From working as a futurist to inhabiting a world of magical cats that speak Basque—Christian Bieck retired and ended up with his debut YA novel published through Guardbridge Books!
Name: Christian Bieck (he/him)
Based in: I’m German and live in the SW of France.
What genres/subgenres are you drawn to?
All SFF except Romantasy and its variants. I typically write light-hearted and cozy-ish, but I also like my science hard—and in a consistent fantasy world, magic for me IS science!
Is writing your full-time focus, or do you have a day job as well? What do you do?
I recently retired from my full-time day job as a futurist, so besides writing I spread my time out to editing/coaching, teaching tennis, a bit of consulting, and taking care of our little “hobby farm”.
The Book: From Pen to Print
What was the genesis of this book? Where did you get the idea from?
A Basquet of Cats started with a family game of Microscope. (TL;DR for the not-so-nerdy: that’s a kind of worldbuilding game.) We ended up creating a setting where magical cat familiars had to solve the murder mystery of what had happened to their human mages. They never found out, but when I decided to write a novel for NaNoWriMo 2021, I already had the basic idea from that game, and just needed to flesh out the full plot. Now it’s neither a murder nor a mystery, though—it’s more an adventure story.
How many drafts did you go through before you felt it was ready to query? How long did that take you?
I think I did the first round of queries with version three. My first draft tends to quite readable; for me, the adage that “you can’t edit a blank page” is not quite true. (Which has it’s upsides and downsides.) That was in summer 2023, so about 18 months after I finished the first draft. The majority of that time was waiting for feedback from beta readers; the actual writing and revising took maybe 3 months total.
Did you work with beta and/or sensitivity readers? How did you find them? How did you incorporate their feedback?
Yes. My alpha readers are always my wife and son, because if they don’t like my writing it will need major changes. Then on every revision, I had a bunch of test readers who were either friends, or people I knew via the online writing communities I am a member of. They all generally liked the story, and were very valuable in identifying where the pacing needed to improve.
The biggest help overall, though, was working with a developmental editor. She pointed out an issue with the main character’s voice, an issue that my writing had in general, and changing that made all the difference between a novel that’s enjoyable to friendly readers, and a publishable novel.
Lastly, I use Basque as the language of magic, so I had someone look over my snippets of Basque.
What was your querying process like? How long did it take?
I queried 17 agents in total, with nothing but unhelpful form rejections, not a single bit of useful feedback. After the first six months of that—and since my short stories were largely running into the same issue, despite test readers positive reactions—I decided to work with the aforementioned developmental editor to see whether my writing was bad, or I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
After her help, and the voice revision, I continued querying with the intention of going self-pub after 50 rejections. Still no useful feedback.
But then WorldCon 2024 in Glasgow happened.
It was actually my very first con, and I went through the dealers’ room, chatting up all the publishers there to see whether they would take unagented submissions. David Stokes from Guardbridge Books in Scotland did, and even though he was at that point closed to submissions, he agreed to take a look and maybe give it to his daughter, who is right in the book’s target audience. And he liked it enough to want to publish it! I mean, who can say no to magical cats… 😉
So if I take from first query to verbal agreement to publish as the end points, it took a little under two years. I am not sure how unusual my path is; I now have a publisher, but still don’t have an agent. I do plan to go back to querying agents when I have the outline for a sequel and/or know whether Basquet is doing well; as an international author I have so many people asking me when they would be able to read the book in their own language, and I definitely will want help in placing that. It would be French, German and Japanese so far…
Once it was in the hands of your publisher, what was the process to get it ready for release?
Pretty straightforward. Once David said he wanted to publish, he sent me some rough editor’s notes that gave me enough to clean up a few bits and tighten pacing once again. I also did some more worldbuilding with sequels in mind, and made some changes to avoid continuity errors later on. (Probably nothing a normal reader would have noticed, only petifoggers like me.) After that, it was just a few rounds of copyediting and proofreading, and here we are!
