The Desk of Karen Lee Field

I’m so happy to announce that the website is finally working. I’ve chosen to use Jekyll, which I’m new to so the coding is unfamiliar to me. I had a devil of a time getting things to work properly. Everytime I fixed an issue, it broke something else. I was getting close to giving up. But I didn’t and now I have a working, custom Jekyll website.

After much heartache and frustration, all sections of the website are working together.

The posts uploaded now are test posts or only part of a real post. All will be removed soon when I start to add the real posts. The website will start to fill out and look much better within a week or so.

Again, thank you for your patience.

Over the past little while, my website has been undergoing a complete rebuild — new structure, new layout, new navigation, and a much cleaner way to explore everything I write. It’s been a big job behind the scenes, but I’m delighted to say the new version of The Desk of Karen Lee Field is now live. Although it has a long way to go before it’s finished.

As things change, you’ll notice clearer pages, easier navigation, and a more organised home for my books, blog posts, interviews, reviews, and writing resources. My goal is to create a space that feels welcoming, simple to use, and enjoyable to explore, whether you’re a long‑time reader or visiting for the first time.

Thank you for your patience while things are being shuffled around. Your support means a great deal, and I’m excited to share more updates, stories, and writing news with you in the weeks ahead.

If you spot anything odd or have suggestions, feel free to reach out through the Contact page, when it’s working. Otherwise, enjoy watching the new site change and grow — I hope it feels like a comfortable place to settle in and read.

Editing is where a story truly comes to life. It’s the stage where rough ideas sharpen into clear moments, characters deepen, and pacing finds its rhythm. Here are five simple editing tips that can strengthen any story:

1. Read aloud. Hearing your words helps you catch awkward phrasing and unnatural dialogue.
2. Trim filler words. Just, really, very — they often weaken sentences rather than strengthen them.
3. Check pacing. If a scene drags, shorten it. If it rushes, expand it.
4. Strengthen verbs. Replace weak verbs with stronger, more active ones.
5. Focus on clarity. If a sentence makes you pause, rewrite it.

Editing isn’t about perfection — it’s about making your story shine.

Rosewood Lane is a horror/thriller movie starring Rose ~McGowan and Daniel Ross Owens.

The synopsis reads: Radio talk show therapist Sonny Blake moves back to her childhood home on seemingly idyllic Rosewood Lane after her alcoholic father dies. But upon arrival in the old neighbourhood, Sonny discovers her neighbours are terrified of the local paperboy. She thinks this is ridiculous, until she encounters the boy himself. It turns out that he is a cunning and dangerous sociopath, one who may have gruesomely killed her father… and others. When the boy starts to call Sonny’s radio show and recite eerie nursery rhymes, an unnerving game of cat and mouse begins, one where Sonny starts to doubt her own sanity.

Firstly, why do people insist on going outside when they know there’s a killer on the lose? It’s annoying, but I guess if they didn’t do it then there wouldn’t be a movie as no one would get murdered.

Apart from the obvious where that is concerned, this movie was quite good. It was entertaining. It had some moments when you think your own heart will strangle you. And it had tension. What I also liked was the ‘tease’ of information. If you sit and think about it afterwards, the movie does tie up all the loose ends, but when it actually finishes, you feel a bit ‘up in the air’ and some people may even feel a bit confused. There are clues throughout the movie which tie in perfectly with the ending. It was quite well done really.

Rose McGowan did a great job with her role. She was convincing…even though her character was a bit frustrating at times. I certainly wouldn’t do the things she did, in the same situation, but maybe I’m a coward.

Daniel Ross Owens was brilliant. His character was creepy, which is perfect for this type of movie.

Definitely worth watching, and a sequel could easily be in the future.

This month I am pleased to present an interview with Australian author, Pamela Freeman, who has many publications to her credit - some of the titles for children and young adults include The Willow Tree’s Daughter, The Murderer’s Apprentice and the Network Mysteries; and for adult, The Casting Trilogy.

Thank you for your time, Pamela. Please tell us a bit about your writing background.

