Catharina Steel is the author of the new middle grade novel Vanishings, the first in a new series. She lives in Australia.
Q: What inspired you to write Vanishings?
A: I was chatting with my dad when I visualized these magical homes within a forest. Several weeks later I recalled my love of magical stories, and I knew this would make such a fun world to set a story within.
I started to write with zero idea what I was doing; however, it didn’t take long before my love of writing came back to me and I recalled all the stories I had started to write over the years, particularly when I was younger.
This story took me about a month to draft, and five years to edit! I kept going back to it each time I learned a little more and received additional feedback—I essentially learned the craft of writing working on this story.
But the story itself felt like it was given to me when I first allowed the words to flow onto the screen, not really knowing where the story was coming from, or where it was going. I felt like I stumbled through that first draft.
Q: The writer Katie Keridan said of the book, “Set in an enchanted forest, Vanishings is a heartwarming story filled with magic, friendship, self-discovery, and one determined young girl’s search for truth.” What do you think of that description?
A: My publisher, SparkPress, put me in touch with Katie. She was so generous with her time in reading my story and providing such a lovely blurb for me.
One of the things I love about stories is that every reader gets something slightly different from it because of their own life experiences.
I have several elements to the story, such as Jess’s anxiety, and Tilly’s tendency to leap before thinking things through (based on my own inclination to do this), but how a reader sees these story elements will depend on how they relate to how I’ve shown it.
One of the great benefits about showing, rather than telling, the reader how a character is feeling or behaving is that they will interpret it in their own way—making the story their own. Which is what putting a book into the world (for me) is about.
Q: How did you create the world in which the story takes place?
A: This is the story element I visualized first. Interestingly, this also happened with a YA series I’m working on, although I saw the world and the start of this story simultaneously. I tend to see things in a very visual way in my mind.
For me, the world a story is takes place within will determine how the story unfolds. The rules of the world, how magic works in the world, the mythical creatures included, and how the characters think and behave will impact each scene.
There are so many aspects to the world of Vanishings that I simply knew. I saw so many aspects to this story so vividly that I never felt like I was creating the world so much as it was presented to me.
As I became more familiar with the craft of writing, I paid more attention to the rules of this world and how things had come to be. This guided my edits with how this impacted the characters and the story arc. The children, originally, hadn’t been magical, but I realized this wasn’t true to this world and so I added it in later.
I believe it’s during edits where the world is brought to life for the reader. Once the story is drafted, you have a better feel for things, so you can go back in and add more elements to the scenes to help show the world in a way the reader will be able to picture it vividly in their minds. I like to give them enough to see the world, but not too much that they can’t make it their own.
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: My original title was Tilly’s Adventures in Cheyanne Forest. I thought I made the word Cheyanne up, but I later learned that wasn’t the case.
When I was working on the rewrite, the working title was Bound Magic because Tilly’s magic is bound, but SparkPress advised that there were too many similar titles within this genre and suggested several others—but I didn’t like any of them.
I sat down and allowed my mind to wander through the story and I had a deep think about what happens in this story, and also the following stories in the series.
I considered how both Clayton and Michael had disappeared from within the Wythic Wood, and that the creatures and Opa believed, but hadn’t been able to confirm, that the Witch of Wythic Wood had captured them. It felt like they had simply vanished and I thought that would make a good title.
For the series, it felt like a mystery since Tilly needs to find out what happened to Michael and where he is so that she can rescue him.
I considered the second book, which looks into the mystery around the weredogs curse, and in the third story they search for hidden elves who mysteriously disappeared from the Wythic Wood many years ago, and the fourth (and final) book where the mystery around who the real protagonist is, is fully revealed.
All of these mysteries take place, or have elements within, the Wythic Wood. So, the series title became The Wythic Wood Mysteries Series.
When I presented these titles to SparkPress they agreed they were great titles.
Q: As you noted, this is the first in a series—can you say more about what’s next?
A: There are four books in The Wythic Wood Mysteries Series as follows:
Book Two Working Title: Weredog Curse. Tilly wants to reverse the curse the Witch of Wythic Wood has placed on the weredogs in her territory, so they search for the cure.
Book Three Working Title: Ancient Magic. They search for the elves Clayton eventually tells them about, and the truth about the Witch’s goal is revealed.
Book Four Working Title: Elven Battle. Tilly and friends team up with a group of good elves to battle the Wythic Wood elves at the fortress within this forest.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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