Friend and author Kateri Stanley...

... joins me on the blog today. Hi Kateri, thanks for making time to be here today.  

Tell me what is your latest release?

KS  My debut novel, Forgive Me is a sci-fi horror about a journalist who is hired by an entrepreneur to pen an article for his online business.  After a couple of brief meetings with this client, she wakes up chained to a bed in his home.

Forgive Me focuses on societal issues such as violence in entertainment, our fascination with the serial killer and our love of everything evil.

It was published on Tuesday 20^th April 2021 from indie publisher, darkstroke and is available in e-book and paperback on Amazon.

AW   What first got you into writing and why?

KS   I remember being in love with books, audiobooks, movies and music as a kid. Reading, watching, listening to a story unfold was always something I liked.  I loved getting lost in the characters and what was happening, it made me forget about the world and escape from any stresses that were going on in my life.  I guess why I started writing was that it was just a natural thing to me.  It just happened.  I have to do it.

AW  You write dark fiction and your central character is an investigative journalist.  Is it all imagination or do you also undertake research?

KS  I did do a little bit of research for the journalism part.  Other than studying a fraction of it at uni, I read a couple of articles where an investigative journalist was hired by an outside source to produce a story.

AW  And what about other types of writing?  Have you ever dabbled with short stories, for instance, or other genres?

KS  When I was at university, I studied prose, poetry (which I suck at but hugely admire the people that can pull it off), writing for the screen, radio, for stage and nonfiction writing such as journalism.  I enjoyed studying them all (except poetry) but prose and writing for the screen stuck out to me the most.

I’m a multiple genre writer and reader.  As Kateri Stanley, I write horror, supernatural thrillers, sci-fi and fantasy.  I write crime thrillers and dramas and the occasional romance under another pseudonym. I may reveal the name in the future, who knows.

When I first started writing for practice as a kid, I wrote fan fiction in the form of short story novellas about TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  In my early 20’s, I wrote my first original short story called Hard Way Home and continued to pen shorts, you can find all of my original short stories on my website if you want to have a peep.

Kateri's work station

In my mid-to late 20’s, I discovered audio plays online and began to scribble my own ideas and then aspiring voice actors were bringing them to life.  During this time, I made the decision (while I was working and studying) to write my first novel, Forgive Me.

AW  Famous authors, such as Roald Dahl and Dylan Thomas, had a special space for writing.  Do you have a writing ‘shed’ of your own?

KS   Before I had a durable place to concentrate, I wrote everywhere.  In my bed, on my phone on the train going to and from work, on my ipad, in my head, on a napkin in a coffee shop when I forgot my notepad.  After I moved in with my partner, I can finally write in a study/office!

AW  Finally, if you had a whole afternoon to yourself and could choose to spend it with any one individual, living or dead or a character from a book, who would it be, and what would you want to discuss?

KS  I’d probably choose Tyrion Lannister from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice Series.  You might know it as the internationally acclaimed TV series called Game of Thrones.

Tyrion is an intelligent, brave and witty guy, he could tell me lots of things about what’s it like to live in Westeros and how he copes with all of the back stabbing and treachery and the hard work that comes with running a kingdom.  We’d spend the afternoon drinking and eating, it’d be fab!

And… Peter Dinklage (who plays Tyrion in the show) is pretty gorgeous too! :D 

about the author… Kateri Stanley is a British author who graduated from The Open University with a degree in Arts and Humanities and worked for the National Health Service for eight years. When she’s not writing stories, you can find her binge-watching films and TV shows, making tons of playlists for her writing projects and dabbling in the occasional video game. She currently resides in the West Midlands with her partner, they are hoping to be cat parents very soon.

about the book… A secret video tape.  A painful truth.  A quest for revenge.

Susan ‘Stripe’ McLachlan who is constantly hounded by eager documentarians for interview requests about the Night Scrawler murders.  One of the victims of the mysterious serial killer was a member of her own family, her father.

At the peak of her career, her services are sought by Isaac Payne who commissions her to write an article for his website.  Usually, her projects delve into more uncomfortable, questionable topics, but there’s a deep, almost hauntingly familiar pull about her new client that intrigues her.

As she learns more about Isaac, Stripe digs up fresh secrets about the murders, arousing her suspicions.  After an awkward confrontation, she wakes up in Isaac’s bed — with a chain around her ankle.

Isaac shows her harrowing footage on an old VHS tape.  The contents hits close to home…closer than Stripe ever imagined.  Now, she has to wrestle with her own moral compass and unpick the truth from the web of lies that turn into a crescendo where memories created from misery and suffering cannot be silenced.

Will Isaac ever lay the past to rest?  And how will Stripe cope with the revelations that challenge everything she has ever known?

You can follow Kateri on her Website on Facebook Twitter Instagram and on Goodreads 

You can get the book on Amazon and you can read more on Darkstroke Books