How did you get started writing?

I’ve always written comfortably. To me writing is a conversation that flows from my head to my pen. I remember in school, everyone was freaking out over term papers, but they never bothered me. I’d crank them out the day before and pull an easy A. Now ask me about math . . . I could barely pass my last college course to graduate!

Do you know where the story is going when you begin?

I usually know the beginning and possibly the end, but I never know where the characters are going to take me until they step up, introduce themselves, and start to live.

You don’t plan your characters?

I do after they’ve introduced themselves to me. Take Aine for instance, she’s the main character in Book Two. I never saw her coming. Tormod, the main protagonist, is in a broken down state. He’s been dumped on a beach in the rain. His body has slipped into paralysis. His mind is sliding toward hysteria, and wham, along comes this crazy, outspoken, rash Irish girl, who in the space of a heartbeat goes from helping him to hitting him. Aine announced her presence with authority, kind of demanding that I get to know her.

From there I did a character sketch of her – what she looked like, how she spoke, who her family were, what her flaws, hopes, and desires were. I always seem to choose things that end up more than difficult, though. For instance, accents and origins. To get inside the head of Tormod, a 13-year-old 14th century boy from Scotland, I wrote the entire book in first person in the full Scottish brogue. Not just the dialogue, the whole book!

It was truly a pain to undo or in this case redo the whole thing using only a handful of the original terms, but it did what I needed it to do. I know Tormod. How he speaks and how he thinks. His frustrations, his joys, all courtesy of this long process.

How long did this book take you to write?

Well, truthfully, ten years. But it was more learning to write, while I learned to research and plot and craft. It was my apprenticeship. I did the second book in a year.

How did you know the dialect of Scotland?

I fudged it, a bit. Though I spent time visiting and traveling about Scotland, talking and listening and researching, most of the feel of the dialect was from watching and listening to Braveheart over and over again:] It my not have been perfectly historically accurate, but it gave me the lyrical feel I needed to have in my head as I worked.

Why did you choose this place and time in history?

History is one of the coolest things I’ve ever come across late. I had a few courses in grammar school but as my interest became more focused on art and music I gravitated toward those classes and away from others like history and geography.

When I started to write steadily I found myself more and more drawn to places and times that were different from places and times that were different from our own. Scotland had a pull for me more than any other, and I found an author whose voice still rings in my head every time I read her words. The book was Outlander. Not a young adult book, but a time-slip fantasy romance that pulled me right in. The author, Diana Gabaldon has such a lyrical style that even today if I’m stuck writing, I can reread any of her series and put myself right back in my own story. The book was set in Scotland in the 1800s and her imagery was so fantastic that I fell in love with the thought of it. So I began my own book set in Scotland. That book is still on my shelf, gathering dust, but the bits and pieces of history it pointed me toward made me book a trip to Scotland. It was there that this book, this series was born.

The great thing about these kinds of books is the learning process. You start out with one fact and in researching it, you’re shoved into another and you branch off in a different direction. I never know where the facts will take me but I know somehow they’ll all fit in and their spin will make the book even more interesting.

What are your strengths and weaknesses?

Well, the strengths are easy for me to speak on. I know I have the ability to make a character real and felt. Small intense bursts of emotional scenes are my favorite things to write. These feel to me like they leap off the page.

But in the same manner I worry about my writing itself. Are the sentences literate? When do the paragraphs need to break, and God help me I am seriously comma challenged:]

Speaking of God. . . there are a lot of religious overtones in the book, are you particularly religious?

I’m not religious, per say, I am Catholic, but it kind of sits in the back of my world. I would classify me more as spiritual, in that I know there’s a God out there, but like loads of kids, I have questions. Aside from my beliefs, though, it was important to incorporate the religious aspect into the book. The Templars, were a highly religious Order of monks. It would be wrong to leave out that part. I like to think of Tormod as a free thinker though. In his time there were still many pagan beliefs and rituals that were as important to the people as those of the Christian faith. Tormod is muddling his way through his beliefs and coming to a place where he is comfortable. We all go through that at one time or another. Bio

Kat Black is an avid reader and writer of young adult literature. Drawn most to ancient times and places of shadow and mystery, she strives to pluck her readers out of the here and now and engross them in the possibility of what once was. Her first book, A Templar’s Apprentice, from the upcoming series, A Book of Tormod, will be released from Scholastic Books in February of 2009.

Kat has worked for nineteen years in the Children’s book industry—more than half of that time as a designer for legendary publishing icon Walter Lorraine. With Caldecott and Newbery Medal winning artist and authors like David Macaulay, Allen Say, Lois Lowry, and Chris VanAllsburg as clients, Kat learned firsthand what it takes to make it in the amazing world of children’s publishing.

Kat lives with her family in Lynn, Massachusetts. A Templar’s Apprentice is her first book.