(note: book in photo is not the boy who steals houses haha)
I'm so excited to have the official Slytherin Queen of Books and Cake™ aka Paper Fury aka author (Cait) C.G. Drews on the blog today! Cait's second book, THE BOY WHO STEALS HOUSES is coming out April 4th (!!!) and Cait very kindly agreed to an interview! We talked blogging, books, writing and of course...cake! I'm also holding an international (as long as Book Depository ships to you) giveaway of THE BOY WHO STEALS HOUSES at the end of this post so make sure to check it out!
Hey, hello, Cait! Thank you so much for coming on the blog today! Would you mind introducing yourself and your books to the blog?
Thanks so much for having me, Ella!
*waves to your blog readers* Hi, everyone! My name is Cait (aka CG Drews) and I'm the author of A Thousand Perfect Notes and The Boy Who Steals Houses, as well as the chaotic owner of Paper Fury. I'm from Australia and my goal is basically to live forever so I can read all the books. Yes, absolutely all of them.
You're so welcome! It's so great to have you here. First question: You've been given a time machine! What's something you wish you'd known before your debut came out and that if you could, you'd go back in time to tell Debut Cait?
I'd tell Debut Cait not to read negative Goodreads reviews (oomphf that was a bad decision haha) and also to chill out a bit about all the pre-release worries (although Debut Cait would not have listened).
That is a REALLY tip about Goodreads that I think Debut Authors might want to be more aware of! Has your favourite and least favourite parts of the writing process stayed the same since publishing two books?
With writing, my favourite parts are scheming up ideas and falling in love with my characters and writing banter! So that definitely hasn't changed. But my least favourite thing for A Thousand Perfect Notes was waiting for updates, while my least favourite part of The Boy Who Steals Houses was the amount of rewrites it went through! It was a super cute disaster, but I'm so so glad it came together.
That's so interesting how different those processes were! Almost like parenting two children haha. Any books you've read recently that you've loved? I've recently binge-read THE CRUEL PRINCE and THE WICKED KING by Holly Black and the mixture of evil fae, a Slytherin main character and Holly Black's glorious writing made me never want the books to end!
Oh I LOVE those! The Wicked King absolutely threw my heartbeat off a cliff...like how are we supposed to wait for Queen of Nothing after that cliffhanger?! Holly Black is such an author queen. My other favourites so far this year have been, Queen of Air and Darkness by Cassandra Clare and Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi!
I will have to check those out because my heart is EMPTY after what Holly Black did to me... Is there a certain stage when writing that you get hit by writers block? What are your ways of getting through it?
My biggest blocks come with developing new ideas. Like, I loooove scheming up plots and imagining it as this epic movie in my head...but when I crash into a wall, w o w do I crash. I hate that frustrated and trapped feeling! Basically I force myself to think through it or corner an unsuspecting sister or enlist my kind agent to help me brainstorm.
Coming up with new ideas is the best feeling ever but gahhhh do I relate! Tell me, how do you self-care as a writer?
I buy books, haha. I actually need to do better with self-care! Taking breaks is good and not failure!
Buying books is an excellent way to self-care, haha. Can I ask how much cake was harmed/destroyed during the process of writing this book??
So so much. My family actually was away the week I wrote The Boy Who Steals Houses so I was left with my own pitiful cooking skills. I am super good at making brownies though, so yes I lived off a lot of cake. And I ended up writing a lot of cake into my book too. It just happened! Can I call it "inspiration" and not "severe lack of imagination and having cake crumbs all over my keyboard already"?
I forget how fast you write! I think it's incredible that not only through all the years of building up to being a published author but now that you ARE a published author, you're still book blogging! How much harder is it to juggle blogging around your writing now?
It's sooo different now and I'm still working out how to balance it! It's hard because I don't fit wholly as a book blogger anymore, what with having my own books out there, and I don't want to make readers feel like I'm lurking over their shoulders while they read my work. I also spend more time writing so I have to blog less, but I have fun!
Lastly, if you could paper a room of your choosing with the pages of just one of your books (published or unpublished!), which one would you choose and why??
I think I would feel very haunted if I did this haha. It would be like having my own typos creep up on me...but can I just choose a motley of all of them?! Then my characters could hang out together. I think they'd make good friends and they could complain about what I put them through.
G I V E A W A Y !
I'm giving away a copy of THE BOY WHO STEALS HOUSES!
+ open internationally as long as Book Depository ships to you
+ giveaway finishes on the 10th of april
+ if the winner doesn't reply to me within 48 hours I will pick another winner
a Rafflecopter giveaway
are you as excited as me for the release of THE BOY WHO STEALS HOUSES?? because i am sooooo excite!
