Kate’s Feline Friction

Kate Gordon loved to go fossil collecting as a young girl and now that interest has expanded into bringing to life that much debated extinct, or still living but hidden creature, the famed Tasmanian Tiger.

Kate Gordon is a proud Tasmanian and has made a contribution to literature on the Tasmanian Tiger or Thylacine. Hers is not an academic text or a research paper declaring the existence or not of the famous creature but it will no doubt reach a more popular audience than a more scholarly script. Kate is Tassie’s answer to Stephanie Meyers, a comparison she would not mind, being an admirer of the lady who kick started the flood of paranormal fiction on the young adult market but Kate’s paranormal fiction has a distinctly Tasmanian twist. Kate explains she wanted a novel for young adults that they could identify with by including sites and places they are familiar with. So instead of the forests of Washington state we see a story set in Tasmanian forests and localities. This has sat well with Kate’s readers. Kate tells me that there was the story of the young lady who visited all the places in Tassie mentioned in Kate’s novel including the science fantasy specialists,Ellison Hawker bookshop in Hobart!

Kate is blessed with a wonderful imagination and it has been that way since she was a child, maybe something to do with the fact that both parents were librarians and Kate herself did the apprenticeship in the ‘family business’ as well as experimenting with acting before she found her niche in writing. Kate was a solitary child so had plenty of time to develop that imagination which saw her intrigued by the legend of ‘ Doctors Rock’ a famous landmark in Tassie that has a story behind it to tell but I’ll leave that for Kate tell you ; )

Kate remembers as a young girl her dad reading her a story about the Tasmanian Tiger and from that moment on this creature that now lives on in a mythical existence had captured her imagination. Of course other paranormal creatures have also preoccupied Kate such as fairies and ghosts and she already has an idea for the latter. Kate is quick to add though that she didn’t deliberately set out to write a paranormal novel it was just a story that had a need to be told and the way for telling just happened to be through the paranormal form. The fact that the Tasmanian landscape is full of dense forests means plenty of places for creatures like the famed Tasmanian Tiger to hide which fascinates Kate and provides rich fodder for her fiction.

Kate is also blessed with the discipline necessary to be a writer, once rising at 5 every morning to get in an hour of writing before her day job. Now that Kate is a writer full time she doesn’t need to do this any-more but the discipline is still a large part of her work.

You can check out Kate’s book ‘Thyla’ and it’s sequel ‘Vulpi’, both available now.

Paula Xiberras