A&F Newsletter
Spring 2005
Catlin Turns Screen Play
into Novel
Students and staff who were around the college
in the late 1990s will recognize familiar names and places after reading “Until
August,” the first novel published by former Cowley student Adam
Catlin. Catlin, 28, was in Arkansas City March 8 to promote the novel.
He signed copies of the book at the college’s Regnier Bookstore. “Until
August” is about an eight-month love affair in 1998, set primarily
on the college’s main campus in Ark City.
The book is filled with references to actual places and people, including the
Kirke Dale Dormitory, the Brown family of Arkansas City and Home National Bank,
and Cowley administrators Dr. Pat McAtee, president, and Conrad Jimison, vice
president of administration. Catlin first got the idea to write the book in fall
1999. “The book is loosely based on events in my life,” said Catlin,
who attended Cowley in fall 1997 and spring 1998. The 1995 graduate of Sedan
High School and current graduate student at Kansas State University said he first
wrote a screenplay as a communications major at Southwestern College in Winfield. “I
got $60 for the best screenplay called ‘Uninvited,’ ” Catlin
said. That was in 2000.
It was his second screenplay titled “What We Leave Behind” that resulted
in a 150-page manuscript. “I thought I’d turn it into a novel,” he
said. “It took me five or six months, and I changed the title to ‘Now
Until August.’ I wanted to do something that was seven to nine months long.” “Until
August” is a story about Frank Archer, the events that led him into the
arms of Annie Foster, his time at the Kansas Jaycees Cerebral Palsy Ranch, and
those eight months in 1998. Catlin works at the Manhattan Mercury. “Until
August” is available at Cowley’s Renn Memorial Library and the public
libraries in Arkansas City and Winfield. It can be purchased for $24.95 from
the Regnier Bookstore on campus or through www.publishamerica.com, www.barnesandnoble.com,
www.borders.com, and www.amazon.com.