Catharsis (Book 1)

by D. Andrew Campbell

  And lastly (different from “finally”), a thank you to my many students over the years for being my inspiration to write a young adult novel. I wrote this for you. I hope you enjoyed it. There will be a test over it later. J

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I have always enjoyed reading the “author’s notes” at the end of books. I’ve especially enjoyed when the author gave insight into the “why” behind their creation of the story. I liked having the “curtain pulled back” and seeing how a story was created in someone else’s mind. There’s every chance my love of the “author’s note” comes from my own love of writing and getting to vicariously view another person’s process. It’s a part of the book I always felt blessed to find at the end. It was an unexpected gift. A little treat from the author for those people who choose to read past the end.

  And it was something I wanted to put into my own books.

  For me, a story is never as simple as just “sitting down and writing”. The characters and plot consume my thinking for months leading up to the actual writing process, and that is how I know I have a solid idea worth pursuing. I started writing Catarina’s journey months before I ever sat down and started typing. Although when her adventure began in my head she was a boy.

  Yup. Catarina originally was a male protagonist when I came up with the idea for the story. I actually wrote the entirety of part one with her as a guy and the first several chapters of part two, also. Her name back then was Jesus Santiago, and she was a giant (6’ 2”), sixteen-year old Hispanic boy.

  In the first draft of the story, Jesus went by the nickname “Zoos” (pronounced “Zuse”) and he focused a bit more on his size and muscles when going up against opponents. He made some jokes about comparing himself to the king of the Greek gods, Zeus, too. I liked the idea of connecting a kid who “rises from the dead” in the alley with both the Christian savior and the Greek god. It was an idea I felt I could work with.

  I even called the first draft of the book “Zeus Rising” as a reference to his nickname and the fact that he was coming up into his new power. That was the title I stuck with up until the point where my boy protagonist became a girl.

  Around the time of the gender switch, I read an article attacking modern young adult literature for its lack of solid female characters. It stated that too many female characters were weak, ill-defined or just not well fleshed-out. Even the “heroines” in many contemporary books (Bella in Twilight, Katniss in Hunger Games, Tris in Divergent) were still ruled by males throughout their journeys. Bella is the lead character, but all of her choices are pretty much controlled, or at least influenced, by Jacob or Edward. Katniss is a strong chick who can fight on her own, but her story comes down to her love for two boys and how is she going to choose between them and still be happy. Tris learns to kick butt as a Dauntless initiate, but her ability to really shine is constantly being controlled by her opinion of Four (or his opinion of her).

  In other words, ALL these great female characters are still being controlled by males. That bothered me, and I agreed with the article (I wish I had saved it so that I could reference it here, but I had no idea of the impact it would have on me when I read it.). As a father of two strong-willed girls myself (and a coach of girls’ cross country team full of independent young ladies who refuse to bow to the whims of others), I wanted to create a female protagonist who could stand on her own. She wouldn’t be influenced by guys throughout her journey. I had the power to create that character as I wrote, and thus Zoos became a girl.

  My goal as I wrote was to not put any kind of “love triangle” or even a “love interest” into the story. I know that idea alienates female readers at times (I’ve been teaching English long enough to recognize the prototypical types of books my female students enjoy.), but I saw it as the best way to make my protagonist strong. Plus, a love interest didn’t really fit the arc of the story as I saw it. Catharsis was about the journey of one girl as she has to deal with what is happening to her. Adding in a boy would have just confused things more (Don’t they always!).

  At the same time, I wanted us to see that she does recognize that boys exist and likes them, but they aren’t her main focus right now. That was why we see James in the first part of the book. I really liked the character of James, and I hope I get to bring him back. Early on I did consider creating a scene where she hunts him down and creeps outside his house to watch him at night just so she could feel a part of her old life, but I couldn’t get it to feel right for me in the course of the story. I think that concept (getting in touch with her past) might be something that comes back later in her story. For now, Cat is just on her own. For better or worse.

  But Zoos and Cat weren’t where my idea for the story originated. They were just the people who came along to help carry it to its conclusion. The idea for Catharsis came about in the spring of 2012 when I was reading two other books, Hero by Mike Lupica and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. I was reading Hero out loud to one of my classes, and I really liked the idea behind the book. In short, Hero is about a boy who discovers he has super-powers inherited by his father and he must do something with these powers. The problem I had with the book is that the protagonist never really does anything in the book with his powers. It’s a great setup, but then he just whines the whole time about the pressure of having them. The author gives us a taste of what it would be like to see a kid dealing with these powers, but then he backs off of really letting the kid enjoy their extent. It was a frustrating book to read for me. It was a great concept, but it felt unfulfilled. And that got me thinking…

  How would a kid react to finding out they have super powers? Most books treat it like it would be a fun thing, but I don’t think it would be. Being a teenager is scary enough while trying to fit in and be “normal”, and then you find out you are even more unusual than the rest of the world due to super-abilities? It felt similar to the world created by Marvel comics with their X-men and mutants, but that still didn’t feel right. That’s the idea of you being “different”, but you are “different” along with hundreds of other people. I didn’t want just being slightly “different” for a character…I wanted “unique”. I wanted a kid that would have no one to turn to for answers. No “group” that would guide them. But how do I create that?

