Accomplishment: Author of Mistress of Rome, Daughters of Rome, and the Empress of the Seven Hills - publication date 2012
Kate first got hooked on ancient Rome while watching I, Claudius at the age of seven. Still in elementary school when she saw the movie Spartacus, she resolved to someday write a book about a gladiator. That ambition turned into Mistress of Rome, written when she was a freshman in Boston University.
Winter in Boston did it for Kate. She decided to seek refuge in ancient Rome. Her first book, Mistress of Rome, was completed in four months, written in six-hour stretches in the Boston University basement computer lab while listening to the Gladiator soundtrack on repeat. It has now been translated into multiple languages and has been followed by a prequel, Daughters of Rome, and a sequel, Empress of the Seven Hills. Clearly, every aspiring author needs to experience a Boston winter -preferably underground - and start typing - not something done easily on the Rack, and possibly not after.
Do you really feel you write well or did you just get lucky?
Both. I know I write well – I've worked at it every week, and mostly every day, of my life since I was in elementary school, and my work got reasonably competent around the time I went to college. I'm proud of what I've written. But I could be the second coming of Shakespeare and it wouldn't matter if I didn't have a little luck to go with it.
Many great writers out there remain unpublished because their work is a little off-beat, or they haven't quite managed to get an agent, or their book idea just got published by somebody else first. I was lucky enough to write a letter to an agent when she just happened to be looking for new historical fiction clients, and then I was lucky enough to find a publisher who just happened to glance at my work when she was in a good mood rather than at the end of the day when she was too tired to do more than look at my non-existent resume and toss the manuscript in the “No” pile. Being a good writer helps, but you need luck.
Does bestseller mean good writer?
Certainly not – plenty of dreck gets published and sells millions of copies. Lots of bestselling authors don't know the first thing about how to write; what they do know is what readers want to read. That's talent of an entirely different (and entirely valid) kind. I'm not a fan of the writing styles of either James Patterson or Stephenie Meyer, but I will be the first to say that they are both geniuses when it comes to tapping into their public. They know what sells, and they know how to provide it – that's something to learn from.
Have you ever described yourself as “author” or, “published author”? Why?
To me, an author is someone who has been paid for their writing, and a writer is someone who has a strange irresistible compulsion to put words on paper. I wrote my first story at the age of seven, when I first felt compelled to start writing down the things in my head, and after that I felt I could call myself a writer. (Not that I did it very often, at least to other people – too afraid of coming across like some emo girl in a black turtleneck, sitting in a coffee shop with my non-fat chai tea, scribbling a turgid present-tense novel based on my latest breakup with my equally-emo boyfriend.) At the age of twenty-six when my first book was published and I got my very first paycheck from writing, I decided I had the right to call myself an author. Sounds much less chai-tea somehow.
Has a book every made you cry, and if so, which one?
Pauline Gedge's “Eagle and the Raven” about the Roman invasion of Britain made me cry – it's probably what started me along the historical fiction path in the first place. Such a tragic, epic, heroic story. I read it when I was about thirteen, weeping dementedly on the schoolbus and vowing bloody vengeance on the Romans who defeated Queen Boudicca. That's the wonderful thing about books: the really great ones take you so thoroughly out of your own world that it can be literally hours or days until you come back down to earth. I also cry routinely at the end of C.S. Forester's “Ship of the Line,” when Captain Hornblower has to surrender his ship to the French.
Which literary character would you like to sleep with?
Bernard Cornwell's Uhtred from the Saxon Stories. A strapping Viking warrior with a dry sense of humor and a soft side revealed only to his girls. Actually, I'd nail pretty much any of Cornwell's heroes – Richard Sharpe, Derfel Cadarn, Thomas of Hookton. I have a weakness for unapologetically alpha-dog men who live hard, laugh a lot, love their women, and kill their enemies.
What assumptions do people make about writers?
People think that writing is easy – probably because in one sense or another, everyone can do it. It's one of the few arts that is accessible: people might look at a ballet dancer or a painter or a classical musician at their work, and realize that they will never in their life be able to execute a grand jete or a seascape oil-painting or a Mozart piano concerto – but everybody in their joyless trek through the school system at some point learns to string sentences together. So therefore writing has to be easy, right? It's just putting words together, after all. But putting words together into a 400 page book is hard. I work a good solid eight-hour day putting words together, doing research, tearing my hair out over plotting problems; far harder than I ever worked at any office job or waitressing gig. But some people assume that just because my work is done at home on the couch, it must be simple. I can tell you now that it may be work I love, but it's anything but simple.
What question do you hate the most when people find out you're a writer?
“Where do you get your ideas?” gets old pretty fast. I'm always tempted to say “Walmart” or “The land of Oz.” And it may not be a question, but I hear a lot of variations on “I'd write a book but I just don't have the time.” This usually comes from people who spend hours every night watching “Dancing with the Stars” and Tweeting about it. If you really want to write a book, you find the time. I have a writer friend who fits her writing hours in around five children and a full-time job running a farm. I have another writer friend who gets up at four a.m. to get in an uninterrupted hour on her book. These are real writers – they have an irresistible urge to put words down on paper, sleep be damned.
Sleep be damned - coming from one who demanded a water-bed on the Rack! Thank you, Kate; good answers, and may Uhtred and Sharpe keep you company tonight. For those who wish to read Kate's latest novel - perhaps in French - check it out.
