About me

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

I have had almost a hundred 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. 

My five magazine serials are now available on Kindle – the first three are also in large-print library editions) – The Family at Farrshore  The Ferryboat and A Time to Reap, Jinty's Farm, and The Saturday Scribblers.

 

And there are five collection of my stories, previously published in magazines, available on Kindle. Three's a Crowd and other family stories, Another World and other stories, The Palace of Complete Happiness and other love stories, Still Rocking and other stories and Happy Christmas Eve and other stories.

 

My first full-length novel, Stella’s Christmas Wish, is published by Black and White Publishing. It’s set in the beautiful Scottish Borders and in Edinburgh.

 
For further information on all these publications see here. 

Together with four other Edinburgh-based writers I am part of Capital Writers. I am a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, the Society of Authors in Scotland and of Edinburgh Writers' Club. 

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 1980s.

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 ...