  That’s where Grahame-Smith’s book came in. I was reading it on my own time while I was reading Hero in class and the two ideas merged. What about a kid who discovers they are a vampire? But they don’t know they are a vampire! They have to discover it the hard way. I think finding out you are a vampire, in world where vampires don’t exist, would be horrifying. No one to explain to you why you suddenly want to eat other people. No help from others. Nothing but an intense thirst and desire to consume those who you previously thought were your friends. What do you do in that situation? Who do you turn to? Do you choose suicide as an option (Even though your religion tells you that it is a damning act?) or do you embrace the power that comes with it (With the knowledge that you are feeding on other humans.)?

  Suddenly I had a story idea in my head that I couldn’t shake. I, myself, wanted to know what would happen, and the only way for me to do that was to start writing it out and follow it to its conclusion.

  I began by mapping out a brief outline of the “affliction”. I decided I never wanted to use the “V” word in my book (vampires) as I didn’t see that as the central theme. Even though Cat is suffering from what appears to be vampirism, I didn’t want this to be a “vampire book”. This is a book about a kid with powers that come at a horrible cost. Her powers just happen to come when she feeds on another person. All of her “powers” are based on heightened senses or physical abilities. They are all things that exist in one form or another in the world already, but she happens to have access to all of them in one place. Her sight, hearing and heightened olfactory were based on the animal world, but I didn’t go any further than what you could find in nature already. Her strength and agility are j
ust exaggerated versions of what incredible athletes can already do. Her “mind control” is just a type of “hypnotism” gleaned from the world of mentalists and psychics.

  My goal was to create abilities that would both connect to “vampire lore” and yet also go to the main impetus of the affliction: hunting people. She is the ultimate hunter of humans. Her body is transforming itself to embrace this as its new goal. Unfortunately, the side effect of that is that she is developing less of an emotional connection to her prey/food source. As I wrote, that seemed like a natural extension of becoming this type of hunter. The more she embraces her power, the less connection she feels to what she has to hunt. Emotions are becoming a weakness that she is starting to shed. And that is a theme I would like to explore more in a later book.

  The connection between vampires-of-old and the human-hunter of today worked out well. Her heightened senses that she would use to hunt also would prevent her from wanting to go out in the daylight. Too much stimuli. Because of that she became a creature of the night, just like the classic vampires. The constant input from her senses is overwhelming and the only way for her to get a respite from it is to completely block them off from the world – hence her needing to simulate a coffin in order to rest. Her “will” that she pushes into her voice is just a hypnotism that allows her to get close enough to her prey to attack. That felt reminiscent of the “Dracula” type vampires who are smooth-talkers and very charismatic.

  The chemicals in her saliva that both allow her to heal the skin and create a temporary amnesia were taken from the animal world. There are some pretty amazing critters, insects and reptiles out there and it was easy to borrow from them for these ideas.

  My goal was to create an affliction that could be plausible in the fact that all of her powers are pulled from different parts of the existing world (no eye-beam lasers, flying or car throwing). I just wanted to put them all together in one place.

  Once I could logically explain the “source of power” to myself, I began working on the main character. My main guides here were Harry Potter, Bella Swan and Percy Jackson. As in, I wanted to make sure my main character was nothing like them. I hated those protagonists as I read their stories. They always struck me as whiny and weak, and that bothered me. They have a constant woe-is-me attitude about how awful everything around them is or how everyone else is better than they are. I didn’t want that for my book. I wanted a character that was strong-willed and not reliant on others. I wanted a character that was smart, outgoing and likeable. I wanted James Bond or Lara Croft or John McClane or any number of “adult” action heroes that the audience can get behind and cheer for.

  I realized then that young adult novels have very few strong, kick-butt, I-don’t-need-to-depend-on-an-adult protagonists. Adults have heaps of these types of characters in books (look up almost any “detective” series on Amazon and you’ll see one after another) to choose from, but teens don’t. Harry Potter has to wait on Dumbledore to guide him, Bella needs Edward to “turn her”, Percy can step up on occasion but he constantly has to fall to others to guide him or ask for help from bigger gods. Why is that adults write great action characters for each other, but then create nothing similar for teens?

  I wanted to change that. I decided to make my character one that could stand on her own (it was a boy originally, remember) without help from adults. In fact, adults would know nothing more than he would about the issues affecting him. My goal was to create a strong action hero of a character and have them go an adventure where “action” happens.

  Once my strong-willed and capable lead for the book was thought out and I had figured out what kind of powers they would have, I moved on to figuring out a motivation to drive the character throughout the book. Having the main character deal with the disease was an interesting opening idea, but it wasn’t enough to drive a plot. What was my character going to do with these powers that would be interesting enough to read about?

