About me

Hello - my name is Kate Blackadder and I’m an author and avid reader.

I’m delighted to say that my first full-length novel, Stella’s Christmas Wish, is published by Black and White Publishing in November 2016. It’s set in the beautiful Scottish Borders and in Edinburgh.

I have had over fifty short stories published in magazines including Woman’s Weekly, The People’s Friend, The Weekly News and Writers' Forum, and Woman's Day and Fast Fiction in Australia. In 2008 I won the Muriel Spark Short Story Prize, judged by Maggie O'Farrell. Other stories have been in New Writing Scotland and long/short-listed for competitions such as the Jane Austen Short Story Award and the Scotsman/Orange Short Story Prize. 

Two of my magazine serials are now available on Kindle (and in large-print library editions) – The Family at Farrshore and The Ferryboat. A third serial, A Time to Reap, set in a Highland farming community in 1963 will be out in large-print and Kindle in 2017.

 

A collection of stories previously published in magazines, Three's a Crowd and other family stories, is available in Kindle and in paperback. The paperback is also available from https://www.feedaread.com/ and other e-tailers.

I am delighted to be guest author at The People's Friend writing workshops in Dundee, Glasgow and York.

I am a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association and of the Society of Authors. 

I always have several short stories on the go plus longer pieces. I used to write a lot of poetry but the muse has taken the huff since I took up with prose.

Writing to be published is a more recent passion but I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read. My mum was a great reader, and, frankly, I think I learned in utero. When we visited relatives or friends I made a bee-line for their bookcases and then hid behind the sofa trying to read as much as I could before going-home time. I would still like to do that … My desert island book (and, yes, I’d like the King James Bible and the works of Shakespeare as well, please) would be … impossible to choose. Would I be allowed all the volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica? Once I’d mastered barbecuing fish and given my cave a makeover, my worry would be that I’d run out of reading material.

I read fiction mostly, social history too, and travel accounts, particularly if they’re about China. And I love to browse through my large collection of girls’ annuals which range in date from the 1890s to the 1970s.

So that’s a bit about me – like many of my writing projects I’m a work-in-progress.

I guess if you’re reading this you like writing and reading too, or writhing and reeling as Lewis Carroll memorably put it. Let’s writhe and reel together ...