Julia lives in a city terrorized by a serial killer. A city that
witnesses the drowning of anyone deemed a witch, and that has outlawed all
forms of magic. With no biological family to call her own, Julia and her brother
have taken up with a group of thieves who steal in order to survive. And Julia
makes a great thief and spy, thanks to her unusual ability to remain unseen.
Not invisible exactly, but just beyond people’s senses. In her world, it is a
valuable trait to have.
Now a teenager and fully immersed in the life that has been handed to
her, Julia finds herself being paid to spy in the house of Mrs. Och, a woman
known to aid witches and associate with a cast of mysterious characters. It
seems as if suspicious activities are happening both inside and beyond the
house’s walls, too and Julia’s boss wants her to report back with every detail.
As Julia becomes more entrenched in the Och household, she realizes
that the job she has been paid to do is a conflicting one. If she delivers the
information required of her, she can harm some of the very people she is
starting to care for. But if she doesn’t, she won’t receive her payment, and she
puts herself at risk for some very unpleasant consequences. A traitor no matter
how she looks at it, Julia now faces the ultimate dilemma and the results will
both surprise and stun readers.
We welcome Catherine for an interview today!
1. Did you always know you wanted to be a writer or did you want
to be something else?
As
soon as I knew that books were written by people, that was the kind of person I
wanted to be, and I’ve never wanted to be anything else.
2. How long does it take you to write a book from start to
finish?
I’ve written each book
under such radically different circumstances that it’s difficult to say. Julia Vanishes, in particular, did a lot
of sitting and simmering while I worked on other things, and then I’d return to
it. Now that my kids are older, I’m able to measure my writing time in hours or
days, but that’s a pretty recent development. My very rough estimate is that it
took about 36 000 minutes to write Julia
Vanishes.
3. How do you come up with themes for your stories?
Most of my stories start
with a pretty clear idea of the characters and a very rough idea of the
situation. The themes creep in without my giving them any conscious thought at
all. Julia Vanishes is not the first
book I wrote as a parent, but it’s the first book that was conceived from the
very start after I’d had kids, and a friend pointed out that a lot of the central characters have lost
a parent or a child. That wasn’t intentional, but on some level I suppose I’m
always writing out my deepest nightmares.
4. Do you have a schedule of when you write?
I write on weekday
mornings while my younger son is at preschool, and on Saturday mornings at a
café.
5. How are you able to balance other aspects of your life with
your writing?
It’s a lot like the scene
in The Cat In The Hat where he’s
hopping up and down on the ball and holding up the cup and the cake and the
books and the fish and the little toy ship and the milk on a dish… well, you
know the rest. Which is to say, I’ve sort of given up on balance.
6. What elements do you think make a great story line?
For
me it’s all about the characters. I love books that are suspenseful, and will
shout in delight at a really good plot twist, but I’ve also loved books that
were basically plotless. I don’t need to like the characters in a book, but
compelling personalities and relationships will hook me above all else, and
making people up is my favorite part of writing.
7. What was the hardest thing about writing a book?
Before I had kids, I
think the hardest thing was how to make the things I was writing book-shaped.
Oddly, that was less of a problem after I had kids, but then the challenge
became finding the time.
8. How many books have you written so far? Do you have a
favorite?
I’ve written 8 books that
have a beginning, a middle, and an end, if you include the still draft-shaped
sequels to Julia Vanishes. I’ve
written four books that have been through the full spit-and-polish process, and
the book I haven’t started yet is always my favorite.
9. Do you have a favorite character?
I love all my made-up
people, but the character I had the most fun writing is easily Nia, the villain
from my previous trilogy, The Last Days
of Tian Di. Her exuberance and her rage
were pure fiery joy to write.
10. Where do you write?
I write at my kitchen
table during the week, and at coffee shops on Saturday mornings.
11. When deciding on how to publish, what directed you to the
route you took?
I didn’t know anything
about publishing when I started, and to be honest I still don’t know much. When
I was finishing up Julia Vanishes, I
had just been completely wowed by Lena Coakley’s first novel, Witchlanders. So I queried her agent, Steve
Malk, and here we are. Fortunately, he does know about publishing. Lucky me!
12. Have you gotten feedback from family about your book(s)?
What do they think?
They are good beta
readers and so they read and critique my books in draft-form, which is
particularly generous because, except for my niece and nephew, none of them
read YA fantasy for fun – they only read my stuff because I wrote it.
I remember crashing with
my older brother’s family for a few months one very cold winter in Ontario,
when I was drafting my first YA / MG novel. My nephew would stand behind me,
reading over my shoulder so quietly I’d forget he was there, except for the
little squeak when I’d suddenly delete a paragraph he’d been reading.
