Ask the Author: Kate Heartfield
Answered Questions (5)
Kate Heartfield
No plans at the moment! I have a paragraph sitting in a notebook with some ideas for a possible book 3 someday, but the publisher only contracted two books, so I wrote book 2 knowing it might be the last.
Kate Heartfield
Thank you for the question! The story is here for those who haven't read it:
I wrote it as an entry in a flash-fiction contest in a writers' group. The prompt was "make a cruel action into a kindness, or vice versa." For some reason, I thought about people who don't make space for others on buses, and thought about how I could turn a person claiming a seat with their backpack into a secretly kind action.
On a deeper level, it hearkens back to my own teenagehood, when I used to take buses through rural Manitoba and northern Ontario, and a long Greyhound bus ride I took from Winnipeg to Houston when I was 17. That was a whole education in a few days! I was thinking more generally about the ways in which women and girls get away from their lives when they need to, how they find safety or freedom. And I suppose I was thinking about the ways that we use our outward appearance to signal our identities to each other and the world, the meanings of a t-shirt or a hair colour, and how for some people those can be a kind of language telling you where you're safe and where you aren't.
I wrote it as an entry in a flash-fiction contest in a writers' group. The prompt was "make a cruel action into a kindness, or vice versa." For some reason, I thought about people who don't make space for others on buses, and thought about how I could turn a person claiming a seat with their backpack into a secretly kind action.
On a deeper level, it hearkens back to my own teenagehood, when I used to take buses through rural Manitoba and northern Ontario, and a long Greyhound bus ride I took from Winnipeg to Houston when I was 17. That was a whole education in a few days! I was thinking more generally about the ways in which women and girls get away from their lives when they need to, how they find safety or freedom. And I suppose I was thinking about the ways that we use our outward appearance to signal our identities to each other and the world, the meanings of a t-shirt or a hair colour, and how for some people those can be a kind of language telling you where you're safe and where you aren't.
Kate Heartfield
Armed in Her Fashion came out of a little bit of offhand research I did for another novel. I was looking for a name for a pot. :) I wrote about that for J. Kathleen Cheney's series on Research Rabbit Holes.
Kate Heartfield
I'm working on an interactive novel for Choice of Games, based on The Canterbury Tales. I've got 3 of the 10 chapters written, and I'm having a blast.
I'm also working on draft 2 of a fantasy novel set in 18th century Europe.
And pretty soon, I'll be working on edits for my debut novel, Armed In Her Fashion.
I'm also working on draft 2 of a fantasy novel set in 18th century Europe.
And pretty soon, I'll be working on edits for my debut novel, Armed In Her Fashion.
Kate Heartfield
I've been meaning to read Everfair by Nisi Shawl for what seems like forever. This Census-taker by China Mieville is on the bedside table, and The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu, and The Just City by Jo Walton. The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin. Bonhomme Sept Heures by Evan May.
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