BookWenches

Interviewed by Bobby

Today we’re visiting for a moment with Cat Connor, author of the FBI thriller killerbyte. Thanks so much for making time in your day to talk with us, Cat!

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How long have you been writing, whether for personal pleasure or actual publication? What was the first story you wrote (that you can remember)?

My best friend and I wrote something called, ‘The book.’ We were young teens and it was a marvelous lot of utter rubbish. The contents of ‘The book’ are top secret, even now.

The first things I remember writing that garnered any positive attention– were two pieces I produced in high school English - an Ode to a Tree and an Ode to Profundity. I think my best-friends mother kept them. She was a Behavioral Scientist with Police and it always worried me that she kept those poems.

What caused you to pursue professional publication? Have you found that being published has changed your life at all? If so, how?

Friends. That’s the short answer. I was writing, they were reading, and they loved my characters. And I loved my characters. There weren’t many really kick-ass female characters out there for a long time so I was really amusing myself, and then realized if I liked them, and my friends liked them, maybe other people would – so off I went to learn about the publishing industry and I’m still learning.

I started small though with the whole being published thing. I built up a resume by writing short stories and finding publishers for them.

Has it changed my life? My life is a lot busier now than it used to be. No one wanted to interview me before April 10th this year or wanted me to talk at their book club! So yes it has. There aren’t enough hours in the day to write and do all the other myriad of things that are required once a book comes out but it’s so freaking cool! I’m loving it.

Is writing a full-time career for you, or do you juggle another job along with pounding the keys?

I guess writing is a full-time career for me, my other job is taking care of the children. Writing slots in and allows me to be accessible to my kids and juggle their demands. That’s not to say I wouldn’t love an office somewhere – away from home, where I can work without being harassed every five minutes! Especially today – middle of winter school holidays and the Squealer seems to cause Breezy to scream every few minutes… while I’m trying to sound intelligent!! It’s not happening for me today.

What kind of writing schedule do you set for yourself? Are you strictly regimented, or are you most likely to write only when the inspiration hits?

I try to write every day. Even if some days I only manage a blog, or a seemingly random paragraph. Today it’s this interview. Everyone can tell if I don’t get a chance to write – could be the steam coming from my ears or the way I grump about the place that gives it away – but that’s only evident if the interruptions to my day were annoying and unnecessary, otherwise I suck it up and squeeze some keyboard time out before bed. It’s not unusual for me to work until well after midnight and I don’t get weekends. Occasionally I will take a day off – but that’s rare.

Inspiration tends to hit while I’m in the shower, doing the dishes, walking Squealer to school – so I have to hold onto it until I get home and hope like hell it’s still good when I get to my keyboard!

How much planning goes into your writing? Do you systematically plot everything ahead of time, or do you let the words flow and see where they take you?

I’m more a go with the flow type of writer. I tried outlines and plot planning, and quite frankly I suck at it. The story tends to develop on its own and thumb its nose at any outline with every paragraph. Most often my stories begin with Ellie telling me something or asking a question. They’re her stories so I let her tell them. I do write beginning to end though. I’m always surprised at how much information I retained when the end comes and all the pieces slot into place. I admit to being stunned at my own cleverness on a few occasions, luckily I got over it fairly quickly.

Your awesome book killerbyte is set in the US, yet you live in New Zealand. What prompted you to set a story on the other side of the world as opposed to at home?

Thank you for saying awesome! It is set in the US, more exactly in Virginia. And it’s true that I live in New Zealand. For me to write I have to be interested all the way to the very end, and setting a book somewhere else gives me that little boost. It’s occasionally a challenge but mostly good fun. I hate to say this because it sounds so simple but it’s true, this particular story is set in VA because that’s where Ellie is. She’s FBI, we don’t have FBI in New Zealand. (But does come to New Zealand eventually so you will get a glimpse of life at the bottom of the world through Ellie’s eyes.)

Each chapter of killerbyte is titled with the name of a song. Will you tell me a little bit about that?

