It’s only a few days now until Frontier Resistance is published, and apart from thinking about that, I’ve been thinking about cats.

Why might you ask? I think it’s because I enjoy writing about them, and they form a very important part of the Frontier Series. I am, very definitely, a cat person. Even now as I’m writing this post, I’m covered in cat fur because Nosey has spent the last hour hopping on and off my neck. At the moment, I’m sitting on the couch and he’s on the back of it.

It doesn’t matter what I do when I’m home, there’s usually a cat watching me, following me, or sitting on me. We have two – Socks who belongs to our son, and the aforementioned Nosey.

The mannerisms and behaviours of many of our family cats have snuck into my writing, and very much into my starcat characters. For those of you who haven’t read my book (soon to be books!), starcats are 100kg, black or dark grey felines, with glowing ‘tidemarks’ that fade and brighten dependent on their mood, and flicker in complex patterns. They can vanish at will, move so fast that they blur, and still like to sleep on the bed.

In Frontier Incursion, one of my characters gets woken up by a whisker up the nostril. I know how horrible that is, because a now deceased feline friend of mine (Roly) used to do that if I ignored his pats on the cheek when he was hungry and I was trying to sleep in. Nosey inspired some of the antics of Ember and Nosey (yes I used his name) in Frontier Resistance. Panda (he was black and white) inspired the starcat love of water, and Nicholas the persistence of one of the cats I’ve written about in Book 3. (Just completed the initial drafts.) Fatso, otherwise known as ‘The Fat Cat’ or ‘Fatsy Catsy’ appears in various places with his love of resting, body contact and cheese.

I once read that you should write what you know. I think that’s partly what I’ve done in the Frontier Series. I’ve written cats – lots of cats, behaving as cats do and as I imagine they’d like to, were they larger.