I started writing professionally as a scriptwriter for children’s television, and began writing stories for kids then. I’d written stories for adults before, but never submitted anything anywhere – I didn’t have any confidence in them (and reading them over, I think I was right!). My first short story was published in 1990 and my first children’s book, The Willow Tree’s Daughter, came out in 1994. Since then, I’ve published twenty books. The Castings Trilogy (Blood Ties, Deep Water and Full Circle) are my first books for adults.

I’ve read several of your books, even the ones for the younger audience, and was impressed. My favourite is The Casting Trilogy. I’m interested to know if there was a moment in your life that clearly sparked your desire to write?

No, not really. I first thought about it when I was around 12, but I had a vague idea that I needed to have a really interesting life before I started writing, so around 15 I decided I wanted to work in television, and set my sights on that first. I think that did me no harm, frankly, as TV writing gives you a great apprenticeship in story-telling.

I didn’t know you started out writing for television. That must have been quite different to novel writing. Tell us about your latest publication?

My most recent book is Full Circle, which is the third and final volume of the Castings Trilogy. I hope people who have enjoyed the first two books will feel satisfied by this one!

For kids’ books, my most recent publication is Victor’s Challenge, which is a funny chapter book for younger readers, a sequel to Victor’s Quest, my most popular books for kids. It has great illustrations by Kim Gamble.

I must admit that I can’t wait to get my copy of Full Circle. The first two books were excellent! What project are you working on at the moment?

Several! I am working on Ember and Ash, a stand alone novel set in the same universe as the Castings Trilogy. I promise, it’s not the fourth book in the trilogy! It’s set more than 20 years after Full Circle, and involves earlier characters only peripherally. We get to see the Ice King’s realm, and discover more about the old Powers of the Domains.

Sounds interesting. Is your life reflected in the stories you write?

No, fortunately I haven’t encountered too many blood thirsty ghosts out for revenge recently! Seriously, I think an author’s life always influences what they write, but in my case the influence is indirect, more a matter of theme and flavour than content or characters drawn directly from people I know. A couple of my children’s stories have been sparked by incidents in my own life, but they tend to be just the jumping off point for a very different story.

Where do you get inspiration for your stories and characters?

So many different places that it’s hard to say. The Castings Trilogy was actually inspired by a lecture Bishop Desmond Tutu gave on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission – a fairly obscure inspiration, which I hope will make sense once people have read Full Circle.

Do you know how the story will end when you first start writing it?

If it’s a short story, not always. If it’s a novel, pretty much, although things do change in the writing and surprises can always trip you up. I prefer to know the end because I like to make plots interesting and fair for the reader, so they don’t end up feeling that the solution to whatever problem the heroes are facing just came out of thin air.

Satisfying the reader isn’t as easy as it sounds, so I understand what you are saying here. Do you work on more than one story at a time? If so, I would like to know how do you manage it?

I usually have several stories at different stages – one I’m actually writing, one with the editors, one with an illustrator, and so on. So I concentrate on one book at a time, but I juggle two or three over the course of a year.

I suppose it all comes down to discipline. How do you balance writing with the rest of your life?

Basically, I write while my son is at school. Towards deadline time, I may also need weekend writing time, but I try to keep that to a minimum. Having juggled a career as a writer and a consultant in organisational communication for quite a few years before he was born, I was already used to fitting my writing in around something else, which was helpful.

What advice would you give to a newcomer to writing?

Three things – just do it. Write, write, and keep writing. Second, find a community of people who can read and critique your work with some understanding. I workshop everything I write and I find it invaluable.

And thirdly, listen to criticism and be prepared to do the redrafts. The main difference between a professional writer and an amateur is the number of drafts they’re prepared to do.

Oh, I wish this was a live interview because I’d go off in another direction here and ask you more about rewrites and drafts. But…it’s not…so I’ll continue on. Who is the person behind the writer? What do you do when you are not writing?