You’re the first to mention the songs. They are significant to me and are used on chapters because that’s what was in my head while I wrote or because they suited how Ellie felt at the time – which usually means it was in my head. The beauty of having songs as chapter titles is that you can create a play list and kinda ‘listen’ to killerbyte but to do that you’d have to know exactly who sang each song – sometimes it’s the interpretation of the song by the artist more than the song itself.

We created the killerbyte play list for the launch party, and that was groovy. Songs as chapter titles is something I’ve carried through to the other Conway books.

I’ve read that you based part of killerbyte – the death threats in a poetry chat room – on personal experience. It amazes me how some folks will act online in a way that they would never do in real life! Will you satisfy my morbid curiosity and tell me a little about this incident and why it made its way into your book?

It's how the entire book began – the thought that some people behave so badly online is quite fascinating. But seeing it for yourself and then asking the questions, how far could this go? How much anonymity does the internet really provide? When the answers came back as ‘as far as this sicko wants to take it’ and ‘not as much as you would like to think’, well, I had the premise for a pretty cool story!

It was back in the days of MSN chat rooms, and for a while we saw a lot of people choosing to behave badly. The incident that sparked killerbyte wasn’t isolated. (I still have the actual room transcripts.) Which is something I guess those idiots didn’t think about – room owners and moderators frequently kept transcripts so if a complaint arose they would have the entire chat to review. (Or in my case – fodder for writing.) 

What kind of research did you need to do in order to write a book with FBI agents and some awesomely gruesome murders in it?

I asked a lot of questions and I read a lot of text books. It helps to have had some involvement with police too. The murders were fun (in a sick twisted way). It’s a matter of sitting down and getting into the head of the killer and then asking the right questions while listening to the answers without vomiting. (That’s the tricky bit.)

Your heroine Ellie Conway uses the screen name of “Otherwisecat” in her chat room. Is this a little bit of you, the author, peeking through? Ellie has such a great personality…is she perhaps modeled a bit after her creator?

I used my screen name ‘Otherwisecat’ because it was registered to me years ago in MSN, and it stops anyone trying to say I wrote about them or used their nick. ‘Galileo689’ was a real screen name too, and he gave me permission to use it. The other nicks were butchered and well disguised versions of people we knew from chat rooms.

I still use ‘Otherwisecat’ as my screen name. If you see it/me around the internet say hello – I won’t bite. I think Ellie and I share a few commonalities beyond the screen name. But I’m not telling what they are.

I read somewhere (I think Twitter or your blog) that killerbyte is an iPhone application. What is the application (I don’t have an iPhone and am pretty ignorant about them), and how did that all come about?

I so wish I had one! The application is an e-book. Have a friend with an iPhone and she was checking out the application last night, she told me she’ll buy Terrorbyte as an iPhone application and read it on the train going to work. The joy of this ever-expanding technological age is that things like phones double as e-book readers. I’ve seen the screen shots and it’s very cool. It also amuses me that killerbyte is downloadable by iTunes! (You have to read it, you can’t listen to it and that is a tad confusing I think!)  My publisher told me a while ago she was looking into getting Rebel e books as iPhone applications – and she did.

Your next Ellie Conway novel, Terrorbyte has been accepted for publication by Rebel E Publishers. Congratulations!  When can we expect to see it available to the public? Can you give us a peek into what this story has in store for Ellie?

Thank you very much. I think it’s about 3 months or so away from release. (Depending on how much work I can get done!)

As for the storyline:  This time around Ellie is the supervising special agent on a team comprising of Lee and Sam – we met them in killerbyte – and also Mac who is on loan from Cyber. The team is invited into a police investigation: which leads to a series of horrific murders splattered across several counties. Ellie has to face a dreadful reality when she deduces the murders link to the Butterfly Foundation (which is a project of Ellie and Mac’s: aimed at providing support for the children of mentally ill parents). She has to deal with an injured team member, possible missing kids, a terrorist cell, and suspected child trafficking. On top of it all the team has to work with a Russian agent that Ellie isn’t sure she trusts. No one will come out of this one unscathed, least of all Ellie.

