Buried By Debt

Interview with the author Q: Your novels are classified as Suburban Noir. What exactly is Suburban Noir? A: Suburban Noir fiction peeks behind the curtains and tears off the facade from the lives of people trying too hard to fit in. My characters are working overtime to hide their secrets and darker desires. It's a world that on the surface appears perfect, but that very perfection gets distorted. Q: How do you get inside your characters heads so well? A: I spend a lot of time listening to people and observing what they do. Most of the time, we have no idea why people behave as they do. I like to explore what might be going on inside the minds of characters who populate the suburbs. Q: Who are your favorite authors and why? A: The list is too long, so I'll narrow it to those who have most influenced me. Ruth Rendell because discovering her standalone novels made me realize the kind of stories I wanted to tell. She is the Queen of crawling inside the human psyche, and prodding all the dark spots. Joyce Carol Oates because I love her stream of consciousness style, and because her characters are also dark, at odds with the world, and brimming with unsatisfied desires. You can find out about other writers I love at GoodReads. Q: Your writing has been described as "different", where do your ideas come from? A: In part, from frustration that when crimes are committed, most of the time, we don't really know why, and I'm obsessed with the why of everything. I imagine knowing the answer. I think about the endless conflict in relationships, frustrations and pain suffered by everyone, and imagine those events coming to the forefront of a character's life. I take a lot of long walks and slowly the pieces of the story emerge, a new piece every day, but not always in order! "Cathryn's writing style amazed me. She was able to get inside the heads of her characters to an incredible degree and expose their vulnerabilities, their insecurities, their fears, and even mental illness without flinching."Her fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines, The Shroud Quarterly Journal, and The Best of Every Day Fiction. Her short story "I Was Young Once" received an honorable mention in the 2007 Zoetrope All-story Short Fiction contest.She's the author of Suburban Noir novels, psychological thrillers, and ghost stories.When she's not writing, Cathryn reads fiction, eavesdrops, and plays very high handicap golf. She lives on the Central California coast with her husband and two cats.