I’m a mum! I do all the mum things – except cleaning. Not really a cleaner. But I manage my son’s soccer team, and take him to a multitude of sports, and cook (I enjoy cooking a lot) and steal time for reading and TV and Facebook. I like computer games (especially logic puzzles), I love the net, I like making music with my family, I garden a bit… just a life, like anyone else’s, except I walk into bookshops and there are my books, which sometimes seems quite strange! I got a fan email from India the other day (I didn’t even know you could buy the books in India) and it was astonishing, knowing my words had reached someone in Mumbai and meant something to them.

It’s unfortunate that many fans don’t see authors as people with real lives so it’s good to see that you do the same things as other people. It makes you more human…if you know what I mean. Who would you chose to play the star role if your book(s) was made into a movie and why?

For Ash, I’d pick Daniel Radcliffe – looks right, acts well, right age… perfect! For Bramble, I just don’t know… I’d love to hear suggestions.

Maybe readers of this interview will make some suggestions for you. Do you believe in writer’s block? Why?

I think sometimes you get to a point in a book where you don’t quite know what to do next. Some people, I think, suffer more from this than others. This is when I love having more than one story on the boil. I switch to the other one and let my unconscious deal with the problem. I know that some other writers have more difficulty with this than I do – talking it out usually unblocks things for me, or going for a walk. On the other hand, I think ‘writer’s block’ is sometimes a code for either laziness or fear – being afraid the book won’t be good enough is a good way to freeze your creativity! All you can do is ignore that and just keep writing, even if what comes out at first is total crap and you have to throw it away later.

What are your writing goals for the future?

More books! Lots more books! Some set in the same universes as the Castings Trilogy and Victor, some not.

Secretly, what I would really like is to have many, many people waiting for the next book in the way I wait for my favourite authors’.

There can never be enough books, so keep writing them and people will keep reading them. Do you have anything else you would like to mention?

My next book for kids will be a non-fiction picture book about Lake Eyre in the centre of Australia – usually a dry salt pan, every ten years or so it floods and creates an extraordinary oasis, full of life. So keep an eye out for The Dreaming Lake.

Thank you for your time, Pamela. It’s been wonderful “chatting” with you and I wish you all the best for the future.

If you would like to learn more about Pamela and her books, please visit her website - Pamela Freeman.

This month I had the pleasure of interviewing Ellen Jackson, author of over 60 children’s books.

Thank you for your time, Ellen. Please tell us a bit about your writing background.

When I was a kid, I loved to write. But my mother wanted me to train for something that had an actual salary–so I became a teacher. I read books to my class every day, and I kept thinking, “I could do that.” Eventually I moved to a town where jobs were scarce. No problem. I decided I’d just make my living as a writer. I wrote a picture book that I thought was a work of genius (it wasn’t). I worked and worked on the manuscript and probably rewrote it fifty times.

While working on book number one, I thought of a second idea. I wrote book number two in about fifteen minutes, and sent the first draft off to five different publishers. I also submitted it to a writing class, where the teacher tore it apart in front of everyone. I totally lost interest after that, but one of the publishers actually bought it. That manuscript, THE GRUMPUS UNDER THE RUG, is still in print and has done very well.

That’s very encouraging. Tell us about your latest publication.

I write nonfiction as well as fiction. One fun project has been the SCIENTISTS IN THE FIELD books. For this series, the author follows a scientist around while he does his work in “the field,” which can be on top of a volcano, or in some strange and lonely spot on land. I was lucky enough to hook up with Alex Filippenko, an astronomer who’s studying supernovae. I went with him to the top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii and watched him do his work. Then I wrote about it for my newest book THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE.

You might think that kids wouldn’t like a book about astronomy. But all children love to ask questions such as: “Where did the universe come from?” “How big is it?” Children’s eyes light up when they’re told about supernovae, huge explosions bigger than thousands of nuclear bombs, and black holes, places where time and space no longer exist. Science is the greatest of all adventure stories. If you keep that spirit of adventure alive in your nonfiction books or articles for kids, you can’t go wrong.

