This is why she keeps having “pronoun issues” in the final scene with Chadwick. She goes from referring to herself as “I” to saying “we” or “us”. She is acknowledging the fact that she doesn’t feel she is in control of her actions any more. Her addiction is driving her, and she is too mentally broken to resist it. She’s fighting to remain sane and in order to do that she keeps retreating into the safety of her mind and away from the actions of her body. It is still all “her”, though. There isn’t another being in there controlling her like a puppet or anything. It’s just the human mind can only take so much punishment before it breaks. And hers is breaking.
At his warehouse, why does Chadwick claim that Cat had taken everything from him? Did she truly take everything he had? And why claim she had given him away if he was just going to turn himself in?
The ranting over the PA system at the warehouse was just to distract her. He didn't mean most of it. He just wanted her to stay focused on the words. Chadwick is smart, and he believes that she will hunt him down eventually. But he wants revenge on her for her seeking him out in the first place. That’s why he kills Leyna, to punish Cat. He knows once he does it, though, then she won't stop hunting him down, so he decides to hide where he thinks she can't get him. In jail. He believes she will easily hunt him down anywhere else. He is just using the jail as a safety net to prevent her from getting to him. Plus, he figures he can manipulate the system to get what he wants while he’s there.
Ironically, this is where Chadwick makes a mistake. Since she hunted him down so easily at the start, he believes she can do it again whenever she wants. He prepares himself to not be surprised by her again by taking the offensive and stalking Leyna. But if he had just walked away after destroying his own house, then she would have moved on from him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t have known that, and Leyna paid the price.
Is there ANY good left in Catarina? Or is Cat going to be the new villain?
That's the “big question” I want to examine coming up in the next book. Cat is now fully embracing the addiction and the "good feelings" it gives her. Does that make her a bad person or is she just making bad choices? At what point do our choices define who we are? And the question about Cat being a villain is a REALLY good one. That is what I am going to examine in the next novel: what defines a villain? Cat will be doing some good deeds still, but her methods might end up being inexcusable. It’s similar to the classic comic book heroes Batman, Punisher or Wolverine. They fight crime and try to make the world a better place, but their methods aren’t always supported by the public. They aren’t Captain America or Superman. They are antiheroes. That is how I see Cat progressing. Up until now she has been a vigilante, but she has been, essentially, “good”. Now she will slip into being a vigilante with less of a conscience or restrictive morals.
The question becomes: at one point does the antihero become a villain. I don’t believe real evil in the world starts out to be evil just for the fun of it. It starts out trying to accomplish good and gets its methods twisted in the process. This is Cat’s path. But it will have to wait for the next book for the full answer.
Why does the book end so abruptly? It almost feels like this is half of a longer book.
In theory, I see all three of the books about Cat being one long story so that assessment makes sense. Catalyst, in particular, was just about her change from “still kinda good” to “disturbingly close to evil”. If I had kept this story going until she completed tracking down Chadwick, then it would have added too much to an already lengthy book. Plus, I see this as a complete story. Much like the classic movie, The Empire Strikes Back, I liked the book ending on a cliffhanger and a downer. It gets you ready for the next part of the saga. Empire ended with the main characters in turmoil and questions unanswered, but it worked. I want Catalyst to end that same way. It is both part of a longer journey, and a complete representation of this part of Cat’s life.
What about those “fail safe” devices that Ren has Cat install? They’re never mentioned again. Did you forget about them?
Nope. They will play a role in the next story. I wanted to have a little bit of overlap from one book to the next, and these will be one of those “continuation” things. And the conversations Ren and Cat had about them in Catalyst will be a bit foreboding, too, if things go as planned. I’m thinking the lawyer’s house could play a major role in how Cat’s story finishes out.
Did you have any influences on this book or on Cat as a character this time around? How did this part of her story come about?
Actually, yes, there was. A pretty big one. Walter White, the lead character in the Breaking Bad television show became a model for what I foresaw happening to Cat’s life.
I wrote the opening chapters with Chadwick and Cat’s escape from him and her getting back to the warehouse shortly after finishing Catharsis. But then my ideas for the story stagnated. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with her as a character. I couldn’t see myself just writing about her going out and fighting basic crime anymore. That wasn’t compelling for me. It didn’t pull me in and make me want to write. But Chadwick did. I really liked him a lot more than I thought I would. He was actually supposed to be a small, throw away character, but obviously that changed.
Anyway, I let the story sit for a few months as I tried to visualize where to go with it. And then I got into the show Breaking Bad. I watched all five seasons on Netflix within a month’s time, and I fell in love with what the writers did to Walter White throughout the progression of the show. He was a good man with good intentions, and he used his abilities to try and do something positive: make money for his family so they would be supported after his death from cancer. But it all goes wrong and he destroys everything he loved, instead. That was Cat! I realized that was what I could find fascinating about her: Her desire to do something good and failing at it. The more she tries to make the world a better place, the more it destroys her.
