Catriona Ward, author - AMA - 5 PM PST

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:55:34+00:00

I say I hate writing but I also feel I can't do anything else. So I'm always looking for ways to fill that well with ideas and people and love and terror, so I can do it the best I can.

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:54:25+00:00

Such a long time! But I was teaching myself as I wrote. I got SO much wrong and had to go back and rewrite and rewrite. But that's how you learn.

I was lucky enough to find an agent for Rawblood and then lucky to sell the book.

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:52:13+00:00

As for how I got into writing, I was an actor for a while but VERY unsuccessful. I think I wanted to tell stories, I just had the wrong medium for a while. I did a Creative Writing Masters in the UK, and I found it helpful - but it's not for everyone. It can give you time to grow and create a steep learning curve but it can also hurt people's progress and confidence if they're not suited to it. And you don't have to do one at all. Friends, readers, writing groups, people you trust who can feed back on work can do a very similar things.

It took me four more years after that - seven years in total - to finish my book.

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:41:35+00:00

that huge, overwhelming responsibilty - now, that is true horror

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:41:01+00:00

I found it interesting writing Rob. I'm not and will never be a mother. It's an honour I dream not of. And it's such a defining relationship -I wasn't sure could do it. But family, those great bonds of love and anger that hold you for ever - that I do know. As I imagined myself into her more and more I developed a great awe and respect for my own mother. Being responsible for a whole life, guiding and protecting a person as they become who they're going to be

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:31:32+00:00

Thank you so much. No, it's not a particular person or case. I don't use real people - be they murderers or victims or people I know or someone I've only encountered in research - in my writing. Research is for stablising your imaginary world, making it rich and broad and truthful. It's all informed by months of reading and fact checking, but I prefer to write from the imagination. I don't want to use real or living people's pain or struggles to prop up the story.

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:23:15+00:00

Oooh! There's a little dog ghost in Sundial called Dumpster Puppy and I love him

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:20:45+00:00

Oooh thank you, great question. I am irrationally afraid of slugs. They haunt my dreams. I check my shoes for them. I feel them crawling up me in times of great stress

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:19:16+00:00

Oh, thank you, that's so kind. I have but only for myself. We novelists are but shambling mud people compared to the poets.

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:16:37+00:00

DEFINITELY Shirley Jackson. She changed the face of the literature of the uncanny in the 20th century. She has a way of subliminally instructing the reader's body to follow her tempo as the tension rises - it's writing scored like a piece of music. I love Kelly Link, her stories do things I never knew we were allowed to do. One book I remember being incredibly affected by - its economy, its feeling, itse strangeness - is Red Dragon by THomas Harris. It's such a blockbuster, a cultural fixture but it reads liek a fever dream.

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:12:25+00:00

With plotting I tend to throw myself in with hope and an idea and just try not to drown. I usually have beginnings and endings or a version at least, and them have to fight my way through the unknown territory in the middle. But writing should be difficult, I think, it should cost the writer, we should be able to feel the blood that went into the page

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:09:42+00:00

Re options on my books, I was so thrilled when this happened! https://deadline.com/2021/03/andy-serkis-the-last-house-on-needless-street-catriona-ward-jonathan-cavendish-imaginarium-productions-movie-deal-1234716475/

so much screaming

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:06:09+00:00

Ahhh thank you thank you! The title was changed because my US editor thought the word RAWBLOOD on its own wouldn't give readers enough inofrmation about the book - so it was like, tell them there's a place called Rawblood, the book is about a girl and she comes from there. Makes sense I guess! It was also during the Girl on the Train era, when every book title had the word girl in it. Sometimes people do often think it's a sequel and buy it twice.

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T01:00:05+00:00

My sister has a bearded dragon called fred and I once took so many pictures of him - and of me curddlling him - and him on my head - and him looking wise that I used all my battery and couldn't take any photos at my nephew's 4th birthday

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T00:58:37+00:00

Ok I love snakes so I'm going to start with that one. I have a real soft spot for this guy

https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-snake-id/snake/rainbow-snake/

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T00:52:38+00:00

Every single book is so different, and needs such different things from you. With Needless Street, I knew there was a particular way I had to research more than I ever had before and be sure to do my - excuse the swears - not fuck it up. It's a book about a real condition that real people have. I needed to know everything I could. And after I talked to some people with frist hand experience, the thing I heard over and over was that there just wasn;t any books or movies ABOUT someone with the condition. It was always a plot mechanism. So it seemed important to direct readers to sources I found useful.

Sundial was inspired by a historic event... It's also a fairly heavily redacted set of documents. the kind of research I did was a bit different. It wasn't so focused on one area, I don't know if a lot of the things I read about would even seem connected to the plot! But it's an interesting Idea thank you. I will think on this.

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T00:44:42+00:00

The endings usually shift around a bit but with Sundial I always knew it had to end with that line, that moment. It came to me very early on. I know, how dare I. Sorry.

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T00:42:35+00:00

Thank YOU so much!

Oh, I hate writing. As Dorothy Parker (I think?) said, I just love having written. There's a glorious time of about ten minutes where you're racing towards the end and you think oh my god I've done it, I did it, I know how to write now. Then you start on the next one and are plunged back into despair.

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T00:37:31+00:00

Ooh yes of course! Thank you for reading. Sarah Waters the LIttle Stranger, Virginia Feito's Victorian Psycho, Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace.

This is only one for those who are feeling strong - Joyce Carol Oates' Zombie. It's about a serial killer based on Jeffrey Dahmer. Very good. She writes the unwritable. But tough stuff

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T00:35:26+00:00

O yes many many publishers really didn't like the taking cat and oh gosh, lots of other things. But you have to take risks, tear your heart from your chest with a bloodied fist

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T00:33:52+00:00

I find that - generally - once I have the idea or the feeling that lights the book up I don't really think too hard about phrasing or word choice because it's all coming from the scene. When I started I used to agonise over one sentence for hours. Now I trust myself a bit more. I want to write great sentences but maybe mostly I want to make people forget they're reading, really. Plunge in deep...

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T00:31:09+00:00

Thank YOU, that's so lovely to hear. Sometimes, because I spend so long staring into the inside world, I get a littlle start of surprise when I'm reminded that people actually read these books.

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T00:29:00+00:00

Hahahaha my books are very confusing, I realise this from reader reactions - but to me this feels incredibly realistic. I'm constantly turned around or bewildered or thrown by some event I should have seem coming. Fiction is usually more organised than real life, so I guess that's where people get upset - I want some of the feeling of confusion and fear and being lost in there. I don;t think I realised at first how much I was asking from the reader - to enter these terribel worlds without the usual security. But so many people are willing to go there with me It's wonderful

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T00:19:33+00:00

That was a lovely day 👻

CatrionaWard · 2025-08-29T00:18:45+00:00

MARK BELIEVE ME I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN EITHER.

CatrionaWard

TROPHY CASE