13. What kinds of things do you like to do outside of writing?
If you imagine the hours
of your life as currency that you trade in for experience, travel will give you
by far the best bang for your metaphorical buck. I traveled a lot before I had
kids, and when I wasn’t traveling, I was planning The Next Adventure. Now that
I have small children I don’t travel as much, but I still
like to plan possible future adventures. I like reading outside while my kids
build forts or sandcastles or fight dragons or each other, I like dinner
parties where the kids all run around in an overtired overhyped mob and the
grownups eat and drink too much and laugh ourselves silly, I like dropping my
kids off at school and running home to write, feeling liberated, and I like
picking them up again, because I missed them after all.
14. What kinds of advice would you give to someone who wants to
start writing?
Start, I guess. (I am
pretty terrible at giving advice.)
I think it’s important
for the joy or satisfaction you get from writing to be enough on its own to
sustain you, regardless of whether you publish or not / sell a bazillion copies
or not, etc. That’s not really advice though, because it will either be true
for you or it won’t. If you love writing, it’s a great thing, and you’re lucky,
and you don’t need my advice.
15. What is your favorite book? favorite author? Do you have an
author that inspired/inspires you to write?
Some
favorite authors (in no order, just scanning my bookshelves): Kazuo Ishiguro,
Donna Tartt, Susanna Clarke, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sarah Waters, Kelly
Link, Tanizaki Junichiro, Shirley Jackson, Virginia Woolf, Roxane Gay, Margo
Lanagan, Kristin Cashore, Meg Rosoff, Elizabeth Wein.
Books
that most recently blew my mind: Tracey Lindberg’s Birdie, Elana Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels and N.K. Jemisin’s The
Fifth Season.
The Long Secret by Louise Fitzhugh is the first book that
made me think about the craft of writing and how the story can go much deeper
than just plot. It seemed to me, at age eleven, a perfect and mysterious book,
and I still think that.
16. Do you have any go to people when writing a book that help
you with your story lines as well as editing, beta reading and such?
I work out plot tangles
by talking them through with my husband. My family and a few friends beta read
for me once I have a decent draft and their critiques help me to see the book
from outside of my own head. Then I send it to my agent and editor, and they
are the ones who really beat the book into shape.
17. Are you working on anything now?
I’m working on being more
patient with myself and with my kids, I’m working on going to bed earlier so
I’m not chronically underslept… oh, do you mean writing something? Yes, I am
always working on a book. Right now, I’m working on revising the sequel to Julia Vanishes, and also drafting the
third in the trilogy.
18. Tell us 5 things that make you smile & 19. Tell us 5
things that make you sad
I guess I tend to think in
extremes because I looked at these two questions and immediately started
thinking about transcendent experiences of joy and moments of
staring-into-the-abyss style despair – all of which seemed a bit much for a
snappy “5 things” type of question. So I decided to combine them and think of 5
things that make me smile and make me
sad at the same time:
When my husband points
out at the end of the day that I’ve got my shirt on backwards or inside out.
This has happened more than once, and it does make me laugh, but underneath
that is a bit of sadness that I’m such a disaster I can’t even get dressed
properly.
Watching a cat stalking a
bird. I can’t help smiling at the grace and beauty of the hunter-cat, but also,
oh poor bird.
When my son describes the
“Code Red” drills at school and says they all hide in the dark to practice for
if something bad happens, “like a skunk getting into the school.” I smile at
his idea of danger, while at the same time I think the bottom of my heart will
drop out at the truth.
Browsing in bookstores. I
want to read all the books! / I can never read all the books.
The moments when I’m
folding the laundry and the kids are crashing around and I need to make dinner
and I’m thinking about the book I’m writing. Some days, in these harried moments,
I’m bowled over by my good fortune and I can hardly stop smiling; other days I
think, slow down wait I’ve done it all
wrong this is not who I meant to be this is not the life I meant to lead, and
every choice seems a wrong turn but it’s too late to turn back. Some days,
confusingly, I feel both of those things at the same time.
120. If you could travel anywhere in the world to visit a place
so you could use it as a background for a book, where would it be?
I have a book idea set largely in Tokyo, where
I lived for three years, and sometime in the next few years I will need to go
back before writing the book.
Julia spies. Julia steals. Julia vanishes…discover her magic in book 1 of the new Witch’s Child trilogy, #JuliaVanishes—on sale 6/7!
My superpowers: high-kicking, list-making, simultaneously holding two opposing opinionsMy weaknesses: fear of flying, excessive list-making, lame-ass mortality
My allies: The Canadian Mounties, my made-for-walking-in black boots, Mick, the English Language
My enemies: decaf, low blood sugar, the passage of time
My mission: the coexistence of ambivalence and joy.
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