Guest Post: The Journal of Will Mallory by Kate Oliver, author of Caterpillar + Giveaway

Everyone please welcome Kate Oliver, the author of Caterpillar!

About Kate Oliver

Born in Santa Barbara, California, Kate Oliver has lived most of her life just outside of Washington, D.C.. Having worked as everything from a professional statistical programmer to a professional student to a professional parent, she now splits her time between wrangling her three kids and writing books for children and young adults.

Her first novel, Caterpillar, was released by MAB Books on April 10, 2012.

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The Journal of Will Mallory 

One of the things I discovered early on as a writer is that there are two ways novels are born. They either start with a premise—a plot—or they begin with a character.

Caterpillar began with the character of Will Mallory, a character who gnawed at me beginning in the summer of 2010.

What I knew about Will, in the beginning, was that he was unbearably lonely, that he was not human, yet felt as though he was, and that he has once been someone who had taken real intimacy for granted. Cara Gallagher, who narrates most of the story, followed shortly afterward.

We first meet Will in Caterpillar when he has a chance meeting with Cara on the rocks at Half Moon Bay, but we first hear from Will directly in one of his journal entries, made later that same day.

The Journal of Will Mallory 

August 15 

Year 64, day—oh, hell, I don’t know. 

Forms: Four 

I appear to continue being not dead.

 I’ve already discussed here how this came to pass. Though I’m still thinking about it, about her, I’m trying very hard to let it go. I don’t seem to have a choice in the matter. I know I won’t see her again.

I dreamt of Meris again last night. I always do, whenever I see the ocean. I’m not sure if this means I should go more or less. I do enjoy the dreaming. But then after always comes the waking up.

Things with Kleeman are still not going terribly well. Trying not to think about it. Worse, today was my day for office hours, so I went, figuring that as long as I was going to continue shuffling along this mortal coil, I ought to remain employed. I sat in my office for three-quarters of an hour and tried to explain to unhappy eighteen-year-olds with no hope of grasping relativity that if they were shot into space at the speed of light, their lack of scientific understanding would seem to an onlooker to stretch on for eternity.

I didn’t actually tell them that. I probably should have. Would have saved us all some time.

I needed a break, so I went out into the hallway and raised my coffee cup, tapping it with my finger. “Caffeine,” I explained to the students who were queued up to talk to me. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

I bypassed the Physics Department’s main office, with its coffee maker, not sure where I was going. I wanted to be alone. Not to be surrounded by people I was lying to. Which was unfortunate, because, as I went out the front door, I ran headfirst into Adeep Kumar. Have I mentioned Adeep before? I can’t recall.

“Watch where you’re going, jackass,” he said to me in Hindi.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you.” Adeep, a native of Seattle, is under the impression that my Hindi—which is better than his—is the result of my spending a summer in New Delhi (a lie), while I was in college (another lie). We’ve become colleagues, of a sort, as we’ve begun collaborating on an interdisciplinary research project, though of course he has no idea that our project has any immediate practical applications. Adeep, whose shock of curly, electric-blue hair only seems to accentuate the lankiness of his frame, is a fourth-year grad student in the Chemistry Department. Something of a wunderkind.

He continued to look at me expectantly. “Were you looking for me?” I asked.

“I need more of that powdered palladium.”

I nodded. “I’ll call.” God, I was tired. “Was there something else?”

“Jesus, you’re an unfriendly prick,” he said. “Aren’t you even going to ask how I’m doing? What’s new with you, Adeep?”

I sighed. “How are you doing, Adeep?”

He grinned. “I asked the Biology Goddess out again.”

“Did you.”

“I did.”

“And what did she call you this time?”

He ran his hand self-consciously through his hair. “The Barbie Dream-Poodle.”

I laughed. “I think that’s a no, my friend.” Adeep doesn’t hear “no” often. I gathered that the Biology Goddess had become something of a challenge for him. From what I’d seen, he was lucky if all she did was make fun of his hair.

He shook his head. “Have you seen the Biology Goddess? Legs. For. Days. I’m going to rock her mitochondria, man.”

“Please tell me you didn’t actually use that line on her.”

“The Biology girls love that line,” he insisted. “If you weren’t such a homo, you’d know that.” Adeep is under the impression that my disinterest in “The Goddesses” is due to the fact that I am a closeted homosexual. A notion of which I fail to disabuse him, as it’s so much easier—and more pleasant—than the truth.

One lie among thousands. How many have I told? And with each one, some corresponding part of me dies, as if its denial causes it to cease existing altogether. How much of me is left? The real me?

I didn’t know. Barely even cared. Then, from somewhere, I heard a shout. A girl. I looked at Adeep.

“What is that?”

He shook his head. “A fight?”

I shoved my mug into his hands and ran across the quad, to the source of the sound, heart racing, feet pounding against the pavement. There was something about the voice—something familiar.

When I arrived no one was there.

About Caterpillar

Caterpillar (The Metamorphosis Trilogy #1)

by Kate Oliver

In a small college town in northern California, a lonely young man is working himself to the bone to solve a sixty-year-old problem ... a stranger with a will of iron and eyes the color of ice is searching for someone he can't identify ... and a girl who loves plants is about to grow roots of her own.

When Cara Gallagher's parents are transferred overseas again, she's off to spend her senior year of high school living with her sister, a graduate student at the famed McNair University. Cara, a girl with a passion for science and an indifference to people, hopes this move will be her first step in claiming the independence she craves. Cara has her future planned down to the letter: her college, her major, her career.

Then she saves Will Mallory's life, and both of their futures are completely rewritten.

The last years of Will's life have been spent shifting from one identity to the next, dodging the FBI, and trying desperately to find a way home. But Will's home is forty-four light years away, and to reach it he'll have to outwit the man who's hunting him--and leave behind the only love he's ever known.

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