I’ve had the idea for YEARS to do a blog series about Big Dreams coming true – interviewing fabulous people (like you!) about having their Big Dream come true. Then Catherine Ryan Howard asked for help to launch her new book “Distress Signals”, and this seemed like the PERFECT time to launch the series. If you’d like to be next in the queue to talk about your Big Dream Coming True, get in touch. Over to the wonderful Catherine:
What Big Dreams have you had come true? Tell us all about them.
As of May 5, all of them! Growing up I always said I had three big dreams: to see a Space Shuttle launch, to live/work in the United States and to be a published novelist. I also had this thing about seeing the Grand Canyon, and I wanted to do all this before I was 30 (for some reason that’s lost to me now).
I was very efficient in that, back in 2006, I moved to Orlando, Florida to spend eighteen months working in Walt Disney World – which of course satisfied the United States thing – but it also put me just an hour’s drive from Kennedy Space Centre. After a number of failed attempts (because shuttle launches got postponed all the time), I finally saw Discovery lift-off on STS-120 in October 2007. It was easily one of the greatest days of my life. A few years later, a fortnight before I turned 30, I finally saw the Grand Canyon and on May 5, my debut thriller Distress Signals was published by Corvus/Atlantic. I’m a little late – I’ll be 34 in July – but hey, close enough!
What was the catalyst for this dream – what made you want this?
As far as being a published novelist goes, I don’t really remember deciding to do it, I just always wanted to. I love telling stories and my goal in life is to provide for someone else the experience I love the most: a day or a night spent curled up on the couch, totally immersed in a book, bringing it to the kitchen with you when you make a cup of coffee to keep you awake a bit longer, failing to notice that the sun has gone down or come up. There’s just nothing better than a good book. I wanted to try to create that, to have someone else experience that while reading a book of mine. (Whether or not I have remains to be seen, of course!)
What obstacles/challenges did you face along the way and how did you overcome them?
How long have you got?! It was nothing but obstacles, as anyone who’s tried to get published will tell you. I think though they all boil down to one simple idea: you have to believe in yourself and utterly ignore those who try to swat you off your path. Because I started seriously pursuing this when I was in my mid-twenties, I tended to get a lot of what I call ‘pat on the head’ advice from people who were older than me. Most of it was well-intentioned, but sometimes it was downright devastating, e.g. ‘Give up. It’s never going to happen. You’re deluding yourself.’
I took all this with a smile and a nod but it started to get me down. Irish people have a very careful, self-limiting attitude. We don’t tend to dream big and if we do – and we say them out loud – there’ll be plenty of people waiting to laugh at us. As a nation we don’t really expect the extraordinary for ourselves but honestly, I always did. Why not? So one night – while listening to one of these patronising, doomsday ‘pat on the head’ monologues – I had an epiphany. I realised that while everything the person was saying might be true, it was only demonstrably true for them. And they had mistook me for them. We were not the same.
You are not the same as everybody or perhaps anybody else who set out to achieve the same dream. No one knows how much you want it or how strong your drive is or how deeply you believe in yourself, or how much you’ve studied and prepared. So after that, I was still smiling and nodding – but also, not listening at all!
What is the best thing about your dream coming true?
Validation. I was right to keep going. I was right that I could do this. It’s funny now, of course, how many people are claiming that they always knew it would happen too! Hmm…. [suspicious face]
What is the worst thing about your dream coming true?
Honestly, I’m having a bit of an existential crisis now that all my big dreams are ticked off the list. What’ll I do next? I’ll have to think up some new ones. Also, it’s quite a pressurised event, when something happens that you’ve been dreaming of for the last twenty-five years or so. I’m really trying to relax and enjoy it and appreciate the fact that it has.
What advice would you have for other people who want to make this Big Dream come true?
As I said above, believe in yourself and remember that no one else is exactly like you. I once had a conversation with someone who’d decided at the age of 45 to write a novel because, hey, why not, and because she had a friend who knew a literary agent, she got a book deal a few weeks later. It was a small advance and the book didn’t sell, and now she was telling me that there was no point in trying to get published because it wasn’t going to be all rainbows and unicorns like I thought it was. But what did she have to do with me? This is something I’ve wanted to do all my life. I don’t remember not wanting to do it.
Several years ago I made a number of drastic changes, turning everything in my life towards books. I started working in publishing. I went back to college to do a BA in English Lit. I self-published non-fiction to help build my profile and keep me in coffee grounds and ink cartridges while I worked on my novel. What had my story got to do with hers? Nothing! So next time someone tells you that you can’t do something, think about it. Are you and them the same? Almost certainly not.
What’s next on your Big Dream list?
There is one little thing I still dream of doing and that’s spending a week or two in Seaside, Florida, the town where The Truman Show was filmed. I’m working on it!
ABOUT DISTRESS SIGNALS:
Published May 5 by Corvus/Atlantic in Ireland and the UK, June 2 in Australia and New Zealand. 2016 in North America.
Did she leave, or was she taken? The day Adam Dunne’s girlfriend, Sarah, fails to return from a Barcelona business trip, his perfect life begins to fall apart. Days later, the arrival of her passport and a note that reads ‘I’m sorry – S’; sets off real alarm bells. He vows to do whatever it takes to find her.
Read a preview of the first three chapters here.
Buy now from Amazon.co.uk
http://www.DistressSignalsBook.com
ABOUT CATHERINE:
http://www.CatherineRyanHoward.com
Connect with Catherine:
Thank you Catherine for sharing your Big Dream Coming True story. Have you had a Big Dream Come True? I’d LOVE to interview you about it – get in touch and share your Big Dream Story.
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One response to “Big Dreams Come True: Catherine Ryan Howard”
I really enjoyed reading that and look forward to an update in a few years time 🙂