As some of you may already know, this year I’m celebrating
30 years as a published author. It’s really a rather special occasion – and one
I’m not quite sure how I got here! I was a child author,
The answers to that one’s easy (well – easier to answer than
to managed) I wrote these books one word at a time – and that’s how I’ll
continue to do so while I still want to write and people still want to buy my
books.
So, last month, I received a box full of my newest book –
Olivero’s Outrageous Proposal – and if
you’re one of the ones who gets hold of a copy early through the Book Club you’ll
have seen that it has a very special dedication to a very special friend of
mine. My dear friend Pat who had been a vital part of my life for 35 years
lost her battle with cancer last year.
She left a huge gap – one that I will never truly fill. Pat was one of the very few people who knew that I was writing when I was just aiming for publication - so she and another long-term friend Noelle have very special
places in my heart both as a writer and a woman. But this made me think about other friends being a writer - friends who are an unexpected bonus as a result of this writing life.
Because romance books are so well known all over the
world, one of the surprises that writing
for Harlequin brought me was meeting up with people who read my books –and/or
wrote their own – from so many different
countries. For example - he reason I’m
on this blog is because of one of those readers. Lee Hyat came to visit my brand new
web site and told me how much she enjoyed my books – that’s always a great start! I think she wrote first because of Constantine's Revenge - We’ve been friends ever since. And now here I am writing on Lee’s web site!
Regular readers of my blog will know that Michelle Reid and
Anne McAllister are writer friends pf
mine – writers whose books I’ve enjoyed and then met the authors and enjoyed
being with them too. Well, actually the
list of authors I now count as friends has grown too long for me to list here – I’d only forget someone. But I do have
to mention my ‘twins’ – Holly Jacobs and
Donna Alward. We didn’t know we were twins
until we met at a RWA conference. (What do you mean you can’t have 3 twins – we
can!)
There’s a special place in my friends list for people who
have come to my courses to learn about writing romance. Some of them I’ve met on line – Julie Cohen, Anna Louise
Lucia and Abby Green were all people I’d chatted with in forums or
on line writers classes and Abby came to
my course at Writers’ Holiday. Now they’re all published authors with thriving
writing careers behind them.
And that’s another reason why friends have been on my mind,
Tomorrow I’ll be heading to Weetwood
Hall in Leeds (UK) to run another course – this year’s Writing
Retreat. I’ll meet up with a bunch of
people who were originally students but now are affectionately known as my ‘Stalkers’! I’ve had the great thrill and privilege to see some of my students progress from
studying writing to being successful at it – the latest student to be published
had been Rachael Thomas, brand new Harlequin
Presents author. She is the 14th of my students who has gone
on to be a published writer.
So now I’m hoping to see another one – perhaps one of this group
in Leeds – become the 15th!
There are a couple of people I have hopes may well make it soon (fingers
crossed) and that being so I’ll be delighted to in traduced them to you over on
my blog. But in the meantime I’m looking
forward to spending this weekend with them – and meeting up with some I know as friends
Friends are important. I knew that with my dear Pat and I
lost her way too soon. So I’m grateful for all the other friends – writers,
readers, students . . . I’ve made
as a result of this writing game! So that’s why Olivero’s Outrageous Proposal is
dedicated to Pat. Thank you to all my friends – and to the readers out there - too many to list – who write to me and tell me you enjoy my books. You’re an important part of my life even if we’ve never met. And I’m so glad you’re there.
What about you? Do you have one special friend or a gang of friends? Are your friends all close to you – or, like mine, spread out all over the country – the world. Tell me about a special friend and I’ll get my furry friend – Charlie the Maine Coon - to pick out one comment so that you can give your friend a present of a Kate Walker backlist book.
The 63rd book of mine Olivero's Outrageous
Proposal will be out at the end of March /early April.
And the 12 Point Guide To
Writing Romance is now available on Kindle. (I hope to have
some extra news about that 12 Point Guide - for people who prefer
print books - very soon. Watch my blog for that.)
You can catch up with all of Kate's news on her website or on
her blog.
You can also find her on her author page on
Facebook.
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