Kate Bohdanowicz

I’m not going to start every post saying: “I haven’t blogged for a while because I’ve been [insert wildly exciting activity here]”, but I’ve been waiting until I had something to say. (Those who know me in real life are laughing loudly: if only I spoke when I actually had something to say).

So, it’s taken almost two years but I’ve done it. I’ve finished my book. It’s a novel and it’s called Lookalikes. It’s about six lookalikes you see. 

It’s not going to trouble the Booker longlists but I wasn’t aiming for that. I’ve finished and whittled it down to 86,000 words. I will never sneer at anyone else’s book again, no matter how rubbish it is. Writing books is hard. 

I started mine in August 2013. I write pretty much every day (I’d say five days out of seven, minimum). I started off with 500 words a day, found it was too much and reduced it to 250. Nothing, right? True, but then I kept on going. Doing that amount (and usually no more: it taps into my OCD) every day. The first draft took 13 months. The second (editing 700 words a day) took six the third (rattling through it), two. I write in the mornings. 

It’s my second novel.  My first is called The Last Splash and it’s set in a newspaper. Both are what you would call dark comedies (I love that term as it means when no-one laughs you can say that’s because it’s “dark”). It’s like insurance. 

So now I need a literary agent. Self-publishing doesn’t interest me right now.  If you’re an agent, publisher or someone influential with lots of money, contact me. In return I will give you two books with potential and an author who can drum up publicity. My boyfriend draws cartoons cats for a living so we’ll even chuck in some of those.