Welcome Back to Pottersville: 20 Questions with Cate Mckoy

This month I’m going to do something a little different. I’ve always asked my previous Authors of the Month 15 questions. But September’s honoree is just so interesting in so many ways I was obliged to expand the usual Q&A format to 20 Questions. I say this because not only is Cate a novelist but also a screenwriter and teleplay writer with her foot in the door.

20) Cate, on your Amazon Author page, you describe yourself as “a Jane of all trades”, which is self-evident when one sees your literary oeuvre. And that doesn’t even address your actual vocation as an IT professional. About how old were you when you were bitten with the writing bug?

A. I was in the fourth grade. We used to get this magazine at school called “The Weekly Reader” we used to read the stories and articles in class. One day there was a story by a fourth grader. I remember being so impressed that someone my age was “published”. And Lois Lane was my hero. I’ve been hooked ever since.

19) You’ve donated stories and even a book cover to charity. Tell us about some of the charities with which you’ve been associated.

A. I contributed to The Rose Foundation which promotes healthy breasts and help those with breast cancer and, being a woman, it spoke to me. I also donated to the MOD (March of Dimes) I liked donating to this organization because it reminded me of my childhood, doing the MOD walk, going door to door getting sponsors.

18) Having an eclectic mindset not only permeates your literary output as a whole that also applies to your novels. You’ve written African American Women's Fiction, romance, romantic suspense, even children’s books. Do you have a favorite genre or is your philosophy, “It’s all good”?

My all time favorite will always be Romantic-Suspense. It speaks to me on a level the other genres do not. However, I do enjoy writing the others. Sci-fi is the newest to me.

17) Considering how catholic and eclectic your output is, I’m very curious to know who some of your favorite authors were growing up.

A. Stephen King is number one. He influenced my mind when I was very young. Later, Sandra Brown, Shannon McKenna, Anne Mather, Tammy Hoag, John Saul. Of course, I enjoy the classics that were assigned in school as required reading. Such as; “Of Mice and Men”, “Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, “Great Expectations”, “Oliver Twist”, “Tom Sawyer”, “The Good Earth”. I also like the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, especially “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Pit and the Pendulum”. And, of course, I am a fan of the great William Shakespeare. My favorites are “Romeo and Juliet, “Hamlet”, and “Macbeth”.

16) You’re currently working very hard on two different television projects. Could you tell us a bit about both proposed series?

A. One was submitted to a studio and then picked up by a production company which is in development right now. The other one is being pitched as we speak. All I can say, because I am not the creator, only the writer of the pilots is, the one in development is a sitcom set in New York City. The one being pitched is a crime drama set in Chicago, Illinois.

15) For those of us (like me) who write in just one genre or neither, what are some of the unique challenges to writing novels vs screenplays and teleplays? Where did you learn how to write in these disciplines?

A. You’d think writing is writing and it would be about the same. They are really quite different. Novel writing is more freehand with me. I am a pantser. I sit down at my keyboard and the story goes directly from my mind to the keyboard. The ideas often come to me as I am typing. Also, a lot of the times the ideas come to me in a dream I had, a conversation I am having with one of my kids and suddenly an idea pops in my head. With screenwriting you must plot the scenes in detailed fashion, but the writing has to include detail without being long-winded or verbose. You must paint a striking visual. Within screenwriting itself there are different types of writing. Meaning, a feature is written differently than a spec script and spec scripts have different types too. I’ve written spec scripts for T.V. but I’ve never written a “shooting script” with ALL of the camera angles, directions and even the camera counts. I learn something new every time I write a script. I will study some more on shooting scripts and then try it. I am an intuitive learner. I pick things up fast.

14) I made you September’s Author of the Month without my even knowing it’s also Black Author Month. Do you have any plans to celebrate or observe it and, if so, how?

A. Actually it’s only a DAY in August (8/21/19) and I only found out about it being Indie Black Author Day because I saw several other posts. I posted about it the day after. LOL If I had been aware sooner, I’d have made my Kindle Books free for the day. It is my birthday month though 😊

13) You’ve written and published a trilogy called The Dark Series then you embarked on a spinoff series, Mackenzie's Song. (As with a recent Author of the Month, Liz DeBoest, you write interracial romance). Could you give us a brief overview of the main characters and the basic storyline of both series?

In the original trilogy the story begins with our main characters as high-schoolers. Our heroine, Catlyn is a young gifted black girl who has skipped several grades. I grew up in a predominately white neighborhood and was often the only black in the group. So, I made race and racism a focal point and it is woven throughout the trilogy. Catlyn is a 15-year-old senior and her classmates are 18. She ends up in the group with the popular kids because one of the popular girls takes our heroine under her wing. Our hero, Jack is the quarterback popular for his athletic abilities and his nice-guy persona. In book one, Catlyn is raped by a football player and her friends alibi the rapists and he gets away with it.

Years later Catlyn is an FBI Special Agent and Profiler who works within the Behavioral Analyst Unit; specifically in the HCD (Hate Crimes Division). She is called back to her hometown, assigned the slasher case in which young black women are being raped, mutilated and killed. The local police is headed by none other than her former friend and quarterback, Jack. While working on the case tension increases and sparks fly. Book two is the story of one of the FBI agents introduced in book one. Book three reveals what happened with the original rape and alibi. The spin-off series the first story is the continuation of book two from the original trilogy. I was going to stop there but readers fell in love with another agent that was introduced in the spin-off series and they wanted his story.

12) Within our generation, we’ve seen television evolve from episodes with completely unrelated plots to those with one single, evolving storyline aimed toward some resolution. As a TV writer, do you see this as helpful or harmful in television storytelling or does it depend on how it’s handled?

