Cathy Hapka

"It was a nice experience; they're cool people and they really love the world of BIONICLE."
— Cathy Hapka

Cathy Hapka
Human
Job	BIONICLE Books Author (2003) No longer affiliated with BIONICLE
Department	Author

Catherine Hapka, better known as C.A. Hapka, is an author who wrote the first three BIONICLE Chronicles Books, BIONICLE Chronicles 1: Tale of the Toa, BIONICLE Chronicles 2: Beware the Bohrok, BIONICLE Chronicles 3: Makuta's Revenge, as well as the BIONICLE: Mask of Light novelization.

Biography

Cathy Hapka was the one originally asked by Scholastic to write the BIONICLE books because of the company's familiarity with her, as she had written several books that had been published by Scholastic before. However, Greg Farshtey, a leading member of the BIONICLE story team, was asked to write Tales of the Masks and continued writing all of the books starting from the BIONICLE Adventures series.

Because Cathy was only working off the comics and likely not any Templar games, Cathy did not incorporate any of the latter's content into her work. However, she did effectively expand on the comics, weaving together illustrations of events mentioned in the comics that occurred offscreen, her own original subplots, and novelizations of key comic scenes, forming them into narratives that could stand on their own. Because of the time her books were written (near the beginning of 2003), her books feature a mix of pre-Naming Day names (such as Jala) and post-Naming Day names (like Hewkii). Moreover, like the original Templar games, the word "Ta-Koran" is used in the third book where it should be Ta-Matoran.

Cathy continues to be an active writer, and has given a couple interviews with BIONCLE fans where she has shared insight into her writing process.