Accomplishment: Author of Mistress of Rome, Daughters of Rome, and the Empress of the Seven Hills - publication date 2012
Kate first got hooked on ancient Rome while watching I, Claudius at the age of seven. Still in elementary school when she saw the movie Spartacus, she resolved to someday write a book about a gladiator. That ambition turned into Mistress of Rome, written when she was a freshman in Boston University.
Winter in Boston did it for Kate. She decided to seek refuge in ancient Rome. Her first book, Mistress of Rome, was completed in four months, written in six-hour stretches in the Boston University basement computer lab while listening to the Gladiator soundtrack on repeat. It has now been translated into multiple languages and has been followed by a prequel, Daughters of Rome, and a sequel, Empress of the Seven Hills. Clearly, every aspiring author needs to experience a Boston winter -preferably underground - and start typing - not something done easily on the Rack, and possibly not after.
Do you really feel you write well or did you just get lucky?
Both. I know I write well – I've worked at it every week, and mostly every day, of my life since I was in elementary school, and my work got reasonably competent around the time I went to college. I'm proud of what I've written. But I could be the second coming of Shakespeare and it wouldn't matter if I didn't have a little luck to go with it.
Many great writers out there remain unpublished because their work is a little off-beat, or they haven't quite managed to get an agent, or their book idea just got published by somebody else first. I was lucky enough to write a letter to an agent when she just happened to be looking for new historical fiction clients, and then I was lucky enough to find a publisher who just happened to glance at my work when she was in a good mood rather than at the end of the day when she was too tired to do more than look at my non-existent resume and toss the manuscript in the “No” pile. Being a good writer helps, but you need luck.
Does bestseller mean good writer?
Certainly not – plenty of dreck gets published and sells millions of copies. Lots of bestselling authors don't know the first thing about how to write; what they do know is what readers want to read. That's talent of an entirely different (and entirely valid) kind. I'm not a fan of the writing styles of either James Patterson or Stephenie Meyer, but I will be the first to say that they are both geniuses when it comes to tapping into their public. They know what sells, and they know how to provide it – that's something to learn from.
Have you ever described yourself as “author” or, “published author”? Why?
To me, an author is someone who has been paid for their writing, and a writer is someone who has a strange irresistible compulsion to put words on paper. I wrote my first story at the age of seven, when I first felt compelled to start writing down the things in my head, and after that I felt I could call myself a writer. (Not that I did it very often, at least to other people – too afraid of coming across like some emo girl in a black turtleneck, sitting in a coffee shop with my non-fat chai tea, scribbling a turgid present-tense novel based on my latest breakup with my equally-emo boyfriend.) At the age of twenty-six when my first book was published and I got my very first paycheck from writing, I decided I had the right to call myself an author. Sounds much less chai-tea somehow.
Has a book every made you cry, and if so, which one?
Pauline Gedge's “Eagle and the Raven” about the Roman invasion of Britain made me cry – it's probably what started me along the historical fiction path in the first place. Such a tragic, epic, heroic story. I read it when I was about thirteen, weeping dementedly on the schoolbus and vowing bloody vengeance on the Romans who defeated Queen Boudicca. That's the wonderful thing about books: the really great ones take you so thoroughly out of your own world that it can be literally hours or days until you come back down to earth. I also cry routinely at the end of C.S. Forester's “Ship of the Line,” when Captain Hornblower has to surrender his ship to the French.
Which literary character would you like to sleep with?
Bernard Cornwell's Uhtred from the Saxon Stories. A strapping Viking warrior with a dry sense of humor and a soft side revealed only to his girls. Actually, I'd nail pretty much any of Cornwell's heroes – Richard Sharpe, Derfel Cadarn, Thomas of Hookton. I have a weakness for unapologetically alpha-dog men who live hard, laugh a lot, love their women, and kill their enemies.
What assumptions do people make about writers?
People think that writing is easy – probably because in one sense or another, everyone can do it. It's one of the few arts that is accessible: people might look at a ballet dancer or a painter or a classical musician at their work, and realize that they will never in their life be able to execute a grand jete or a seascape oil-painting or a Mozart piano concerto – but everybody in their joyless trek through the school system at some point learns to string sentences together. So therefore writing has to be easy, right? It's just putting words together, after all. But putting words together into a 400 page book is hard. I work a good solid eight-hour day putting words together, doing research, tearing my hair out over plotting problems; far harder than I ever worked at any office job or waitressing gig. But some people assume that just because my work is done at home on the couch, it must be simple. I can tell you now that it may be work I love, but it's anything but simple.
What question do you hate the most when people find out you're a writer?
“Where do you get your ideas?” gets old pretty fast. I'm always tempted to say “Walmart” or “The land of Oz.” And it may not be a question, but I hear a lot of variations on “I'd write a book but I just don't have the time.” This usually comes from people who spend hours every night watching “Dancing with the Stars” and Tweeting about it. If you really want to write a book, you find the time. I have a writer friend who fits her writing hours in around five children and a full-time job running a farm. I have another writer friend who gets up at four a.m. to get in an uninterrupted hour on her book. These are real writers – they have an irresistible urge to put words down on paper, sleep be damned.
Sleep be damned - coming from one who demanded a water-bed on the Rack! Thank you, Kate; good answers, and may Uhtred and Sharpe keep you company tonight. For those who wish to read Kate's latest novel - perhaps in French - check it out.