimination closed doors she couldn’t force open.
Overcoming career rejection
“They said they couldn’t trust me around artefacts, so I wanted a career where people wouldn’t tell me I couldn’t do it,” she explains.
The pivotal moment came in 2015, after a conversation about Fifty Shades Of Grey.
“I didn’t love the book,” she tells.
“My friend told me I was too innocent to write something like that – so I accepted the challenge.”
The novella that took off
In three weeks, Steffanie wrote a paranormal romance novella about a fox shapeshifter, paid $50 for a cover and uploaded it to Amazon under her secret pen name so she could laugh about the flopped experiment with friends later. But it sold 1000 copies in its first week.
“I had to tell my husband there was money coming in from a very smutty romance,” she says.
“After he finished laughing, he asked if I was going to write another.”
Turning a commute into a career
She did. Then another. And another. Steffanie was working as a copywriter and her commute was a five-hour round trip. She’d use the bus ride to churn out 2000 words a day, launching one book roughly every two months. In 2018, she quit her day job to become a full-time author.
Now publishing three to four books a year, she’s very successful. In the past two years, she’s made seven figures annually. Her most famous series, The Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries, follows a woman going blind who stumbles into a magical bookshop – and falls for Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. After one viral TikTok, it became her bestselling work.
Connecting with readers around the world
Steffanie’s a superstar at romance conventions, where she signs hundreds of books for devoted fans. Her work reaches readers primarily in the US and Europe, with strong sales in Germany and Italy. As for the future? More vampires, obviously, and maybe a daring robbery.
“I devour things that interest me and eventually they end up in a book somewhere,” she reveals.
“Since the Louvre heist, I’ve been fascinated by art fraud and theft, so who knows – it might appear in a future book! I just want people to escape for a little while and step into a world where anything is possible.”
A Grave Mistake is on sale Wednesday at steffanieholmes.com.
