C.K. Kelly Martin
Long before I was an author I was a fan of books about Winnie the Pooh, Babar, Madeline, Anne Shirley and anything by Judy Blume. Throughout high school my favourite class was English. No surprise, then, that most of my time spent at York University in Toronto was as an English major—not the traditional way to graduate with a B.A. (Hons) in film studies but a fine way to get a general arts education.
After getting my film studies degree I headed for Dublin, Ireland and spent the majority of the nineties there in forgettable jobs meeting unforgettable people and enjoying the buzz. I always believed I'd get around to writing in earnest eventually, and I began writing my first novel in a flat in Dublin and finished it in a Toronto suburb. By then I'd discovered that fiction about young people felt the freshest and most exciting to me. You have most of your life to be an adult but you only grow up once.
Currently residing near Toronto with my Dub husband, I'm an aunt to twenty-one nieces and nephews, and a great-aunt to five great-nieces and two great-nephews. I became an Irish citizen in 2001 and continue to visit Dublin as often as I can while working on novels about young people.
My first young adult book, I Know It's Over, came out with Random House in September 2008, and was followed by One Lonely Degree, The Lighter Side of Life and Death, My Beating Teenage Heart and sci-fi thriller Yesterday. I released Yesterday's sequel, Tomorrow, in 2013 and put out my first adult novel, Come See About Me, as an ebook in June 2012. Two of my contemporary YA books, The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing and Delicate, were published by Cormorant Books' Dancing Cat Books imprint in 2014 and 2015. They also published my middle grade sci-fi, Stricken.
My 2017 young adult novel, Just Like You Said It Would Be, is the book of my heart. Packed with movies references and giddy love for Dublin, Ireland, Just Like You Said It Would Be is a frank exploration of first love, full of confusion, elation, disappointment and its knack of making the ordinary seem amazing.
In 2019 I made my horror debut with DCB under the name Cara Martin. Booklist described Shantallow as "serious, literary and very scary" and Kirkus called it "gut-wrenching on various levels." It was an Ottawa Book Awards finalist and was longlisted for the Sunburst Award.
“It´s amazing how quickly life can take things from you-and astounding the swiftness with which its gifts arrive too.”
“A thought is just a thought until you own up to it and give it depth and weight.”
“There´s no cure for that kind of missing, but I keep walking...”
“Maybe no one person should be that important that their absence drains life of meaning, but he was. Day after day and the loss didnt get any lighter.”
“In my opinion, we didn't have to aspire to greatness. We were already there.”
“In two years you can love somebody with all your heart and lose them. You can become the very best of friends with someone and then neglect them to the point that they don't expect anything different from you anymore. You can become someone you never expected and forget things you believed you could take for granted about yourself.”
“Love is real and real love lasts. I used to feel sorry for people who didn't believe in it--the people who were lonely with someone else or lonely along. For awhile I was was one of the lucky ones.”
“Bending instead of breaking,” he repeats. “That’s probably always a better option if you can take it, isn’t it?”
“But you can't unsee something once you've seen it. Not without a memory wipe anyway.”
“I'm talking to myself in two different personas now. I'm reaching for a full-throttle meltdown and why not? Why stop halfway? Why not just go for it, jump on and ride the wave?”
“Things never go wrong at the moment you expect them to. When you're completely relaxed, oblivious to any potential dangers, that's when bad things happen.”
“You spend months barely acknowledging someone's existence and then BOOM, you're emotionally addicted to her. Science would probably blame it on chemicals, genetics or something equally logical, but it didn't feel like anything logical”
“Sometimes it seems so easy to make people happy that I wonder why I don't do it more often.”
“Things don't always change with a bang. Sometimes they change so gradually that you can't clearly pinpoint the last moment they were truly the same.”
“How many times can a person break you heart?”
“Love does strange things to you sometimes. It can twist you into saying and doing things that you know you’ll regret and still, you do them.”