But I also love fiction and imaginative stories. My latest fiction picture book is called EARTH MOTHER and it tells a deceptively simple story about the cycle of nature.

Where do you get the inspiration for your stories and characters?

My ideas are a by-product of my life, my childhood, the books I’ve read, my hopes and fantasies–everything that’s gone into making me who I am. Ideas come more often to people who pay attention. After I published my first book, I was afraid I’d never have another idea again. But I kept writing, and the ideas kept coming.

I keep an idea file, and when I get an idea I write it down on a card. I always check Amazon or BOOKS IN PRINT to see if anyone else has published something similar–and if so, how long ago that was and in what format. If my idea has already been done in the same way and in the same format, I usually pass.

That sounds like a system that works for you. Thank you for sharing it. Do you work on more than one story at a time? How do you manage it?

Yes, I have to work on several books, or I’d go crazy! Sometimes I get “stuck” on one project, so I work on something else to give my brain a rest. I keep a folder on each book with notes and ideas and even poetic ways of expressing a thought. For THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE, I interviewed Alex over a period of days and taped his answers so I could quote him in the book.

If you’re really, really lucky, the idea for a book might come to you all in one piece. That’s what happened with EARTH MOTHER. I had a vision of a beautiful woman diving with otters, and I asked myself, “Who is she?” The story came to me late at night.

I love it when that happens. What advice would you give a newcomer to writing?

I have a lot of advice, but I’ll keep it short here. First of all, believe in yourself. Lots of people, even your friends, will say discouraging things. You have to be strong enough to persist, no matter what. Also try to learn how the business works. If you understand that, you’ll be able to write things that editors want to buy. It’s not enough simply to listen to the voices in your head. Those voices have to actually communicate to someone.

Children’s writers need to remember what it was like to be a child–the smells, the tastes, as well as the fears and wrong ideas that kids have about the adult world. Some of my best stories come from my memories of how children think. For example, I recently sold a manuscript based on my childhood ideas about place names. When I was seven or eight, I thought that Death Valley was full of skeletons and that Orange County was filled with orange people. As an adult, I took the core of this idea and expanded it into a picture book.

I feel inspired by what you’re saying and will, no doubt, run off and write some ideas down after this interview. Who is the person behind the writer? What do you do when you’re not writing?

I’m lucky to have a supportive husband and a demanding dog who needs lots of exercise. So whether I like it or not, I get out of the house a lot. I live in Santa Barbara, California, which is a beautiful town for walking and thinking. I guess you’d say I’m an introvert who loves to read, listen to music, and to explore the natural world. I have two or three really good friends and we laugh a lot when we get together. I play tenor recorder with a Bach group and I do volunteer work in the community. For ten years I worked at our local library helping kids find books and doing other librarianish things. And I also used to cook at our local homeless shelter. Actually, my life is (usually) quiet, which is perfect for a writer.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t have problems, I most certainly do. Like everyone else, my writing life gets interrupted with car problems, financial problems, health problems, dog problems, family problems, and environmental disasters (wildfires in this area). One of the hardest things about being a writer is just finding blocks of alone time to get your work done!

Do you have anything else you’d like to mention?

Writing for children is a profession and there’s a lot to learn. If you’d like to write for kids, read a couple of good books about the children’s publishing industry, such as The Complete Guide to Publishing Children’s Books by Harold Underdown and Lynn Rominger. Also read lots of books in the genre you hope to write for. It’s important to see what’s already been done, so you don’t submit a manuscript based on an idea that’s been done a thousand times before.

Second, don’t get so hung up on your story that you forget to polish your language. How someone tells a story is as important as what story it is that they’re telling. You should make sure your language is fresh, entertaining, and compelling.

Thank you, Ellen, for an informative interview. I’m sure my readers will get a lot out of what you’ve said.

If you would like to find out more about Ellen’s books, please visit her Goodreads author page.

One of the new directions this website will be going, is Genealogy. A new tab will be added to the navigation bar at the top of the page, as well as a new category added to the sidebar.

