“One thing’s for sure, it’s not the money – thought I’d get that out of the way up front. I spent years (too many) in graphic design and advertising and made obscene amounts of money doing something my heart was never really in. Belatedly, I got sense and walked away from it. These days I confine my creative activities to writing and painting. Since childhood I’ve had the urge to draw, paint, sing, show-off, anything that satisfies the need to express myself. After studying in the National College of Art and Design, I was given the opportunity to put what creative talents I possessed to use in advertising. I was lucky in so far as it provided a lucrative career but it left me unfulfilled. And then, by chance, an opportunity arose to illustrate a series of Irish Folk Tales. To do this, I had to study the text, analyse the story and identify the set-pieces for illustration. Around this time, I became heavily involved in amateur drama as an actor and a director – an activity that, like the folk tales, forced me to analyse scripts and deconstruct the plots. As a voracious reader and lover of theatre and cinema, it seemed like a natural progression to have a shot at writing myself. I was incredibly lucky to have had my first effort, REVENGE, accepted by Mercier Press. Each year since then I’ve written a book and the thrill of seeing the work in print never diminishes. Why do I write? I don’t have a succinct answer or any kind of logical rationale but it has something to do with the elements outlined above. That, and a measure of madness, a dollop of conceit, an understanding wife, and a need for peer approval might go somewhere to providing an answer.”KT McCaffrey’s THE CAT TRAP will be published in spring 2008.
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