Katharine Grubb

Tell me about the early days when the kids were little and you began writing a novel. Was it as haphazard and chaotic as I imagine? (Because it’s a zoo here, and I have one less child, the older ones are spaced farther apart, and I don’t homeschool.)

It was chaotic. I knew going in none of it would be neat and tidy. I’ll be honest, some days all my expectations did was expose my delusion. Some days I handled interruptions well. Some days I didn’t. But motherhood is a game of inches. You don’t teach order once, you teach it daily. You don’t teach hygiene once, you teach it daily. You don’t teach manners once, you teach it daily. It’s the same with my personal goals. What mattered to my writing is that I did something daily. Once I organized my time and household, made a plan and stuck to it, I got those ten minutes in. I also learned to be content with low expectations. If you can get through the day and say, everyone ate something, the house didn’t burn down and we didn’t go to the ER, so it was a good day. But now my kids are older and the lessons I taught them about order and hygiene and manners are paying off because they can basically run the house without me. My increments for writing are much, much longer.

I think of Falling For Your Madness as a quirky, clean romance. The main character, David, is, at a minimum, offbeat. What did you hope to convey by what I’ll call his extreme chivalry?

You think he’s just a little offbeat? 😉  I wanted to create a character, a man, that a woman couldn’t say no to. In my mind, that man would have to be extremely respectful and conscientious of his power. I exaggerated David and created his elaborate backstory to prove a point. He gets the reader’s attention. I also hoped by writing Laura in first person, and by not describing her appearance, that readers could put themselves in her position and wonder what they would do with David. If I had one goal, it was to get my readers to think. The world doesn’t need another romance. But it does need reasons to think about chivalry and respect.

Can you give us a thumbnail sketch of the huge upward trajectory your career has taken over the past couple of years?

What a ride it’s been! It all started with Falling For Your Madness even though there was a novel before that one. In January of 2013, FFYM was named a quarterfinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award annual contest. That meant that it was in the top 25 of 10,000 entries. For writers, it’s kind of like being on the stage at American Idol. Days after getting that news, I was contacted by Hodder & Stoughton, who I honestly think Googled Ten Minute Writer  and found my original blog on which I gushed about FFYM’s success. They wanted a book Write A Novel In 10 Minutes A Day and asked me if I’d do it. I was so freaked out I didn’t even know how to answer! But because I had been reading writing blogs for years, I knew an agent’s advice would be helpful. I emailed my top three agents. Of those three, Chip MacGregor was the only one who answered me back. Chip negotiated my contract and we got to meet in person a few times! Then, as I started drafting the book, I was thinking about marketing and how having a community around my book would not only sell it, but would also (hopefully) build a long-lasting platform for future books. I really didn’t know what I was doing in March of 2014 when I started 10 Minute Novelists on Facebook. But I did know that time-crunched writers everywhere needed tips and encouragement. I find it easy and fun to help people. The Facebook group has evolved into something I could have never dreamed up in a million years. I love everything about it.