I first became interested in my ancestors when my children were born about 20 years ago. Prior to that there was just me and my immediate family. There were no grand parents, aunts and uncles or cousins, let alone distant relatives. Of course, I had all these relatives, but the closest lived 3,000 kilometres away. I always considered myself from a very small family and when my sons were born, I suddenly developed an itch to know where we had come from.

Hence, the questions started. Back in those days, there wasn’t the convenience of the internet. Everything was done by post and everything took months before I started seeing results. I questioned my grandmother and her sister-in-law until they probably cringed every time they saw an envelope with my hand writing on it. But they were fantastic and patient, and provided me with a firm family tree foundation.

Later, many years later in fact, the internet popped up and after a while I restarted my search as I found new sites generating databases filled with valuable information. In the few years that followed my discovery of the internet, my family tree went from 200 or so people to over 6,500 people. Every name I found, spurred me to look some more. More importantly, I connected with other family members who were researching the same family names. These people were complete strangers, even though they were distant cousins, and now they are friends.

However, during those early years of research I made a terrible mistake. I didn’t “source” my information, which means that my family tree is virtually useless in genealogy circles. By the time I realised my mistake, I had gone too far to turn back…or so I thought.

Recently, only two weeks ago, I purchased a new version of the genealogy program I’ve been using for a couple of years. With that new version came the urge to record my tree correctly. Yes, it’s going to be a huge job, but in the long term, it will be worth my time and effort. I look at it like this…I am making an investment for my descentants. When someone looks at me as their ancestor, I want them to be grateful that I put a lot of time into building a tree that will make their life a lot easier. And to do that, it must be properly sourced.

That mammoth job will begin soon…and it will be recorded on this website.

This month I have the honour of interviewing Sean Williams, author of several publications including The Change trilogy, the Broken Land series and several Star Wars novels.

Thank you for allowing me to interview you, Sean. Tell us about your latest publication.

I’ve had two series finished this year, giving me double cause to be anxious. Endings are hard enough when you’re writing just one book; over three or four the target can become very hard to hit. The Grand Conjunction concludes a gender-bending gothic-noir space opera set well over a million years in the future. The series, Astropolis, is full of all sorts of odd things, including a character who speaks solely in the lyrics of Gary Numan, and I was never entirely sure that I could pull it off. Reviews have been glowing, though, so I’m beginning to relax a little now.

The Scarecrow ends my “Broken Land” series for kids. It’s inspired by South Australian landscapes (like all my fantasy novels) and draws a lot of its characterisation and concerns from my own childhood. I felt very close to my young protagonists, and it’s been hard leaving them behind. I’ve since found the opportunity to continue their story as adults in a couple of sequel novellas, so I haven’t quite let them go yet.

Having read a couple of your books, I know how real your characters become so it’s no wonder you’ve grown attached to them. What project are you working on at the moment?

I’ve just finished a new Star Wars novel, but I can’t reveal the title, alas. The deadline for that was very tight, so I’m just beginning to catch up on all the things that have built up in the last few months. One is an introduction to a reissue of Arthur J Rees’s classic mystery novel The Shrieking Pit, which required a lot of research. Another is a series of linked poems for an anthology celebrating the work of Charles Darwin. When I’m working on a book, particularly when time is tight, I don’t like to do anything else but write when I’m at the computer, so everything else gets put on hold. Then my brain breaks as I try to do nine different things at once, all of them usually late. Then it’s on to re-writes or the next book. It keeps life interesting.

It sounds exhausting. Is your life reflected in the stories you write?

In all sorts of odd ways, and probably ways you wouldn’t recognise. Some of it’s up-front: the landscape of my fantasy novels, for instance, which is very clearly modelled on places I have spent a lot of time in down the years. There are themes that return many times because they’re themes I’ve struggled with all my life. Some of them I’m still struggling with now–like the nature of fatherhood, and love, and one’s place in the world; those old favourites. My friends pop in the books, as names or in certain behaviours, but it’s like meat in hot dogs: you’d never see them in the finished products. I’ve occasionally destroyed Adelaide, my home town, just for fun.

