Katherine Fast

An Interview with 2013 Short Story Award winner, Katherine Fast

Katherine “Kat” Fast grew up a townie in Oberlin, Ohio, received a degree in history from Oberlin College, and then began a random career walk. She defies anyone to detect a pattern in the following: admissions counselor, MIT project manager, quantitative market research analyst, headhunter, and graphologist (handwriting expert). She received an MA from Cambridge College and became a seminar conductor teaching business writing to government agencies and corporations here and abroad.

Her current focus is watercolor and fiction. She is a contributing editor with Level Best Books, a small cooperative that publishes an annual anthology of crime stories by New England authors. She lives in a Boston suburb with her husband and two spoiled cats.

Interview by BWG member Diane Sismour

BWG: Your 2013 Bethlehem Writers Roundtable Short Story Award winning story, “Ave Maria,” was one of my favorite entries. We're so happy to have it in our new anthology, Once Around the Sun: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Tales for All Seasons. What prompted you to write the story?

Katherine Fast: Thank you! I had just read a few submissions for this year’s Level Best Books anthology Stone Cold on a frigid February afternoon in New England when I saw a gaudy Christmas display with lights still blinking months after the holidays. The story’s a bit irreverent, but I couldn’t help myself.

BWG: When did you begin writing and why?

KF: A friend and I wrote and produced a play Christmas in Las Vegas when we were in junior high school. I had a bit part for Sandy, a gun moll. Why? It was fun.

BWG: Do you find real life stories offer good fodder for crime stories, or do you prefer to create your own character’s situations?

KF: A little of both. Real life experiences often provide the impetus and ingredients for stories. Often the ideas grow like mushrooms in the messy subbasement of my mind. I scrub them off, and voilà, a story. For example, yesterday I listened to an a cappella choir dominated by a woman whose voice positively warbled. Throughout the performance, my brain was percolated with ways to snuff that sound. It’s so much safer to write about naughty impulses than to take action. (I once paid the price for buttering the violin bow of my stand mate in orchestra, when I should have written a little story.)

BWG: Do you feel that editing for the Level Best Books helps your writing, and why?

KF: Who could help but be inspired by the inventive, twisted minds of New England crime writers? This year’s anthology boasts of “a not-so-innocent trivia game, blood-red geraniums, an army of angry skunks, spousicides, lousicides arsonists, rum runners, hackers, witless wonders, and even a diabolically well-trained pooch.”

BWG: How do you find time to write with such a busy schedule and editing?

KF: Around 6:00 am when my husband leaves for school, I grab my notebook and a cup of coffee, fluff up the pillows, curl up with our two cats and scribble until the rest of the world intrudes.

BWG: What draws you to write crime stories, and in what other genre would you like to write?

KF: I’m happiest with a character-driven tale with lots of psychological twists and turns. I like the inherent conflict at the heart of just about any kind of story. The novel in my drawer (don’t we all have one?) has a suitable amount of mayhem but would probably be more aptly classified as contemporary fiction because of length and complexity. I have no interest in writing police procedurals, cozies, political thrillers and the like.

BWG: Where do your characters come from: do they draw from real people or imagined; and do you have a favorite character?

KF: Well, I’ve knocked off my mother-in-law and an old love or two and a few (former) friends. Personality traits and quirks of real people multiply, combine and morph into new characters and sometimes take on a life of their own. I don’t have a particular favorite.

BWG: Your muse keeps you busy between making jewelry, graphic arts, and writing. Unless you are on a deadline, do you schedule time for each creative endeavor or does your muse control what you are working and when?

KF: This one is easy. I lurch between deadlines, and if there isn’t one, I’ll create one because I work best under pressure. “Schedule for conflict and you’ll get something done,” was the advice of an old boss. I’ve been known to overdo the conflict part. (My husband just offered to pay me not to enter a holiday craft show.)

BWG: Are you a member of any writing organizations; do you recommend writers join a local writing group and why?

KF: I’m active in the New England chapters of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. For the last decade or so I’ve met weekly with a writers group. Every week a few of us produce pages and the others prepare written critiques that we discuss as a group. I find the insights, support and camaraderie of the group to be invaluable.

BWG: What advice can you give this year’s Roundtable Short Story Contestants?

KF:I think this year’s theme is food. There are so many tasty morsels to sample. Advice? Eat, enjoy, and experiment, and then, well, enter the story anyway. I did.