Interviewing Cathy-Lee Chopping – Burying Love

Introducing you to new Author Cathy-Lee Chopping who wrote Burying Love which is in our Ghostly Writes Anthology – Love from the Other Side

-Introduce Yourself and where you’re from.

I am Cathy-Lee Chopping, and I am from Perth, Western Australia. We are located in one of the most beautiful cities in Australia, and I am lucky enough to live around 4 minutes from the beach and my local café where I love to sit and write overlooking the Indian Ocean.  My background is Hospitality and Administration, and I currently run a successful distributorship selling cosmetics and skincare. I am married with a 6-year-old son, and my hobbies include reading (of course), writing short stories, listening to music and enjoying downtime watching reality tv about cooking and renovating.

-Tell us about your writing journey?

I started writing when I was around 12 years old, as a way to cope with immigrating to Australia from New Zealand.  I had to make all new friends and that pushed me into my own little world which I expressed by writing short stories about the people in my life and the new friends I made.  It was a way of journaling for me, and one that I thought was a secret, so imagine my surprise when 20 years later my younger sisters told me that they used to sneak into my bedroom and read my latest short stories when I wasn’t home.

I started taking it seriously when I turned 21, and in the last 14 years I have amassed a huge folder of stories that have not yet seen the light of a publishers screen.  I have enough material for my own anthology of short stories, to which I am seriously considering having published.  I have also been working on a novel that I am planning to release in early 2019, and I am really looking forward to this.  Why did I decide to start publishing my secret work?  To be honest it was when a friend of mine passed away in January.  She was 34, too young to have been through a heart and two lung transplants over the last decade, and she once told me that I was crazy to not want to show my work to anyone; that life was too short.  After she passed away I submitted my first ever published piece of work to Plaisted Publishing House. 

I realised a story not written is a story not told, this has motivated me to start publishing my work.

-What is your story about?

I wrote this story as it came to me one afternoon in the middle of January 2018.  I had just received the news that my friend had passed away, and being in the UK on a family holiday I was unable to get back in time to pay my respects.  This was my way of coping and honouring her.  My character in ‘Buried Love’ is a woman who is saying goodbye to someone, and needs to get a message to the other side so that everyone can move on.

One of my favourite lines in the story is “I wonder why people wait to say nice things about people until they’re gone. Why did they not say thank you and how much they loved and appreciated her when she was right in front of them?”

–Why did you choose this topic/genre?

I was invited to submit a piece of writing for the Ghostly Writes Anthologies Valentine Edition for 2018, and as I was grieving for my friend, I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to write about love and the passing of a loved one.  I wrote “Buried Love” especially for this Anthology.

-Why publish in the Ghostly Writes Anthologies?

The Ghostly Writes Anthologies offer a wonderful platform for budding authors from around the world to showcase their work.  I am very happy another author, who is also published in the Anthology, contacted me to let me know that they were taking submissions.  I look forward to working with them again.

-Share your experiences of helping each other in the Ghostly Writes Group.

As a newcomer to the publishing game, I had a lot of questions which were happily and quickly answered by the members of the group.  I would like to extend my thanks to every one of them who pointed me in the right direction so that I made the deadline.

Thank you for participating.

(You’re welcome!)