Writer Catherine Norton’s interesting children's novels are full of magical adventures and characters that are bright stars on the page.
Catherine's novel, TheFortune Maker, is long-listed for the ARA Historical Fiction Prize 2024.
Catherine generously shares information on what brought her to writing and when her writing journey started in this exclusive interview with KBR's, Anastasia Gonis.
My writing journey started as soon as I learnt to read and write! I wrote my first stories before I started school (the spelling left a bit to be desired). In year five I stapled together and illustrated my own book of poems, and the school librarian let me put it on the shelf (school librarians are legends). When I was thirteen, I submitted my first attempt at a novel to a publisher and got a kind rejection. I’m interested in lots of things, but I can’t remember ever wanting to do anything else.
Your first book, Crossing, in 2015, was joint winner of the Patricia Wrightson Prize. Did you work on any other projects between then and the release of The Fortune Maker?
Yes, I actually wrote a novel for adults and a sequel to Crossing during that time. They are still in my bottom drawer (the metaphorical place where writers keep unpublished novel manuscripts). Up to that point, I’d always assumed once you got your first book out, you were in, so to speak – that you just had to keep writing them and someone would publish them. Writing careers are not so linear, as it turns out.
You have lived and worked in many places and at many jobs. Have these life experiences influenced your writing in any way?
Absolutely. I write a lot about class and work, and during my twenties I did all sorts of menial jobs and lived in all sorts of places, seeing and experiencing how different people live in different strata of society.
During my first trip to London, for example, I was a live-in housekeeper for millionaires in Belgravia, and then (when they fired me for being terrible at it, which I was) I was a live-in bar attendant at a working-class pub. We moved around a lot when I was a kid, too, and lived in caravans and half-built houses at various times. As a result, I never take any perspective for granted, and I like to write about characters who often get left in the background in fiction.
The Fortune Maker is a magical adventure created in a historical setting. Is history a preferred topic of yours?
I’ve always loved history and historical fiction, probably because I’m a sucker for a good story. History is full of things I could never make up. I like to repurpose them into stories I have made up, but which have a ring of truth about them. Written history has a long and complicated relationship with fiction – when we write history, we use the techniques of fiction to narrate what we know about the past, to try to organize it into some kind of sense, to find cause and effect. But to do that we have to take a point of view, so it can never be truly objective.
I love the way historical fiction can offer a different view of the past, interrogating what we think we know about it, bringing to light the stories of people who didn’t make it into the history books or questioning the stories of those who did.
Both The Fortune Maker and Hester Hitchins and the Falling Stars address the strengths and abilities of the superbly created female characters whose worth is undermined by others. You appear to champion women’s rights and worth through your writing. If so, can you expand this point?
When I was a kid there was a dearth of stories centered around girls. Even less common were stories that showed girls’ inner lives or celebrated their independence and rebellion. That’s changed a lot in recent years and I’m proud to contribute.
We can’t take down the patriarchy if we don’t talk to kids about what it is and how we could challenge it.
You have perfectly captured the language, manners and customs of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Was this difficult to do?
I think I drew on a mélange of novels and other texts written during those eras, frock dramas made in the 80s and 90s and very wide range of history books! Some I’ve been reading my whole life, and some I read especially when researching these two books. So not difficult, exactly, more a labour of love.
A great pleasure for a reader is closing a book and having learnt something they didn’t know. Now many people will learn what an orrery and an azimuth is. How much research was involved in the gathering of information about navigating the stars?
A fair bit – I did read books about astronomy and navigation. I also spent countless hours on the internet, listened to podcasts, visited museums and a planetarium, pored over maps, gazed at works of art…it all comes together to form a picture of a time and place.
But although several of the things in the story are inspired by real things – the giant telescope, for example, and Mrs Janet Taylor’s tome on nautical navigation – I shuffled history around a bit to make them align with the 1866 Leonid meteor shower that is so central to the plot. They are true to the era, if not the exact year.
You have created wonderful sub-stories, situations and complex characters. How long did it take to write each novel?
I wrote The Fortune Maker over the course of about five years, including many redrafts and time spent thinking about other things. In contrast, I wrote Hester Hitchins very quickly, in just over a year. Witness the amazing power of a deadline!
Can you share with us what you are currently working on?
I am actually taking a short break from writing – life has a habit of getting in the way! – but I plan to return to it soon. Stay tuned!
Connect with Catherine via her website or Instagram.