With Walter as Cat’s character inspiration, I attacked the story again and saw her arc flesh itself out in front of me. I saw her go from being a naïve girl who wants nothing but good in the world and who won’t even curse in the first book, to the Cat who finishes out Catalyst: angry, vengeful and no longer reluctant to use the Darkness to accomplish what she feels needs to be done. That was an idea I found fascinating as a writer, and it hooked me.
You mentioned that Chadwick’s role was supposed to be much smaller in Catalyst. What happened? How did that character come about?
When I started the writing of Catalyst, I didn’t want to jump into it with Cat hunting the same dealers from the previous book. I didn’t find that as interesting. Instead I came up with the idea of her expanding who she would punish beyond just those pushing drugs. What about other people who had broken the law and deserved to be punished, but the justice system couldn’t reach them? I thought Cat would work perfectly in that area. And, actually, that was my initial thinking for the second book: Cat chasing down people who thought they were above the law. The book didn’t eventually go there, but that was my original concept.
I started writing the opening scene of her tracking down someone I thought would be truly heinous: a child trafficker who had escaped justice. And I had to give him a name, so I bastardized the name of one of the worst people I could think of: my childhood bully. It was a Tuckerism, but I’ve done that a lot throughout the story. I figured it would be cathartic to create this character, make him vile and then kill him off. He just needed to be around for the first few chapters and then she could put him away, introduce the book’s new concept and move on. But that wasn’t what ended up happening.
As I wrote the character into the story and had Cat confront him, I ended up liking his evilness. Well, it wasn’t that I “enjoyed” him, but that I “respected” him as a foil to her. He was the “brilliance” to counter-balance her “brawn”. The more I wrote about Cat and Chadwick, the more I saw him being someone who could really torment her. And then I couldn�
��t get rid of him. He wriggled his way into the story and began taking it over. And I enjoyed it.
Then I had the conundrum of whether I should keep Chadwick’s name or change it. Here was this evil person I had named after a person I hated just so I could kill him, but he was becoming a major character. I didn’t want my past tormentor’s name to have such a prestigious role in my book, so I decided to come up with a new one. But no other name worked for him. “Chadwick” had already grown into an entity by that point and renaming him just seemed false. In the end, I resigned myself to keeping the name, but I would do my best to make sure nobody liked him. I figured it was a good compromise. Plus, I still have hopes that something awful will happen to him in the next book. That cathartic revenge might still be coming.
You mentioned that Chadwick’s name is a “Tuckerism”. What does that term mean?
This is one of those things I picked up while writing. Writers have to name characters, but where do those names come from? Often times the names we use in books have importance in one way or another. Almost every name I use in my books does. Well, a Tuckerism is the idea of using the names of people you know in real life and working them into your writing. Wilson Tucker was a classic sci-fi writer who often used the names of friends and associates as his characters in his books. He did it so often that the practice was named after him. Both Catalyst and my previous book, Catharsis, are rife with them.
Chadwick is named after my childhood bully, as I stated previously. Leyna is a combination of my daughters’ names: Kailey and Jenna. I just took the end of each name and smashed them together. In Catharsis, I named Cat’s friend, James, after my father. And her P.E. teacher’s name is Ms. Davis, which comes from my mother.
Aside from just Tuckerisms, I also use literary references and allusions to create my character names. In Catharsis, the dog’s name is Lazzy, which is short for Lazarus. The idea being that the dog is risen from the dead, much like the biblical character. It’s also an allusion to the old TV show Lassie. I was able to kill two birds with one stone on that name.
Also in Catharsis, I always referred to the school nurse as “Nurse Pritchett”. That was a reference to Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. They are spelled differently, but the pronunciations are very similar.
In Catalyst, Chadwick’s pseudonym he uses with Leyna is Jacob Joodis. His last name is a reference to Judas, another character in the Bible. For those who don’t remember, he’s a traitor to Jesus and brings about his downfall. I saw Chadwick doing the same thing to Cat’s family, so I thought the name was fitting.
And finally, we have Ren, Cat’s friend. Ren’s name comes from the original Dracula novel in which the main vampire had a minion who helped him during the daytime: Renfield. That is the job that Cat brings Ren in to do, so I thought it would be a fun reference. And Ren’s real name? Pater? The word is Latin for father and sometimes even a reference to God. I saw Ren being Cat’s surrogate family and her guiding light, and I wanted to give him a name that was suitably fitting.
Speaking of Ren, why introduce him into the book in the first place? In Catharsis, Cat is on her own throughout most of the book. Why give her a sidekick?
First off, I’m not sure Ren would accept the label of “sidekick”. Second, I had originally wanted Cat to have a confidant in Catharsis, but it never seemed to work out in the story. When I had been planning out Cat’s original story, I foresaw her meeting up with an old teacher and having him guide her and give advice. It felt a bit clichéd, though, and I never found a good place to work it in. Cat remained on her own throughout the first story regardless of what I had planned.