  Then one day in the early summer of 2012 another idea came to me while I was mowing my lawn (Working on the lawn has been great for my creative process!). What would happen to a vampire if they drank from a person who was addicted to a drug like heroin? Would that drug pass on to them? Would they also be addicted? How would that affect them? Better yet, what if my newly-minted little vampire’s first official kill was from an addict? He wouldn’t know “good blood” from “tainted blood”. He wouldn’t understand there is a difference between being addicted to drinking human blood and just being addicted to the drug in the blood.

  That idea fascinated me, and with that I had found my character’s motivation. He would dedicate his newfound powers to fighting crime. That would be the “action” I was looking for in the book. Here is a kid who has grown up watching action movies and now he suddenly has the ability to act out all those things he’s watched. He gets to be a superhero! Albeit one who also is compelled to attack those he is trying to defend whenever he needs to replenish his energy.

  The more I thought about this character, the more I liked him and wanted to see him in action. The only problem was that I was the only one who could make that happen. If I wanted to see what was going to happen in this story, then I was going to have to be the one to write it. A few weeks later (after debating with myself if this was an undertaking I was really up to doing), I sat down and started typing out the story.

  Interestingly enough, the story didn’t really go where I thought it would either. I had planned on Zoos tracking down an old teacher to use as a mentor to help him learn how to fight and to bounce ideas off of. The teacher wouldn’t be someone who knew “more” than him, just somebody for him to talk to and be friends with throughout the story. But that never happened. I kept trying to get the story there, but it had a mind of its own (writing truly is a weird process).

  Likewise, I had never planned on Lazzy having as large of a role as he did, but I liked the dog and kept him around. I had never planned to kill him off, but when she came back from being shot that was where the story carried me. How would Lazzy not give up his life to save this girl (By this point in the writing my main character was a girl…confusing, I know.) who had done so much for him? I hated to have to kill a dog in the book, but it also gave her the needed motivation to turn dark and hunt down Mr. Black. Lazzy’s sacrifice is what was needed to propel the story towards the difficult ending I saw looming before me.

  I plan to come back to Cat’s story soon. I want to see what she is doing a year down the road after having committed to hunting down criminals. How much humanity is left in her? Has she embraced being a villain or is she fighting against her own nature and trying to remain a hero? What does she do with the money she takes? Does she ever get up the courage to go back to her family?

  What I would like to see (And I’m guessing I’m the only one who can make this happen.) is a powerful Cat, who has had time to hone her abilities, pit herself against some bad guys and truly unleash her skills on them. I envision a younger version of Angelina Jolie’s character from the movie Wanted tearing through undesirables like an angry mongoose going through a basket of cobras. I think that will be a fun book to write.

  Oh, and if you enjoyed the book then I would love a review on Amazon, Itunes, GoodReads, Barnes & Noble or wherever you purchased the book. Every review and rating counts. Trust me. Until next time…

  D. Andrew Campbell

  July 2013

  Catalyst

  By D. Andrew Campbell

  A preview of the second novel

  in the Catarina Perez story

  CHAPTER ONE

  I watch the handsome, well-built man cross the street and walk into his small, immaculately-maintained house, and I wonder - not for the first time this week - if he will become the fifth person I've ever killed. His death is certainly not my intention as I follow him, but I've come to learn over the past year that sometimes my - lets' call them "darker" - instincts have a bad habit of exerting control over me when I become extremely emotional (U
sually just anger. A good bout of anger still has the ability to flip my time-to-go-rampaging-crazy switch. I'm getting better at controlling it, but it's a slow process.). And this tall, blond, impressively good-looking man is rumored to have made some choices that could very well prevent me from controlling my decisions.

  Truly evil people tend to have that effect on me. And I should know about evil; for over a year now I've been hunting people so that I can drink their blood. It’s not all necessarily by choice, though. It's either that or starve to death, and I fear what might happen to my soul if I choose to abstain from eating and commit suicide (I’ve been given the ultimate version of “screwed if you, and screwed if you don’t”. I either commit a sin by feeding on other people to stay alive, or I commit a sin by not feeding and eventually killing myself. Thanks Fate for that sick little twist on life!). So I choose a life drenched in evil so that I may do the greater good. I use the evil that's in me to try and make the world a better place (At least that's what I tell myself every night as I lie in my sensory deprivation box. A girl has to have something to keep her sane, right?).

  And if Renny is right about this guy, then the blond man definitely qualifies for his own spot on the steaming-sack-of-nasty scale.

  Tapping the small microphone on the band around my neck, I whisper into it, "Are you sure this is the guy? I've been following him for almost a week, and I've seen nothing suspicious. Maybe he is innocent like he's claimed."

  The response comes from an earbud that's been tucked into my pocket. With how sensitive my ears have become, there is no possible way to actually have the speaker in my ear without it also causing me pain and possibly deafening me. Luckily with my heightened senses, I can still pick out my friend's words quite clearly even though they are coming out of a tiny wireless speaker. Turned down to the lowest volume setting. In my pocket. Some days it really does pay to have superhuman senses.