Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with Susanna Kanto
Book Title: Caytee
Released: 08/15/22
Genre: YA Contemporary Romance
Interview by Heather L. Barksdale
What inspired you to write “Caytee”?
Kanto: Caytee is a modern YA retelling of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. The inspiration for Caytee was a combination of my love of Jane Austen and a new-found enthusiasm for YA novels. Back in 2012, I was reading a lot of YA. That got me thinking what would happen if the main character of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey was a modern-day teenager and obsessed with YA paranormal fantasy.
How did you come up with the names of your main characters?
Kanto: The names were very easy to come up with because I mostly used the names from Northanger Abbey. The biggest change was the main character’s name. To imitate the slightly strange names in contemporary YA, my main character decides to change the spelling of her name into ‘Caytee’. Another name change happened to Isabella Thorpe, whose name I changed into Isis Thorne. Most of the other names are the same although I did add first names to some characters that were only addressed by last name in Northanger Abbey.
Is there anything that you want readers to know about you, your writing process or your book?
Kanto: I’m an indie author from Helsinki, Finland. I write in several genres, ranging from historical fiction to urban fantasy. Caytee is my debut novel, but I’ve been a writer ever since I can remember, and a storyteller even before I could write. My first stories weren’t very good, but at least I got a lot of practice!
I spend a lot of time planning my stories—years, even decades. I have random piles of paper and notebooks everywhere, and a dozen novel or short story ideas circulating in my head. Although I use a lot of time plotting the novel, I consider myself a plantser (a cross between someone who plots their stories before writing and someone who writes “by the seat of their pants”). I don’t plot everything, but I need to have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen in the story before I start writing it. I don’t write my novels from the beginning to the end but skip around, working on the scene that I feel inspired to write at that time.
If "Caytee" was adapted into a movie, who would you like to see cast to play your lead characters?
Kanto: I honestly don’t know! Maybe some up-and-coming actress with the right combination of innocence
and charm.
When you encounter writer’s block, what do you do to break yourself out of it?
Kanto: Since I plot my novels first, I find writing a first draft relatively easy and don’t usually encounter any writer’s blocks. I already know what’s going to happen and I try not to worry too much about what I write or how I formulate my sentences just as long as I get something on the paper. Skipping around the story helps too. If I can’t write the next scene, I just skip it and pick a scene I can add something to.
Are there any tips that you would like to share with other aspiring authors?
Kanto: If you want to write, write. Make it your priority, but don’t listen to people who say that you have to write every day to be a writer. If you can’t write every day, write when you can. And most importantly, don’t be discouraged if your first draft sucks. As Jane Smiley has said, “Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist.”
What is your favorite genre, book, and/or author?
Kanto: Obviously one of my favorite authors is Jane Austen. I read a lot of classics, but also historical fiction, YA, and dystopian sci-fi. With the exception of horror, I’m open to all genres.
Kanto: My next novel is a coming-of-age story of a boy and a girl living in a prehistorical matriarchal society. I’m currently revising the third draft and hope to send it to beta readers later this year.
Learn More About the Author and “Caytee”:
Website: https://www.susannakanto.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susannakanto
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Find it for purchase here
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