Stella's Christmas Wish – publication day

katewritesandreads interviews … Kate Blackadder

katewritesandreads: So – today’s the day! Publication of your first full-length novel, Stella’s Christmas Wish.

Kate Blackadder: Yes! It’s a day I’ve dreamed of since I used to scribble stories in old school jotters.

katewritesandreads: Can you tell us something about Stella herself?

KB: She’s a financial whizz; for the last fifteen months she’s been a high-flyer in a City of London office. She enjoys her job but she’s a home-loving girl too  – and home is far from London, in Melrose in the Scottish Borders.

katewritesandreads: Is she anything like you?

KB: Not at all – except that I spent six years in London, the first few months in a blur of homesickness.

katewritesandreads: Aw. But Stella has no option but to stick it out, does she?

KB: That’s right. And she misses her younger sister, Maddie, and Alice, the granny who brought them up, so much – but she doesn’t want to go home to Melrose because she’ll bump into her ex-boyfriend Ross and she doesn’t know how she’d handle that. They parted on very bad terms. So she and Alice and Maddie planned to spend Christmas in Maddie’s flat in Edinburgh.

katewritesandreads: And then … ?

KB: That plan falls through, big time. Six days before Christmas Alice is taken to hospital. Maddie has gone away and it seems that Alice is the only one who knows where and why – but she’s unconscious and can’t tell Stella anything.

katewritesandreads: A mystery … and is Stella on her own with all this going on?

KB: Ross’s grandfather, Gray, has always been a big part of Stella’s life. He tries to help.

katewritesandreads: I guess Stella’s not feeling very Christmassy?

KB: She’s not, but as she walks around Edinburgh she sees the huge glittering tree on the Mound, and the skating rink with all the stalls round it, the big wheel and the German market – not to mention the shop windows and the carol singers … 

katewritesandreads: Christmas is hard to avoid, isn’t it?

KB: <nods> And when she does, reluctantly, go down to Melrose, the Border hills are all snowy, like a Christmas card scene, and she ends up decorating the tree in her granny’s house which brings back all sorts of memories for her. So she can’t help feeling a little of the magic of Christmas despite everything going wrong for her.

katewritesandreads: So what does she wish for?

KB: I will leave readers to find that out for themselves, if you don’t mind. I’m off to have a celebratory glass of fizz.

katewritesandreads: Enjoy the rest of publication day.

KB: Thank you. Cheers! And, lovely people, if you read Stella's Christmas Wish it would be much appreciated if you could take the time to leave a review online. 

May all your Christmas wishes be granted.

Stella’s Christmas Wish is published by Black & White Publishing today, 3 November 2016 (99p).

Find out more about my writing here and here.