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CROSS EXAMINED my head what I am thinking about is what happens next, what are the char- acters going to do, and then once I have started writing, I am thinking what is the next scene going to be and working out the details of that. So it gets more and more detailed depending on where I am in the process." "Once I have a book construct in She may be working on a massive tobacco case, but Catherine McKenzie still finds time to write. The ideas in her head Montreal lawyer and novelist Catherine McKenzie is working on her fourth work of fiction. BY KATHRYN LEGER M write bestselling novels while managing her busy career. "Ideas come to me and they don't leave me alone, ontreal lawyer Catherine McKenzie has a simple expla- nation for how she found the time to author of the books Arranged, Spin, and Forgotten — the third just launched this past May in Canada and planned for a fall " says McKenzie, release in the United States. "A book idea will come into my head like a concept," she explains. "My first book Spin was about a journalist who follows a celebrity into rehab, so that idea popped into my head and stuck there. So I started thinking about that idea, well how does that translate into a book, so then other pieces come to me. What is the main character like? Who is the celebrity going to be? 20 JULY 2012 www. CANADIAN Lawyermag.com cuitous route as in the case of her book Forgotten. It' — and ultimately redemption — featur- ing Emma Tupper, a young lawyer who takes a month-long leave of absence to go to Africa to fulfil the lifelong dream and dying wish of her mother. After spending six months trapped in a remote village that has been hit by a devastating earth- quake, she finally finds her way home only to discover that everyone thought she was dead and her life and legal career as she knew them are in tatters. McKenzie had no plans for the lead That process sometimes takes a cir- s a tale about self-discovery character to be a lawyer. "I did deliber- ately not have lawyers in my first two books," she says. "People tend to confuse a writer of fiction with their main char- acter and I didn't want that to happen. That being said, it happened anyway. " karine patry