The one area of my life that I haven’t included in a story is writing. It feels a little….obvious. And a little too close to home, perhaps.

Do you know how the story will end when you first start writing it?

I like to. Otherwise I risk getting lost. Given I write at least two books a year, there isn’t any time to waste. As far back as I can remember–back to when I was writing novels in high school instead of doing my homework–I liked to work that way. I always make sure there’s some room to have fun in along the way, but I don’t like to set out without knowing exactly where I’m going first.

That makes a lot of sense. How do you balance writing with the rest of your life?

That’s the question, isn’t it? It’s one I’ve struggled with several times in the last twenty years. It’s such an all-consuming vocation–or can be, if you let it. I totally dived in at first, to the detriment of lots of things, from my love-life to my mental health. Eventually it occurred to me that, while it was great I was doing something I loved, I also needed to live a healthy life. So I started taking time off, going out, rejoining the world. Now, with a wife and family, the pendulum sometimes swings the other way, but I still write every day, and I still meet my deadlines. Since I’ve never been happier, I’d say I’ve got the balance about right.

That’s something I’m still struggling with so I admire you for finding the right balance. What advice would you give to a newcomer to writing?

Read a lot and write a lot. They’re the first two of the ten-and-a-half “commandments” – my attempt to compile every piece of writing advice that doesn’t need to be qualified. (link: http://ladnews.livejournal.com/19989.html) I also have an A-Z of writing that might help. (link: a href=”http://ladnews.livejournal.com/114057.html”>http://ladnews.livejournal.com/114057.html</a>) But as long as you’re reading and writing, you’re on the right trick. Weird to think that some people want to be writers without ever actually reading. They just think it’d be a good way to make a living. As the late great Charles Brown used to say: “Everyone wants to be a writer. It’s the writing that’s the hard part.”

Well, he certainly was right. Do you believe in writer’s block? Why?

Some people definitely suffer from it. I don’t know why. There have been periods where I’ve found writing on a particular project very hard, but that can be worked through. I mean, accountants have to go to the office whether they’re feeling inspired or not, right? Musicians have to perform if they’re to booked play in a concert. Why should writers be any different? Finding your way through that feeling is one of the great challenges of writing. If you can’t do it, you’re in big trouble.

Well said. What are your writing goals for the future?

To keep loving what I write, and to write better books. That’s it.

I wish you the best of luck with that too. Thank you for your time.

If you would like to know more about Sean and his books, please visit him at his website.

No one can write all the time. Everyone has to have other hobbies in their lives to ensure a heavy, happy existence. Or so I’ve been told.

Anyway, one of the things I like to do when I’m not writing…is play role playing games on the ~PlayStation. Most people stop and gape at me when I say I’m a Resident Evil fan. How could such a prim and proper woman of my age want to kill zombies? What can I say…I love it!

Except for the first game (which I used to own but sold once I completed it as I knew I’d never play it again), I own and have finished every Resident Evil game. My two favourites are the second and third games. They were especially hard to get through (thank heavens for walkthroughs online), but I have easily played both these games a couple of dozen times each. The suspense throughout these games made my heart pound at times as I tried frantically to kill a “boss” that just wouldn’t die. They were games that took my total concentration and stole many hours each time I sat down. Having said that, I got so good at them that I could sit down and finish the entire game, without a single save, in a little over an hour in the end. And, please excuse my bragging, but none of my family could beat my times and I was the only one to unlock Tofu in RE2.

The games after Nemesis (RE3) weren’t as good, but I still enjoyed them immensely. I guess once a Resident Evil fan, always a Resident Evil fan. Having said that, the worst game (in my opinion) is Outbreak – if you took the RE name off the cover, no one would have known it was connected to the other games. It was just too ordinary and felt the same as many other games. Up ‘til then, RE games stood apart from the rest.