But I didn’t see Cat as being a “loner” long term, so I decided to start Catalyst with her already having found that friend. I could have added in more of the backstory about them finding each other, but it would have added too much length to the book. Plus, that is exposition that wasn’t really needed for this part of Cat’s transformation. Instead, I started this story with Ren already being a part of her life and just dropped hints as to how their friendship originated.
As Cat becomes more ensconced in the Darkness, I wanted to have a moral light to help guide her. That’s where Ren comes in. He is her connection back to who she is supposed to be. Who she wants to be. He helps balance her as a character. And he will play a pivotal role in Cat’s life in the next book. More so than in this one, I believe. The stories don’t always go where I plan, but I think I can at least control the part Ren plays.
Plus, from a writing standpoint, I didn’t want to just have Cat on her own. It is more fun bringing in new characters and having them interact. I can only do so much, creatively at least, with Cat as a secluded hermit. She needs other personalities to bounce off of so that she can develop. Lazzy did that a little bit in Catharsis, but he wasn’t a fully fleshed out character. Ren’s existence allowed Cat to become a stronger person.
And, more importantly, he was just fun to write and bring to life. Once I had the idea for Ren and started bringing him in, he took off on his own. I could foresee doing a future story just about him. I think his history, and future, could be worthy of their own arc.
Will Ren and Cat ever be a romantic item? Wouldn’t that make sense since they are a boy and a girl on their own together in a young adult novel?
Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening at all. I didn’t want Cat to be guided by “love” or “boys”. That happens enough in young adult novels, and I wanted Cat to be a strong-willed girl who wasn’t swayed by her heart. She loves Ren as a friend, but I don’t think she would ever see him as more than that. Also, Cat isn’t Ren’s type. At all. But that is a plot point for another day.
You’ve mentioned that the story doesn’t always go where you want. Are there plot ideas you wanted to put in that didn’t make it?
Aside from Cat having a mentor/teacher in Catharsis that never came to fruition? Yes, actually. Several. The biggest one was the original bad guy I had planned out for Cat to encounter in Catalyst and the next book before Chadwick became such a force. When Chadwick had only been a bit player, I had planned on introducing the idea of Cat encountering another person who had been infected with the same disease as her. It stemmed from the idea of my not being able to find an appropriate foe for her to battle. She’s too strong and fast for most humans to be a worry for her, so I started looking for another way to create conflict. I wanted her to battle somebody even faster, stronger and crueler than herself. I had even mapped out the character and what he would do.
I hadn’t named him yet, but it was going to be a young boy who had been infected decades ago, and we would get to see what the long-term effects of this disease would do to someone’s mental stability. He had been infected when he was around eight years old and spent the ensuing years getting faster and smarter and more ruthless than any other living person. He was going to discover Cat while she was out hunting one night and just follow her. He would have spent the majority of Catalyst being a background character that she noticed often, but couldn’t figure out why he was always around. Then at the end of the book he would have started attacking her indirectly.
He killed whenever he fed, and he always fed on young women. He would use the fact that he looked like a lost little boy to pull the girls in and get pity and then he would reveal his true self and feast. He delighted in destroying people. And he had discovered how to infect others. He would routinely infect two strong males and then force them to battle to the death in order for them to prove which of them was more powerful. This process would be repeated with new guys until he had developed one that was completely insane and yet absolutely loyal to him. He would then use the survivor as an apprentice and send him out after Cat to kill her. This would be how he entertained himself after years of being infected.
I had planned on him being the major bad guy in the next book as she sought him out, but Chadwick usurped him as the villain. Chadwick showed me that I didn’t need a superhuman character to b
eat Cat. I just needed someone who was smarter and wasn’t bound by morals. Chadwick ended up cannibalizing some of the kid’s character traits, but that was all that came from it. Chadwick became the center of her struggle instead. I still think it would have been a fun story to write, but it wasn’t destined to be.
Don’t you control what happens in the book? As the author, don’t you know what will happen to the characters before you begin writing?
Well, that’s a tough question. Actually yes and no. I generally have an idea of what I think will happen when I sit down to write, but it doesn’t always go that way. I’m sure every writer views the process differently, but for me it is more like I am “channeling” the words rather than “writing” them. As a scene unfolds on the page, I am putting words into the mouths of the characters, but I’m not always conscious of the act. It is almost like I am sitting back and watching it happen. The characters take shape on their own and make choices I don’t always agree with. Even though I am doing the physical writing, it feels as if it is coming from somewhere deep in my brain that I don’t have conscious control over. It is hard to explain at times, but it is fun to witness.
As an example, I might want Cat to get angry and kill Chadwick in the opening scene of the book. Just kill him off and move on. I can even write out that scene and leave it on the page. But it won’t feel right. It will feel forced because somewhere inside of me it isn’t what I think she would do as a character. So I will go back and delete it and start over. This time I don’t think about what I’m making her do. I just type and let the scene happen. Something deep in my weird, little writer’s brain then kicks in and guides the action. It isn’t really at the forefront of my thinking. It’s what makes the writing process fun for me.
Catharsis (Book 2): Catalyst Page 23