Interview with Cate Simon
C.A. Asbrey
I am talking to newly published author, Cate Simon, whose first book, Courting Anna has just been released by Prairie Rose Publications. Thanks for talking to me today, Cate.
What gives you inspiration for your book(s)? With Courting Anna, I’d been studying the Victorian novel in grad school, and I was watching some Westerns as a study break, when it occurred to me that this all was taking place in the same time period, and what a contrast it was. Anna Harrison is a born and bred Westerner, but her family is from Massachusetts originally, and they’ve created a home where there are plenty of books, literature and science and so forth. So she lives in this Wild West scenario but she actually reflects a more Victorian mindset in some ways – except that she’s a late-Victorian New Woman, very independent. I wrote a dissertation chapter on Wilkie Collins’ The Law and the Lady, and I thought of the heroine, who goes to great lengths to vindicate the man she loves, as enacting the role of an appellate lawyer. When I dug around, I discovered that while that wasn’t possible for a woman to practice law in Britain at that time, actually the first woman lawyer had been admitted to the bar in the United States in 1869.
What is your favorite part of the book? Right at the beginning, Anna marches into the sheriff’s office to meet her new clients, and it’s never occurred to them that the lawyer who’s coming to see them might be a woman, of course, so confusion ensues. And she’s expecting it, so she’s totally on top of things. The other happens about halfway through the book. Anna and her ward Sarah are on holiday in Colorado Springs, and Anna decides to take what she refers to as “an ill-advised walk” in the evening. Jeremiah and Ed, who have no idea that she’s not two territories away, are drunk and in the company of some young ladies of the evening. While Jeremiah has fallen hard for Anna and hasn’t actually behaved like this in quite some time, she just happens to run across him on the one occasion when he’s celebrating according to his former lights. She manages to brazen her way through the situation, and her parting shot is to invite them to call on her when they’re sober again – at the Temperance Hotel where she’s staying.
What do you love most about the writing process? I love it when the characters just start telling me what they’re going to be doing and the writing flows. Obviously, I’m the one behind it all, but sometimes your characters really surprise you.
Of all the characters you have created, which is your favorite and why? I really am fond of them all, but I have to admit that I have a sneaking liking for Nick Powell, Anna’s rival lawyer in town. He’s a blowhard and you can’t trust him very far, but he’s tremendous fun to write.
Music or silence Silence. I am not a coffee shop writer; I’m easily distracted. I used to belong to a writers’ cooperative loft, which had a silence rule in the main space, and it was heavenly.
What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? Finding the time. Overcoming self-doubt.
Million dollar question, are you working on another book? Oh, yes. I fell in love with writing my female lawyer heroine, Anna. She gets her happily ever after out West, but I thought . . . what if her life had gone differently? And she’d ended up coming East, to a landscape much more familiar to me? So I’m working on what I hope will be the first of a series of mysteries, featuring a different female lawyer in late 19th century New York, amidst Gilded Age opulence, and rampant criminality, and massive waves of immigration coming into the country through Castle Garden and then Ellis Island, all at the same time, in the same place. My ancestors were part of that landscape, coming from various parts of Europe throughout the second half of the 19th century and winding up in New York City. The first woman lawyer in New York state, by the way, was Kate Stoneman in 1886.
Excerpt
“Jeremiah Brown gave her his arm as they strolled down the main street, for the all-too-regrettably short walk home. In her high-heeled boots, they were much of a height, and she found she liked that. The only man she walked around town with on a regular basis, these days, was her clerk Jonathan, who was considerably over six feet tall. She liked looking Jeremiah Brown straight in the eye, those large, liquid brown eyes.
“Here,” she said. “Remember?” She wished her building to the far side of town, so the walk could continue, but disobligingly, it stayed right where it was.
“You live above your office?” He looked surprised.
“Not in a boarding house, or with a respectable old lady somewhere?” She winked at him. “It’s just that I own the building, you see, and it would be silly not to take advantage of the rooms upstairs. Anyhow, my ward lives with me, so I’m not all alone, and it’s right in the center of town, so we’re perfectly safe.”
“It’s just not the usual thing,” he said.
“I’m just not the usual thing, either,” she shook her head. “As you might have noticed. My sister wants me to move out to her husband’s ranch, but it’s too far from town for me to get to the office when the roads get bad in winter. Besides, she’d keep wanting me to help her mind her children every time I turned around. Here, I’m not so far from the sheriff, or the hotel, or lots of other places where there are plenty of people.” She found that she didn’t want to tell him about the other reason, about her ironclad respectability, about how her mourning for David had carried on for years and years until everybody practically forgot Anna Harrison was still an attractive woman and figured no man would come near her anyhow because none of them had a chance.
She didn’t want to tell him that because she found, absurdly, that she was hoping he would kiss her. And, suddenly, he did. Kissed her gently, and pulled away, looking at her to see if she wanted him to continue. She supposed that he could tell by the look in her eyes, and her suddenly heavy, shallow breathing, that she wanted it as much as he did, because he leaned in and kissed her again, harder this time. And this time she kissed back.”
Links
Website: www.catesimon.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/catesimonbooks
Instagram: www.instagram.com/cate_simon_books/