With titles like killerbyte and Terrorbyte, I think I’m seeing a pretty clever naming trend. Do you plan to pursue this trend in further books?

That’s the plan. The whole name thing actually started in Virginia. That’s right, Virginia. When I started work on killerbyte, it wasn’t titled ‘killerbyte’ – the working title was ‘I see you’. (For reasons that became apparent in chapter 4 [Seasons of Wither] with the writing on the café window.) Every night I sent the updated file to Virginia. Galileo would read it, and make suggestions or comments. The story grew rapidly. One day he looked at the size of the file and commented, “It’s more like killerbytes than kilobytes now.”

We sat there staring at this word, and both knew it was perfect as the title. So when I started work on the next one – which also has a fair amount of computer/internet use in it – I started hunting for ‘bytes that I could manipulate and a trend was born.

What are you working on right now? What can your readers expect from you after Terrorbyte?

Exacabyte is what everyone can expect next, and then Ethernet. I will commence the polishing of Exacabyte and Ethernet (yes, I wrote them already) once Terrorbyte is safely out and I’ve had a wee rest!

I’m still writing, currently there are two projects, oh, actually it’s three. Another Conway novel, Satellite. A Conway novella (or maybe full novel, we’ll see) set prior to killerbyte, titled Torrent. And NZ set crime thriller – not Ellie Conway related. Plus there is a little something else with Ellie in it mulling around in my head.

If you had to name one person, book, song, whathaveyou that has most influenced your writing, who or what would it be? Why?

This is the hardest question ever! I’ve actually come to this a few times and thought, ‘shit, I can’t answer this yet.’

The best answer I can give is this one and it’s probably not what anyone expects: At this precise moment in time, it is Jon Bon Jovi who influences my writing. I say that because I listen to Bon Jovi music as I write –I find it easier to get inside Ellie’s head with Bon Jovi playing. (Terrorbyte has solely Bon Jovi chapter titles, whereas killerbyte is an eclectic collection of music) but also because his attitude to life is similar to Ellie’s and mine too. (Maybe that’s where the similarity between me and Ellie lies.)

The song that currently influences my writing, ‘Save the World’, it kick starts my writing sessions like nothing else can. I can’t hear that song without wanting to write or without wondering how it’s all going to work out, and what’s next on the horizon.

What are your hobbies that take you away from the computer?

I love to tie-dye things, anything… I love using dye. Oh, how I love it. All those fabulous colors. I have the most amazing tie-dyed jeans. I used to knit (but it takes too long and I’m not patient enough anymore – I can write a book in the time it takes me to knit an adult sweater – guess what I’d rather do?), now I sew. I make stuff for the kids and fleecy sweaters for me that people can’t look at straight on. (I love thin stripes, especially bright colored ones. Yes, I can induce migraines!) Currently it’s making calico shopping bags that amuses me. Mostly because I get to dye the calico first.

If you could take a day or two and do something just for yourself – pamper and indulge yourself – what would it be? Would it involve chocolate?

That’s an easy question. A Bon Jovi concert with dark chocolate and red wine. And this time around, I’ll take a freaking jacket and not freeze my ass off! (So my indulgent day would be a do-over, with the addition of chocolate. The perils of having a few glasses of red prior to the concert last January. I was warm. But not for long, the Christchurch wind saw to that.)

Now, what have I forgotten to ask? Is there anything else that you would like to share with us?

I think you got everything… but because someone will ask. I’m wearing faded blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a killerbyte tee shirt.

Where can our readers go to learn more about you and your work? And to buy your books as well?

You can drop by my blog, which links to my website, or Twitter me. Or you can join me on Facebook here.

killerbyte can be purchased from Mobipocket, Amazon.com, or iPhone.

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Thank you for talking with us, Cat. We at BookWenches wish you the very best in the future, and we look forward to reading your next release!

Thank you for asking such great questions. I really enjoyed talking with you. Now I’m just hoping the kids didn’t distract me too much and I made some sense!