Kate Walker:

Burnt the midnight oil to write

Compiled by Ishara Mudugamuwa

Kate Walker was born in Nottinghamshire, England in 1950. She didn't live there for long since her family moved to West Yorkshire when she was just eighteen months old.

Because of this fact, she regarded Yorkshire as her home. Kate was the middle child in a family of five girls. Since her childhood, she used to read anything she could get her hands on.

Even before she could write she was making up stories. She got this kind of ability through her habit of reading. She wrote her first book when she was eleven, an adventure story, and most of it done in secret school -particularly during Maths lessons , which she hated.

Her parents and teachers told her that she would never make a living as a writer. So she decided to be a librarian. She thought that if she couldn't write books, she could at least work with them if she became a librarian.

After leaving school she went to the University College of Wales, Aberystnyth where she studied English and Librarianship for her degree. More importantly, university was also where she met her husband who was also studying English there.

They married and moved back north, eventually settling in Lincolnshire, where she worked as a children's librarian until her son was born.

After three years of being a full-time housewife and mother, she turned to her old love of writing.

Her first attempts at novels were written on the kitchen table, often late into the nights when her son was asleep or during a few snatched hours when the child was out at nursery school.

The first two novels sent to Harlequin Mills and Boon were rejected, but the third attempt was successful.

It is difficult to find time to read and write as a wife and mother, but however she found the time without doing any harm to her family life. She loved all sorts of fiction, especially romance, obviously. She wrote fifty romance novels in Mills and Boon since 1984.

She also enjoyed historical novels, detective fiction and long absorbing biographies about fascinating people.Most of Kate Walker's writings show us the reality of life. The Chalk Line, First Man, Game of Hazard, Rough Diamond, Broken Silence , Captive Lover, Man of Shadows, The Cinderella Trap, Chase the Dawn, Leap in the Dark, Runaway and Wife for a Day, are some of her single novels. She wrote non fiction also, A Straightforward Guide to Writing Romantic, being one of them.