About the author

Catherine Whiteway has been an obsessive reader and a compulsive storyteller since childhood, and has been writing and playing with words for most of her life. She is fascinated by the tales to be found in everyday events and in the lives of people a step or two outside the mainstream.

Catherine works as an archivist, and in her spare time is usually to be found reading or writing, almost always with a musical soundtrack of some kind. She blogs on music and popular culture, and draws much of her inspiration from the rock and alternative scene.

The idea for Shelter came from an online news article about a Cold War-era bunker in Moscow that is now open to the public. Catherine found herself wondering what it would be like to be forced to take shelter in such a place, and was already writing the beginning of the story before she had finished reading the article. The story became a fully-fledged novel during National Novel Writing Month in 2010.