The idea for her first Conway novel, Killerbyte, came about after Cat received a string of death threats while co-running a poetry chat room, back in the days of MSN chat. The thought that people could get so nasty online fascinated her. The second novel, Terrorbyte, grew from a conversation about living with a mentally ill parent with the real life model for Mac Connelly.
Cat worked in a voluntary capacity for the Police, for five years, going out on late-night patrols, learning and implementing surveillance techniques, and even wangling her way into search and seizure operations, etc. This provided a great source of information for her writing (and still does). She carried out extensive research of locations and procedures (picking the brain of a Special Agent friend), including having friends visit and document the locations she chose – in Virginia.