INTERVIEW
Writing does not always begin as a chosen path. Sometimes it reveals itself early, almost quietly, before it is ever understood as a craft. Author Kathleen McCluskey fits into that space where instinct precedes definition. ‘My very first “book” was one I made myself,’ she recalls, speaking with Literary Harbinger in an exclusive interaction. ‘I was eight. It was called The Monday Monster. It was a Father’s Day gift,’ she adds. The story was simple in concept but vivid in imagination. A creature lived under beds and bit ankles every Monday morning to make people grumpy. What sounds playful now was already an early sign of something deeper: an imagination that did not wait for permission. That imagination did not fade with age, mind you. It simply expanded outward into school publications, college journalism, and later, short fiction. ‘Over time, writing stopped being an activity and became a natural extension of thought itself,’ Kathleen shares.
From Short Fiction to Worlds That Refuse to End
Before novels came short fiction. Before short fiction came experiments. Kathleen, remember, has published across magazines and anthologies in both national and international spaces. She also writes regularly for a blog where a single image must be transformed into a complete story under 500 words. ‘It sounds simple,’ she says. ‘But it forces a different kind of thinking. A novel lets you expand. A prompt forces precision.’
That contrast between expansion and compression eventually shaped her most ambitious work, The Long Fall. What began as a single idea about a vampire origin story gradually expanded into a trilogy involving celestial war and fallen angels besides the reinterpretation of myth itself. ‘I did not plan a trilogy,’ Kathleen admits, adding, ‘I started at the beginning and it kept growing. It became something much larger than I first imagined.’
Writing Without Maps Or Outlines
Planning is not part of her process. Structure comes later, if at all. The first stage is vision. ‘I do not work from outlines,’ Kathleen reveals. She goes on, ‘I see scenes. It unfolds like a film in my head, and I write what I see.’ This method creates a writing rhythm that is immersive and intense. Once the process begins, time becomes irrelevant. Hours disappear without awareness. She describes entering a mental state she calls ‘the Zone’, where external reality fades into the background.
‘There are moments when I am so absorbed that I do not notice anything else happening around me,’ she lets on. ‘It becomes continuous,’ she adds. The result is prose that does not overexplain. Instead, it suggests. It allows space for the reader to complete the world rather than receive it fully defined.
The Influence of Horror And Human History
Ask about her reading life and it is rooted in horror and speculative fiction. Richard Laymon, Bentley Little, Jack Ketchum, Clive Barker, Anne Rice, Dean Koontz. Stephen King remains a major influence although with a preference for his earlier works. ‘His earlier novels had a different kind of intensity,’ Kathleen notes.
Beyond fiction, there is a strong pull toward history, particularly the European theatre of World War II and the American Civil War. These are not casual interests but thematic echoes that inform her understanding of human behaviour. She says, ‘History shows you what people are capable of. Not always in a good way.’
The Discipline of an Undisciplined Life
Despite the chaotic energy often associated with creativity, Kathleen lives within a structured daily rhythm. Early mornings define the start of the day. Work and responsibilities follow. Writing arrives later, when the mind is ready rather than when the clock demands it. ‘I wake up early. I work through the day. And I write when I can,’ Kathleen says simply.
Alongside writing is family life, reading, yoga, and a steady presence in digital literary communities. Creativity is not isolated from life but woven into it. ‘Writing does not replace life,’ she stresses. ‘It comes from it.’
On Failure, Persistence, And the Act of Continuing
For emerging writers, her advice is stripped of sentimentality: Keep writing. That is all there is.
Rejection is not treated as a setback but as a structural reality of the craft. ‘Not every reader will connect. Not every story will land. That is not failure but distribution,’ she explains, adding that one person not liking one’s work means nothing in the larger picture. ‘Another person might connect with it completely,’ she tells us. Clearly, persistence, not perfection, becomes the defining requirement.
‘I Observe Something And It Becomes a Story’
There is a quiet certainty in the way Kathleen speaks about becoming a writer. It is not framed as a choice made at a single moment but as something that was always unfolding. ‘I was always writing,’ she states. ‘Always imagining. It was never a decision. It was just what I did.’
For her, writing is not construction but translation. Experience becomes narrative almost automatically. Observation becomes story before it becomes thought. ‘I do not write stories first,’ she explains. ‘I observe something and it becomes a story.’
The Final Question
When asked what she would change in the world, the answer is immediate and unembellished. ‘World hunger. It should not exist at this stage of human progress.’
It is a simple statement placed at the end of a conversation filled with angels, wars in heaven, vampires, and mythic collapse. The contrast is striking but intentional. One world exists in fiction. The other exists in reality. In the end, Kathleen’s work moves through darkness and apocalypse. But her final concern remains grounded in something far more human.
Writing does not replace life. It comes from it.
~ KATHLEEN MCCLUSKEY
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