Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Followers (813)

Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Born

The United States

Website

http://www.catherinemurdock.com

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Young Adult

Influences

Elizabeth Gilbert ...more

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I grew up in small-town Connecticut, on a tiny farm with honeybees, two adventurous goats, and a mess of Christmas trees. My sister claims we didn’t have a television, but we did, sometimes – only it was ancient, received exactly two channels, and had to be turned off after 45 minutes to cool down or else the screen would go all fuzzy. Watching (or rather, “watching”) Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was quite the experience, because it’s hard to tell a flock of vicious crows from a field of very active static; this might be why I still can’t stand horror movies, to this day.

My sister Liz, who is now a Very Famous Writer with a large stack of books, was my primary companion, even though she was extremely cautious – she wouldn’t even try to jump I grew up in small-town Connecticut, on a tiny farm with honeybees, two adventurous goats, and a mess of Christmas trees. My sister claims we didn’t have a television, but we did, sometimes – only it was ancient, received exactly two channels, and had to be turned off after 45 minutes to cool down or else the screen would go all fuzzy. Watching (or rather, “watching”) Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was quite the experience, because it’s hard to tell a flock of vicious crows from a field of very active static; this might be why I still can’t stand horror movies, to this day.

My sister Liz, who is now a Very Famous Writer with a large stack of books, was my primary companion, even though she was extremely cautious – she wouldn’t even try to jump off the garage roof, which involved crouching right at the edge for ten minutes working up your nerve, and then checking each time you landed to see if you’d broken anything – and she learned early on that losing at games was easier in the long run than putting up with me losing. Now, of course, she travels all over the world collecting stories and diseases, while I stay at home scowling over paint chips, and losing on purpose to my kids. So the cycle continues. (Read an New York Times article by Catherine and Liz.)

People sometimes ask if I played football in high school: no. I ran cross country and track, badly, but I have absolutely no skill whatsoever with ball or team sports. Plus my high school didn’t even have a football team. Instead, I was part of the art clique – taking extra art classes, spending my study halls and lunch periods working on my latest still life. (Please tell me this was not a unique experience.) I didn’t do much writing – my sister was the anointed writer – but I read my little eyeballs out. I was the queen of our library’s YA section.

In college I studied architectural history. The formal name was “Growth and Structure of Cities Program,” but for me, it was all about buildings. I’ve always been fascinated with the built environment – how spaces fit together, how streets work, how they read. And curiously (Warning: Life Lesson approaching), it’s paid off in the oddest ways. For example, several of us in our neighborhood recently got quite upset about a enormous building going in across the street, and while everyone agreed that they didn’t like the way it looked, I was the one who stood up at public meetings and used words like entablature and cornice line and fenestration – all this architectural jargon I’d learned back at Bryn Mawr – and sounded like I knew what I was talking about. And because of that, the building ended up getting redesigned, and – in my humble opinion – now will look much more attractive and appropriate, which is nice because I’ll be looking at it for the rest of my life. So don’t be afraid to study what you love, because you do not know now, and you may not know for twenty years, how amazingly it will pay off. But it will.

Dairy Queen was my first stab at creative writing since high school, not counting several years as a struggling screenwriter (which followed several years as a struggling scholar). I unabashedly recommend screenwriting for mastering the art of storytelling; just don’t pin any hopes on seeing your work on the big screen. But you’ll learn so much in the process that this won’t matter. I also recommend, you know, living. I've been passionate about food pretty much my whole life – first eating it, now preparing and then eating it. And so it plays a pretty big role in my writing, and adds so much flavor . . . not literally, of course, but the more you can add that's true, whether it's emotion or geography or gardening (that’s me in the picture above), then the stronger that story is. ...more

Combine Editions
Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s books

Average rating: 3.79 · 73,355 ratings · 7,456 reviews · 12 distinct works • Similar authors

	Dairy Queen (Dairy Queen, #1) 3.75 avg rating — 28,212 ratings — published 2006 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Princess Ben 3.75 avg rating — 18,059 ratings — published 2008 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Off Season (Dairy Queen, #2) 3.94 avg rating — 11,346 ratings — published 2007 — 26 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Front and Center (Dairy Queen, #3) 3.95 avg rating — 8,443 ratings — published 2009 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Book of Boy 3.82 avg rating — 3,911 ratings — published 2018 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Wisdom's Kiss 3.09 avg rating — 1,599 ratings — published 2011 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Heaven Is Paved with Oreos (Dairy Queen, #4) 3.48 avg rating — 1,032 ratings — published 2013 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Da Vinci's Cat 3.79 avg rating — 719 ratings — published 2021 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870-1940 3.53 avg rating — 40 ratings — published 1998 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Princess Ben: Being a Wholly Truthful Account of Her Various Discoveries and Misadventures, Recounted to the Best of Her Recollection, in Four Parts liked it 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Catherine Gilbert Murdock…

Series by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Dairy Queen (4 books)
by

Catherine Gilbert Murdock

3.82 avg rating — 49,032 ratings

Quotes by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (?)

“When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Dairy Queen

tags: relationships, talking

1793 likes

“Every fairy tale, it seems, concludes with the bland phrase "happily ever after." Yet every couple I have ever known would agree that nothing about marriage is forever happy. There are moments of bliss, to be sure, and lengthy spans of satisfied companionship. Yet these come at no small effort, and the girl who reads such fiction dreaming her troubles will end ere she departs the altar is well advised to seek at once a rational women to set her straight.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Princess Ben

tags: advice, happily-ever-after, humor, marriage

102 likes

“She says you're not truly human until you've had your heart broken and you've broken someone's heart.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Front and Center

tags: heart, human, love

65 likes

See all Catherine Gilbert Murdock's quotes »

Polls

What book should we read in August?

You may write in titles, provided the book is a 2019 Newbery contender and already published.

Bob by Wendy Mass

38 votes 23.6%

Where the Watermelons Grow by Cindy Baldwin

31 votes 19.3%

The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

18 votes 11.2%

Just Like Jackie by Lindsey Stoddard

17 votes 10.6%

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

17 votes 10.6%

The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air, #1) by Holly Black

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

13 votes 8.1%

the Truth as Told by Mason Buttle by Leslie Connor (write-in)

6 votes 3.7%

Where the Watermelons Grow (write-in)

5 votes 3.1%

Out of Left Field by Ellen Klages (write-in)

3 votes 1.9%

Until tomorrow Mr. Marlsworth (write-in)

3 votes 1.9%

The Unforgettable Guinevere St. Clair (write-in)

3 votes 1.9%

Just Like Jackie (write-in)

2 votes 1.2%

Night Garden by Polly Horvath (Canadian/American dual citizenship) (write-in)

2 votes 1.2%

Just like jackie (write-in)

2 votes 1.2%

just like jackie (write-in)

1 vote 0.6%

161 total votes

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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The Seasonal Read...: By Blood or Marriage (25.2)	41	401	Aug 24, 2009 02:23PM
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The Next Best Boo...: End of the Year Summary	73	314	Dec 29, 2009 05:48PM
The Book Ends: Just Finished	16	36	May 22, 2010 09:48AM
The Seasonal Read...: 30.5 (PJ Reads' Task - As Suggested By Tanja - Six Degrees of Separation)	348	419	May 26, 2010 07:44AM
The Seasonal Read...: Summer Challenge 2010 Completed Tasks (do NOT delete any posts in this thread)	3053	3272	Aug 31, 2010 10:39PM

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