Title: Night Life
Author: Caitlin Kittredge
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Paperbacks
ISBN: 978-0312948290
1. First off, congratulations on the big novel sale! Give us the elevator pitch. What’s your book about?
Night Life is the story of Luna Wilder, a homicide detective in Nocturne City, California who also happens to be a werewolf. Life as a were isn’t easy, but it does have its benefits when Luna is on the job, like enhanced senses, extra strength and the ability to spot liars by scent and heartbeat. Then, Luna stumbles into a string of ritual murders repeating every fifty-seven years, and realizes that her city is under attack by a killer determined to bring something terrible into the world–and the conspiracy working to let him finish the job. With ex-con werewolf Dmitri Sandovsky and white witch cousin Sunflower her only allies, Luna finds herself pitted against black magic, demons and old-fashioned murderers. She never intended to save her city, but now she’s the only one who has a chance…
2. Most new novelists have an interesting story to tell about their journey to publication. What’s yours? Did you use an agent? Make sure to tell us about the day you found out you’d sold a book.
Well, I started writing Night Life in 2005, when I’d just graduated from college and just gotten dumped by my long-term boyfriend. It had gone through many previous drafts, none of which got past thirty pages, and even been handed in, as a short story, to my creative writing workshop. I needed something to distract me from real life, so I recast the novel as my favorite kind of story–the noir detective tale. Raymond Chandler meets Lon Chaney, that sort of vibe. The story wrote like gangbusters–except when it didn’t. I still had a lot to learn about actually finishing a novel, but I bought a membership to a writer’s conference and decided that if I was spending that kind of money on my crappy government salary (I worked in a financial call center for Washington state when I started the novel), I’d better have a manuscript to pitch. And I did. I didn’t end up finding representation at that conference, but I did make a couple of friends who I’m still in regular touch with to this day.
After that conference I polished the manuscript for a few more months, until it was July 2006 and I was sick of reading the damned thing. I knew it had to be ready to send out, or be trunked, so I wrote a really extraordinarily bad query letter and sent it to a friend who was already published. She dashed my ego against the rocks in a very kind manner, helped me re-write several times, I polished my first five pages and the book was off into the wild. I ended up garnering almost twenty requests for partial manuscripts and eleven for full manuscripts, all in less than a month. I’d heard horror stories about waiting months and years for responses, so my head was spinning. I ended up with two offers of representation, and I knew when I spoke to my agent, Rachel Vater, that she was the one. She got my book, she got me, and she even laughed at my jokes, which is when I knew we had clicked. Rachel sent the novel out widely, and she called me about a week after that first submission round to say that three publishers were interested and there was going to be an auction. I was at work, and I had to talk very softly so my co-workers wouldn’t realize what was going on, but then I ran into the break room and did a happy dance.
A week later, Rachel held the auction (from her cruise vacation!) and she called me at work again and told me that St. Martin’s Paperback had offered for three books and that she thought it was the offer to take. Of course I said yes, and they subsequently offered for two more books and a second series of mine–before /Night Life/ had even hit shelves!
3. Do you have another book in the pipeline? What are you working on now?
Okay. Wow. This is a long and complicated answer. The second book in the Nocturne City series, /Pure Blood/, releases August 26th. There are three more in the pipeline after that. The first book in my new series, the Black London adventures, is coming in June 2009. I also co-wrote a novel with the friend who gave me all the query advice, Jackie Kessler, which recently sold to Bantam and is coming in summer 2009. It’s a dystopian superhero novel called /Black & White./ Right now, I’m writing the second Black London book and working on a proposal for a YA urban fantasy that Rachel will hopefully be shopping in the fall.
4. What’s your writing process like? Morning writer, night writer, or something in between?
I am so not a morning person–I may be awake, but I have a hard time focusing until I’ve poured a few mugs of tea into myself. I tend to write in the early afternoon, break for dinner, blogging, reading, or the gym (or all of the above), and then write more in the evening. Really, I don’t have a set schedule–I tend to get restless and end up doing things like alphabetize my frozen food when I can’t get the words down. Unless I’m on deadline, and then I write from the time I get up until my hands hurt too much to keep typing for the day. But I try not to to that.
5. There seems to be an unusually high percentage of writers who own cats. Here at the The First Book, we’re doing a study to find out if there’s a direct relationship between writing success and cat ownership. Do you own a cat? If so, tell us about him or her. If not, tell us what you have against cats.
I actually own two cats–one on purpose and one by accident. Victor was adopted from the shelter with my ex. I definitely got the better end of that deal… Faust was a stray that my former boss found outside her house. She was allergic, and knew I had just had my roommate’s cat move out, and that Victor was very lonely. Faust literally /ran/ up to me when I came to capture him, so how could I not take him home? They’re
great cats, even if they do help my writing by walking across the laptop when they want attention.