A. I believe either way can be awesome. As long as the story holds one’s attention and keeps them wanting to return to watch it is all that matters. Whether they do it with a “continuing story” or unrelated stories with the same characters doesn’t matter. Good story telling is the thing.

11) Plotter or pantser?

A. Pantser all the way. I see as I am typing.

10) For those of us not knowing much if anything about the television and film writing business, could you walk us through the process spanning between conception through development then into actual production?

A. It’s done very differently nowadays than the old Hollywood I imagine. I can only tell how it happened for me. My very first script was my horror movie “Hudson Haven”. It was a contest, The 2014 Horror Movie Search Contest. I made it to the final round. I registered my screenplay and continued to hone my skills by classes online and just practicing writing. I then entered more contests. I wrote a Criminal Minds episode for Stage 32 TV writing contest in 2015 and made the quarterfinals. I’ve submitted my horror movie to Amazon Studios but was rejected. I am prepping it to submit to an agent right now.

As for the pilot for the sitcom that is being developed right now, a producer found me on LinkedIn. He sent me a direct message and asked if he could send me the pitch deck for the sitcom and would I be interested in it. I looked at the specs and then submitted an Act I. The producer liked it, showed the creator and the creator asked me to write the pilot and a couple of more episodes. When she found success with the episodes I wrote, she asked if I could look at her idea for a crime drama she has and asked if I could write the pilot because she needed it for an actress to do an audio audition.

9) You’ve recently told me you’d written a screenplay for a horror movie but were keeping your IMDb profile hidden until it got picked up by a studio or production company. Could you tell us a bit about it?

A. Synopsis: In the mountains of the Hudson Valley, in 1905, one dark night, Dr. Kaplan returns to his beautiful mansion he built for his beautiful wife and 5 daughters and systematically hunts them all down on the massive property and takes an axe to them. One by one all the Kaplan women are slaughtered, each killing more gruesome than the previous. Then Dr. Kaplan disappears never to be found. Through the subsequent decades Kaplans have inherited the mansion only to be plagued with sightings of “Killer Kaplan’s” ghost, mysterious disappearances and unexplained deaths.

Present Day: Sara Kaplan is a Hotel and Tourism major who has lost her parents in a car accident and goes to the infamous Kaplan House to live with her unknown relatives. Kaplan House was turned into an impressive five-star hotel but was shut down due to rumors of the place being haunted and the investigation of a missing girl last seen at Kaplan Hotel. The investigation results are unfounded and the hotel is cleared to re-open. Sara is determined to prove herself in her chosen field and discount the rumors of ghosts and murderers roaming the halls and reveal the Killer Kaplan sightings as pranks by the local teens.

With the re-opening just weeks away, Sara enlists the help of her college friends on break for the summer. The eight friends enjoying their college years head for the hotel to help a friend, make some money and have the summer of their… Deaths!

8) Being a mother of five and grandmother of three, your home life must be hectic to say the least. Do you have anything like a typical writing day and if so, what’s it like? Do you have daily word goals, do you draft on your laptop, a notebook or both?

A. I don’t draft at all. And, because of all the ‘traffic’ in my life, I don’t have a typical writing day. I try to write something every single day. But it ranges from a sentence to several chapters, depending on what’s going on.

7) Historically and even currently, African American screenwriters and teleplay writers are virtually nonexistent. Do you see yourself as a pioneer?

A. I see myself following behind the pioneers such as Shonda Rhimes, Ava DuVernay, Jordan Peele and others like them.

6) Considering how varied your canon is, is there a genre you would never write in?

A. I am not fond of the Historical genre, but one can never say never. If a project came along that interests me, I’d go for it. I never thought I’d do a sitcom. Coming up with jokes was HARD. LOL

5) A couple of years ago, I was speaking to an African American mystery novelist and I asked her why there weren’t more black mystery authors. She said it was because African Americans felt they were underrepresented by it. Do you think that’s the case?

A. I can’t really say that’s the case. There are too many variables. There must be an interest in the genre too. I love a mystery because I was exposed to it early on.

4) What advice would you give younger writers seeking to break into book publishing, screenwriting and TV writing?

A. Pursue with a passion, don’t lose momentum. And Learn, learn, learn. If you have a chance to pick up a new skill in the industry, even if you don’t like the task or think you won’t ever do it again, learn it. And WRITE! Write everyday whether it’s a word or a chapter, write something.

3) Do you ever feel guilty when you’re not writing or do you have a more forgiving approach about the down time?

A. I do feel guilty when readers are expecting something, and I have to postpone. The guilt is bad. But there are times when you are not going to be able to write every day.

2) What’s remarkable about your pair of TV projects is that you have a studio’s attention without the benefit of an agent. Would you hire a dramatic rights agent if one offered you representation or would you prefer to pocket the 20%?

A. I’d hire the agent. I wouldn’t know how to navigate the world of pitching to the execs and producers. And it’s not me that has the studio’s attention, but the creator, Karen Simon. I am listed as the writer. Most studios already have their writers that they put on projects they pick up. That is a real possibility. The studio and/or producer pays for the pilot or episodes and have their own writers take over the writing.

1) As you’re a fan of television as well as a writer of teleplays, do you have a vision or a prediction for the future of TV?

A. No predictions. Sorry. It’s such a vast media. It could go absolutely anywhere, in any direction or multiple directions. I am looking forward to seeing where it goes.

As with many writers these days, Cate has a very wide internet footprint and can be found at the following links:

Cate’s Amazon Author Page
(Hint: As Cate's birthday is September 17th, it'd be a good idea get a book by her this month, especially on her birthday.)