Anyway, earlier this year Resident Evil 5 was released. I had to get it and was lucky enough to get it at a bargain price (less than half price new) about a month ago. So Saturday night is now “kill the zombies” night and I’ll be heading off to do just that right after I’ve finished writing this post. RE5 is much better than Outbreak, but still lacks the old RE feel, which is a shame, but I’m still enjoying the game overall. As I said at the beginning of this post, I love to play role playing games on the ~PlayStation. I have quite a few ~PlayStation 2 games and my ~PlayStation 3 collection is slowly growing. I have some great games, but Resident Evil is still my favourite. Closely followed by Silent Hill, which is great for creating atmosphere through fear (brilliantly done with the sound effects used).

My immediate family are used to the fact that I’m a killer on the weekends (a zombie killer that is). Other family and friends remain mind boggled over this fact, but it feels great to smash their “practical” image of me.

Everyone has an “evil” side, what’s yours?

This month I have the pleasure of interviewing Kate Forsyth, author of several books, including The Puzzle Ring.

Welcome, Kate. Please tell us a bit about your writing background.

I wrote my first novel when I was only 7, and have been writing ever since. I don’t remember ever deciding I wanted to be a writer – it feels as if I was born with the desperate desire – but there must have been a point in which I realised people were paid to spend their days reading, writing, and daydreaming, and knew that it was the job for me.

It sounds brilliant, but I doubt it’s as easy as you make it sound. :D Tell us about your latest publication?

‘The Puzzle Ring’ is a novel about a girl who discovers her family was cursed long ago by one of the Sidhe (a Scottish fairy). She sets out to break the curse but discovers that to do so she must go back in time to the tumultuous last days of the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots, a time when witches were burnt, queens were betrayed and wild magic still walked the land. It is a thrilling adventure story, filled with all sorts of fascinating information about Scottish history and fairy lore.

I’ve already put it on my “to-read” list as it sounds like a book I would enjoy. What project are you working on at the moment?

I’m writing a YA fantasy novel called ‘The Wildkin’s Curse’ about a wildkin girl who sets out to free her cousin from prison, with the reluctant help of two starkin boys. Her cousin has the Gift of Telling which means she can foretell the future, but also has the gift of altering the world with her words. She can wish, she can curse, and she can change the future. It’s the sequel to an earlier book of mine, ‘The Starthorn Tree’.

Is your life reflected in the stories you write?

Not directly. I write stories about curses and perilous quests and battles and fairy queens. However, I do believe that every writer builds stories out of their own lives and their own imaginations. We take everything we’ve ever heard or seen or read about or wondered about or been excited by or disgusted by, and we turn it into something else. It’s an alchemical process.

I agree totally. Do you know how the story will end when you first start writing it?

Yes, I always know the ending before I start. I don’t always know HOW I’ll achieve the ending, but I cannot start writing until I have a clear narrative arc laid out in my mind.

I believe writers could easily be swept away with their story and let “life” slip away without meaning for it to happen, so I’m interested to know how do you balance writing with the rest of your life?

It can be difficult, but I try very hard to! I do this by only writing when my children are at school or asleep, or when they are so busy and happy they don’t mind what I do.

What advice would you give to a newcomer to writing?

Read a lot, write a lot, and rewrite a lot. It’s actually very easy.

And a question that will allow us to see the person behind the writer, what do you do when you are not writing?

I am very busy with my family – I have 3 children aged under 11 – so that involves all the usual mum things of shopping, cooking, cleaning, washing and folding – urk! It’s a sign of my true love for my family that I do it. For my own pleasure, I read books, I garden, I walk by the beach with my dog, I go the movies and out dancing with friends.

Do you believe in writer’s block? Why?

All writers get blocked sometimes, but know to go and work on something else and let the subconscious mind work on it at will. I like to think about the problem before I go to sleep, and I usually wake up with the solution.

What are your writing goals for the future?

To keep writing till I die.

It has been a pleasure “chatting” with you, Kate. Thank you for your time and good luck with your future writing ventures.

To find out more about Kate’s books, please visit her website: Kate Forsyth