Between The Lines is a sporadic feature on Pop! Goes The Reader in which authors and other industry professionals provide further insight into the writing and publishing process in the form of interviews, guest posts, etc. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy as we read between the lines.
About Catherine Lo
Catherine Lo is the author of Easy Prey and How It Ends. She has spent the last decade and a half as a teacher working with at-risk youth. She lives outside of Toronto with her husband and two children.
When I wrote my first novel, How It Ends, I knew exactly where the idea came from. Inspired both by my work supporting adolescents as a teacher and by my own high school experiences, I knew I wanted to write about the ups and downs of female friendship and the impact of mental health on relationships. Armed with that inspiration and with a loose idea of where I wanted the story to go, I sat down to write. The story took shape as I wrote it, and How It Ends was transformed from the spark of an idea into the story I’d needed when I was fifteen years old.
The experience of writing Easy Prey was completely different.
I have no idea where the initial inspiration for Easy Prey came from. As strange as it sounds, I simply woke up one day with three new characters in my head. Their names were Mouse, Drew and Jenna, and they were quite suddenly as familiar to me as if I’d known them for years. I knew what they each wanted most from life, I knew their best qualities and their weaknesses, and I knew the complicated ways they were all intertwined in the story that was to become Easy Prey.
I found myself thinking about this story constantly. It revealed itself to me much like a movie playing in my brain, and I returned over and over again to my favorite scenes, watching as they became clearer over time. For almost six months, I walked around daydreaming about the characters. When my mind wandered, it wandered to the story. Who exposed the photos of Miss Bailey, and why? I knew the answers long before I ever wrote a single word. It was so different than my experience with How It Ends, which I’d written into existence. Easy Prey existed long before I ever tried to write it down.
And while this likely sounds like an ideal scenario when it comes to inspiration, it did come with complications. By the time I felt ready to start writing Easy Prey, I knew the story with such clarity that I was terrified of getting it wrong. Each time I sat in front of my computer, the distance between the blank page and the world in my head was so vast that I was convinced I’d never bridge it. How could I translate the movie in my head into words? There was so much I wanted the story to convey, and I worried that what I loved most about it – the complex histories and relationships between the characters, the way they reveal themselves to each other and to us, the secrets they keep and the lies they tell as they navigate the scandal at the heart of the story – would somehow be lost.
It took a great deal of time and many failed starts. I made charts and diagrams, I wrote and rewrote scenes, I experimented with differing timelines and viewpoints, and slowly, slowly, what was on the page got closer and closer to what was in my head. And then, when the book sold and I had the opportunity to work with the incredibly talented editor Maggie Lehrman, she helped me take the story to whole new levels.
I am extraordinarily proud of the book that’s releasing today. How It Ends may have been the book I needed to read as a teen, but Easy Prey is the book I wanted to read. It’s twisty and dark and complicated and surprising, and I cannot wait for you to discover its secrets.
Title Easy Prey
Author Catherine Lo
Pages 352 Pages
Intended Target Audience Young Adult
Genre & Keywords Contemporary, Mystery, Thriller
Publication Date October 16th 2018 by Amulet Books
Find It On Goodreads ● Amazon.com ● Chapters ● The Book Depository
Only three students had access to a teacher’s racy photos before they went viral. There’s Mouse, a brainy overachiever so desperate to escape his father and go to MIT that he would do almost anything, legal or not. Then there’s Drew, the star athlete who can get any girl’s number — and private photos — with his charm but has a history of passing those photos around. And finally there’s Jenna, a good girl turned rebel after her own shocking photos made the rounds at school last year, who is still waiting for justice. All three deny leaking the photos, but someone has to take the fall. This edgy whodunit tackles hot-button issues of sexting and gossip and will have readers tearing through the pages to reach the final reveal.
