B I O
Catherine STOWE is the pen name of Mihaela Damian, author of The Brainweaver sci-fi psychological thriller.
Born in Romania, Mihaela grew up at the time when the communist regime was starting to become increasingly suffocating. Her father, an industrial robot designer as a day job and an artist in his spare time, encouraged Mihaela to develop her creativity and authentic expression from an early age. Apart from the regular painting and poetry, she enjoyed writing short stories, whenever the inspiration called her.
After graduating from university, she lands in Cambridge, UK where she works on understanding and integrating into the English society. She starts intensive language classes where suddenly she rediscovers writing and, to her great surprise, her brain starts coming up with a foreign new style, a deeper introspection into human emotions, reasoning and behaviour. Maybe it was the stage in her life or expressing in English that produced this strange shift in her creativity processes, but what is certain is that comments like "This is a great story! I would love to read more like it," or "Have you thought about writing a book?" really made an impact on her writing love affair.
An unexpected chain of events propelled her out of the UK into epic Switzerland where she ended up in a stimulating brain-research laboratory at the hospital of Lausanne. If she previously had the right mind-set, now she also gets the right setting to spark her.
She writes in two genres: psychological sci-fi thrillers, inspired by her involvement and fascination with neuroscience, human brain processes and behaviour, and short tragicomedy stories based on life during Ceausescu's 'golden age'. "A psychological thriller can be deep, heavy and soul draining to write at times, so an occasional light escape is just what one needs to keep the sanity in check," she says referring to the two contrasting styles. "Plus, writing one way increases the creativity of the other, as the brain is used differently for the two genres. Definitely in my case; alternating allows rest, processing and preparation for the next writing session of the contrasting type. And then, there is the inspiration: I have to use it whenever it finds me, for whichever book."
I am not the superhero type, she says. I like a real challenge, so I take normal people and put them in extraordinary circumstances and see what happens. And, because people react differently based on personal perception, surroundings, social pressure and prior experiences, the options for a writer are infinite. This applies equally to the reader — I like it when my stories inspire them further and make the reader's mind wander. The writer Rebecca Whitney calls it "an intense collaboration with the author, a direct wire into their brain". I call it perpetual creativity.
After finalising The Brainweaver, the Adam Filder series will follow with two more books. "When you write, you get great ideas that are sometimes too early to be placed into the current book, but are perfect for a sequel. So, this will have to happen."
In parallel, Mihaela Damian is also completing her satirical stories set in Romania in the 80's, seen through the innocent and enthusiastic eyes of a child.