Meteoric rise puts Cat among the stars
IN THE FIRST OF A TWO-PART SERIES WE LOOK AT CAT HOGAN’S EARLY YEARS AND FIND OUT HOW SHE BECAME A WRITER. SIMON BOURKE REPORTS
WHEN Cat Hogan was a child, a Primary School pupil in Sixth Class, she and her classmates took part in a essay-writing competition. It was an opportunity for her to show off her burgeoning talents as a writer and, more importantly, win the much coveted first place prize.
Sadly for the young Wexford girl, and future international best-selling author, she didn’t manage to take top spot.
‘I came second and I never forgave the girl who came first, she got a Crayola art set, I was so jealous,’ Cat recalls.
One can only wonder what became of her conquerer, but for Cat (41) it would be another two decades before she fulfilled that early potential. Like many authors hers was a circuitous route, one which took in a variety of professions, jobs and occupations before she finally realised she could write for a living.
She now has two books under her belt, another on the way, and has recently had an offer from RTÉ to turn her work into a television series. It’s been a meteoric rise for the woman whose earliest memories are of the coast near her home in rural Wexford.
‘I grew up in Ballylibernagh, near Bridgetown, my stomping ground was Ballyhealy Beach, we spent our summers there, either cycling or going with parents,’ Cat says.
‘I was so blessed when I was small. My father worked for Irish Ferries, I was constantly aware of the sea and the stars, it was very conducive to imagination; star constellations, deepsea diving, high adventure.
‘And my mother was the greatest bookworm you could ever imagine, my brother was the same, I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t books in the house. When I would finish my books I would move on to theirs, would read Tolkien, Dickens, I had them all on tap; reading was my favourite pastime, I wasn’t sporty, you’d never see me with a hurl in my hand.’
Naturally the teenage Cat excelled in English at Secondary School, devouring the works of Seamus Heaney, of Shakespeare, Golding and Lee. But it was a book written by a girl her own age which made the deepest impact.
‘When I was 12 I read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, it absolutely transformed me. I was a similar age to her, it was my first introduction to a life outside of my idyllic childhood, and it showed me the injustices in the world, it changed me,’ she says.
‘I reached an age where I questioned things and I took that with me as I went through life, I always try and stand up for the little guy now. Books can do that, they can change the very fabric of your personality.’
These changes accompanied
Cat as she embarked upon the first of what would be many jobs. Having worked part-time in local restaurants during her school years she continued into the hospitality sector, doing a Hotel Management course in the Talbot Hotel, and then a degree in Hospitality Management in Galway.
And those years dealing with customers, will all walks of life, proved invaluable in her later career.
‘It was like an apprenticeship, one in how to study people. Working in hospitality is like training for human nature, you’re observing all the time,’ she says of those years.
Cat’s first child was born in 2005 when she was 26, an event which preceded her first big career change and a decision which would, in a roundabout way, set her on the path to become a writer.
‘I was a parent, a duty manager in a hotel and then I decided to do a law degree in the Wexford campus of IT Carlow,’ she says.
‘ That was what reignited my love of words. Words are so important in law, one word can change the whole meaning of something. They’re so powerful.
‘I was still tipping away at hotel management and studying, this was around the time of the recession, and I had people calling up to the house asking me to write legal letters for them, and I found I could easily string words together to make a point.
‘I realised I was good at it. I started thinking to myself, “I want to write a book”.’
But before she did that, before she committed herself to this new journey, she sought the counsel of one of the county’s most esteemed writers.
‘I was in The Sky and the Ground one evening with Eoin Colfer, and I said to him, “I think I have a book in me”. He said “send me on something and we’ll see if you do”.’
Cat sent him one of her short stories and the response was both immediate and encouraging.
‘He told me this was something I needed to pursue and get going on. So I basically sat down and wrote it.
‘Eoin was brilliant, he’s been writing for years, he’s ingrained in it, I’d have been a fool not to listen to his advice.’
That ‘it’ would become They All Fall Down, Cat’s debut which was published by Poolbeg in 2016. But Cat says she went into this new venture will little idea of the process involved.
‘I wrote it and had no ideas about the work that goes into it afterwards with regards agents and publishers. I finished it in June 2015, edited it myself and by August I had an agent, and November I had a publisher.
‘ The book was published the followed summer and the sequel in September of 2017. It all happened pretty fast. I went into it fairly green, but I learned a lot of lessons.’
And when it came to choosing a publisher, Poolbeg was a natural fit – for a variety of reasons.
‘ The reason I went with them was because their logo was a lighthouse. My father died in 2001 and all I ever wanted was a lighthouse on the cover of my book as a tribute to him.’
While she is now an established author with solid sales and a bright future, success has not enabled Cat to pack in the nine-to-five. She still works, now in Adult Education, and must fit her writing career around the other responsibilities in her life.
‘You learn to have many pots on the boil. What I’ve realised is I’m super disciplined, I will make time to do it,’ she says.
‘I spend two-and-a-half hours every evening working on the kitchen table and snatch other bits of time here and there. Once I realised writing was a priority I treated it like it was work.’
And this leads her to dispel another myth: that writers are loaded, that a book deal means waving goodbye to your old life as you sail into the sunset.
‘ That’s a bit of a myth, “sign a book deal and it’s cha-ching, you’re looking at houses in the south of France”.
‘It’s hard work, no one does it for money. You see stories about writers getting six-figure deals but that’s a rarity. It’s more like building a business, building a brand. There is rarely overnight success, you must put in the hard work and be ready to deal with rejection.’
Having moved to Carlow to be closer to Dublin for work reasons, Cat says she misses Wexford every day, especially now we’re in lockdown and she’s unable to come home to visit.
‘I’m pining for Wexford at the moment. Someone sent me a WhatsApp from the quay the other day and I burst into tears. I’m missing the coast, Kilmore Quay. Where I used to live I could see the Saltee Islands from my bedroom.
‘But before the lockdown, I used to think “if only I could stay in the house for a few weeks I could do more writing”. I know this situation isn’t exactly ideal, but this is what I wanted, “now, all your talking, all your mouthing, now you have it”,’ Cat says, laughing.
And on the days when the words aren’t flowing, when she finds herself stuck in a rut, Cat casts her mind back to her first book launch, an evening when the people of Wexford came out to support one of their own.
‘ The support from people here was phenomenal. I had my launch in the Sky and the
Ground, which is my spiritual home, and 200 people rocked up. Eoin launched it for me. I had friends and family there, people I hadn’t seen in years, they were so supportive, so joyful.
‘And that support has never waned, it’s been magic since the first book. On the crap days all I have to think about is that launch night.’
Another source of comfort is the feedback from her readers, from those who have enjoyed her work, positivity which is worth more than any house on the French Riviera.
‘As somebody who loves books my ambition was to try and keep somebody up half the night turning the page with one of mine,’ she says.
‘ That’s success. Success has many different forms, but as a writer if you write a book that people love, which pulls people out of reality, then that’s success.’