And now your book is about to be unleashed on the world! How are you feeling?
It’s amazing! Debuting as a published author at my age feels very special.
What would you like us to know about this book?
It’s a YA fantasy starring magical cats!
Gentza is a young black cat living a happy life in the Basque lands of medieval France. He shares an intimate mind-to-mind connection with his human friend and companion, the Archmage Zumar Etxartea.
When his human companion is attacked, along with the mage lady bonded to Gentza’s friend Kitty, it is up to the cats to save the day. They must use their feline magic and build a coalition of animals to face dark enchantments, mean people who exploit animals, and a band of truly bad cats. Can they find a way to set the world aright?
(That’s the book blurb, and since it’s pretty good, IMO, I keep reusing it.)
Who’s the ideal reader for this one? What sort of things do they like to read about?
The publisher says it’s “for young adults and animal lovers of all ages,” and that’s how I wrote it—as a book that I would have wanted to read as a teenager, and still enjoy reading after retirement. As strange as it sounds, the best comp I came up with is Warrior Cats meets Legends and Lattes meets Aristocats. Do you like cozy(ish) fantasy? Do you like adventure stories with animals? Do you go for a touch of singing cats? Then this book is for you!
Your Writing Process
Are you a plotter or pantser or somewhere in between? How do you do your first draft?
I’m somewhere between lawful plantser and lawful plotter, meaning at a minimum I need waypoints to write toward, if not a full outline. And I love worldbuilding. Those two things give me fairly solid anchors for the story to flow downstream, and for my characters to still be able to do what a writer’s characters often tend to do: come up with stuff that surprises me. And my first drafts tend to be quite readable; even my first novel written during NaNoWriMo 2009 which I wrote in pantser mode and never revised is readable. (That doesn’t mean it’s good, though!)
How do you approach writing? Are you the type or writer who needs to treat it like a job? Is there a particular time of day you find best for you to write?
I never wanted to “be a writer”; I just always enjoyed telling stories, and one day, around the age of 40, I started writing them down in a readable format. I couldn’t treat writing like a job; I also enjoy other creative endeavors like making music and drawing (I’m reasonably good at the former, just a beginner at the latter), and I can’t really concentrate on more than one or two of those three at the same time. It’s all about having fun! I usually write later in the day after all the daily chores are done.
Geek out about stationery: do you use a notebook? A specific type of pen? Or are you computer all the way?
I use a notebook and mechanical pencil exclusively for brainstorming. Writing is on a computer, ideally several big screens, with an ergonomic keyboard.
That said, a friend just gave me a nice notebook, with cats! This will be my Whiskerverse (i.e. the world of Basquet) notebook from now on.
Is any of that different for editing?
Any serious editing is per printout and pen. The changes then per computer, of course.
Where do you work? Do you have a comfy, creative space at home or are you someone who has to grab the moment wherever it comes?
The need for an ergonomic keyboard for anything longer is somewhat limiting, so I write best in my office. For shorter bits I do have a laptop that also follows me into the garden.
What’s your writing soundtrack?
For fantasy generally the Lord of the Rings Special Extended Edition soundtrack. Or some classical music; I recently discovered an amazing guitar transcription of Pictures at an Exhibition that I had running on repeat for a few writing sessions when I wrote The Color of Happiness, a short story published 2025 in a color-themed anthology.
Do you have a writing ritual?
Not for writing itself, but I do a lot of my brainstorming and plotting while walking our dogs. We live in a nice rural area, and I find nature helps my creativity.
Where can we follow you / find out more about your work?
The best way is my website; it’s the one and only place for me that’s definitely immune to enshittification. If you sign up for updates (that generally go out once a week) you’ll get three of my short stories right to your inbox. And if you find you like A Basquet of Cats, you will find background materials and extra stories there. I am also on Bluesky and other social media, see my LinkTree; I will generally respond if contacted there.
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