Author Crush Friday: Catherine Linka
Glitter girls, you have pressing questions for your favorite authors and we have their answers. Welcome to our weekly segment, Author Crush Fridays.
We love asking questions and we love the answers from some of our favorite authors. Today we’re talking to Catherine Linka, author of A Girl Undone (St. Martin’s Griffin; June 23, 2015). Thank you for talking to us today, Catherine! We’re honored!
GLITTER: For those who haven’t read your work yet, how would you describe your writing style?
CATHERINE: I usually warn people not to start reading A Girl Called Fearless or A Girl Undone after 9 o’clock at night, because so many readers have told me they were up until 2 or 3 in the morning trying to finish it. Even people who normally don’t love reading can get caught up in the romance, the twisted reality, and thriller-like action, and because the chapters are short, they tell themselves, “Oh, I’ll read just one more…..”
GLITTER: What is the main plot of A Girl Undone?
CATHERINE: A Girl Undone is the second book in the A Girl Called Fearless duology. The book is set in LA, ten years after hormones in beef have killed most of the women in America, and teenage girls have become so valuable that their fathers can sell them into marriage for millions of dollars.
Avie Reveare is on the run from a proposed marriage to a powerful politician. When A Girl Undone begins, she’s survived a firefight with government agents, and has been declared a terrorist. The young man Avie loves, Yates, is hospitalized in critical condition, leaving her with the perilous task of carrying information that can bring down the Paternalist party, if she can get it into the right hands.
Avie joins up with a handsome, enigmatic woodsman Luke, but she struggles when every turn becomes a choice between keeping the two of them alive or completing their mission. With her face on every news channel and a quarter million dollar reward from the man who still owns her marriage Contract, Avie’s worst fears are about to come true.
GLITTER: What one message would you like readers to walk away with when they’re done reading A Girl Undone?
CATHERINE: You don’t have to be a ninja/superhero/divergent to be amazing. Avie is a typical LA teen who starts her journey not knowing if she will survive. She doubts herself, and messes up, but we see her become stronger and more confident, and by the end, she has become a force.
GLITTER: What book of yours do you hope to see on either TV or as a movie and why?
CATHERINE: Funny you should ask. A Girl Called Fearless and A Girl Undone have been optioned for television and might be turned into a series. I love the idea of a series, because the books are told from Avie’s point of view so I couldn’t show the reader anything that she didn’t know about. But in a series, the scriptwriters can show the really twisted world that Avie lives in, and viewers can see what happens to other characters–like what happens to Yates when he and Avie are apart. And the production team and scriptwriters are amazing!!! I hope they sell the series to a network, because that would be surreal.
GLITTER: What genre do you prefer writing?
CATHERINE: Definitely YA, because I love high stakes action and adventure. I tend to put my characters in danger and let them get badly hurt. I could never write a picture book about a fuzzy bunny. (But I could write a novelization of The Book of Bunny Suicides).
GLITTER: Who inspires you?
CATHERINE: I’m inspired when I read about teens who are tackling huge problems. I love the A Mighty Girl page on facebook, because it has stories about girls like Ashley Young who took the money she saved for prom and made gift boxes for the homeless instead. Or Hadiqa Bashir who is fighting to end child marriage in Pakistan by talking to girls and their parents and urging them to let their daughters stay in school. And she’s only 14!
GLITTER: What is one thing fans might not know about you?
CATHERINE: That I have a new yellow lab puppy named Carter after John Carter of Mars. He loves to cuddle and play tug of war. This is our first dog, so I have to train both Carter and my husband.
GLITTER: What one piece of advice could you give any teen going through difficult times now?
CATHERINE: You are so much stronger than you feel right now. 2 A few years ago I went through a hellish period when my family had to endure one disaster after another. I didn’t know how I would survive it. Every morning I’d get up and try to get my family the help they needed. Most of the problems I was trying to solve couldn’t be solved, but sometimes, I made things a little bit better. And then one day, the crisis was over, and I realized that I’d survived, and that surviving difficult times was my superpower.
GLITTER: What are you currently working on?
CATHERINE: I’m working on a story about a Persian boy who does something horrible, so he’s transformed into a falcon, and has find his way back to becoming human again. It has magi, a defiant prince, a powerful angel named Mithra, and at least one cobra. As I said, I like putting my characters in danger!
Catherine Linka is the author of A Girl Called Fearless and its sequel, A Girl Undone. A former children’s and young adult book buyer for an independent bookstore in Southern California, she studied international politics at Georgetown University before getting a master’s degree in business at the University of North Carolina. After years in sales, marketing and advertising, she reimagined her life and pursued a masters in writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Catherine is a regular speaker and panelist at book festivals and publishing conferences. Catherine is married and lives with her husband in the San Gabriel foothills.
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