Author Interview: Katherine Center

An Interview with Katherine Center

author of How to Walk Away

I've decided that I'm going to make author interviews a recurring thing here!  I previously reached out to Kimmery Martin to chat about her writing and The Queen of Hearts.  I had such a fun time writing that post, that I reached out to Katherine Center to see if she'd also participate, and thankfully, she agreed!

I recently read and enjoyed Katherine's How to Walk Away.  Lately, I've been enjoying more romantic and a bit lighter reads, especially when compared to the mysteries and thrillers I'm often drawn to.  I read the excerpt for How to Walk Away at www.bookishfirst.com and definitely had my fingers crossed that I would win a copy...and I did!  I picked this one up and read it within a few days of its arrival at my house!

Now, Katherine is not a new author (even though this was the first book of her's that I read).  How to Walk Away is actually her sixth full length novel!

Question: How to Walk Away was my first introduction to your writing and I really enjoyed it!  If there are other readers out there like me who now want to delve into your other works, which ones do you recommend for fans of How to Walk Away?

Katherine:  Happiness for Beginners, which was my last one before How to Walk Away. I’ve been writing novels for ten years, and I think my style and focus has evolved a bit. The books all have the same wry, comic, bittersweet voice, but they’re all different from each other, too. I’d recommend going backwards chronologically!

Question: Which of your novels was your favorite to write?

Katherine: I’ve loved writing them all, because I’m alway happy when I’m writing. But I’d say the last two were probably the most fun. Happiness for Beginners just wrote itself. How to Walk Away was a little different because it required a huge amount of research, but once I had all that down, the story took off on its own, too. I think when you have a compelling idea and characters you’re curious about, it’s easier. You want to follow them. You want to see what’s going to happen! Even if you think you know, you don’t really know until it happens—and it can’t happen until you write it.

Question: Did you have any muses when writing the characters of Chip and Ian in How to Walk Away?

Katherine: Chip was easy, because we have lots of guys like that in Texas—guys for whom everything has just been a little bit too easy. I was curious to put a guy like that in a hard situation and see how he coped. Ian, though—I did need a model for him. My husband is a volunteer firefighter/EMT, and so I know guys who work in that world, and they’re often cheery and funny and optimistic. I knew I needed Ian to be the opposite, and so he was harder to imagine at first. I wound up using Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre as a base for him, and that helped me get started. He grew into a real person from there!

Question:  How to Walk Away was chosen as a Book of the Month pick!  Do you think this helps with your exposure when it comes time for publication?

Katherine: Absolutely! Book of the Month Club is amazing!! Such an engaged, excited, big group of readers! I love the way they’ve created a community around reading.

Question: The cover to How to Walk Away is gorgeous!  I don't like to admit that I judge books by their covers, but the covers definitely sway me when choosing from my own shelves.  As an author, how much involvement do you have in your cover design?

Katherine: I love the cover desperately!! I think covers are hugely, critically important—and I’m kind of obsessed with them. In the past, I haven’t had much control over my covers. But this time around, my amazing editor, Jen Enderlin, and the genius designer, Olga Grlic, and I agreed that covers need to be eye-catching (which is why I love the red), be legible at a thumbnail size, and make you curious about the story inside. I think this cover does all those things. I love everything about it.

Question: When reading How to Walk Away, I was surprised by how resilient Margaret was.  I don't think I would have handled things as well as she did.  Do you have an experience you draw on when writing characters like this?

Katherine: I write stories about how people bounce back from hard things—in part because I’m not great at it myself. I’m very good at wallowing and despairing and announcing that I give up. But in the end I somehow always manage to pick myself up and keep trudging forward. That’s how I became such a fan of trying. At one point in the story, Ian tells Maggie, “It’s the trying that heals you. That’s all you have to do. Just try.” Ian knows that’s true because I know it’s true—from a lifetime of not giving up.

Question: Do you have any tips for people who may be interested in writing, but find the task of writing a novel daunting?

Katherine: Just get started! When I wrote my first novel, I’d only ever done short stories, and one 100-page novella. I was very intimidated by the idea of a 300+ page story. But I found that once I got going, the story just kind of snowballed. I got hooked on it the way you get hooked on a story that you’re reading. It built up a lovely momentum, and I was driven to get to the end. Once you’ve got a draft, then you’ve got a real starting place!

Thank you so much to Katherine for answering my questions!  I really enjoyed How to Walk Away (you can find my review here) and can't wait to check out Happiness for Beginners!  I'm adding it to my Goodreads list right now!