I started writing KEPT back in 2005. Back then, it was a completely different book. Only the location of Portland, an absent father, the idea of secrets to unravel, and the presence of a surprising grandmother who lived among stuffed drawers and boxes of forgotten items, were the same.
Some might think Portland bleak, but I love it. There are three lighthouses, a castle, a prison, a naval base. There are shipwrecks, quarries, fossils and sculptures carved out of Portland stone. There's an ancient ruined Saxon church. Many authors and artists have been inspired by it's landscape before me - Thomas Hardy being one. It's an island and not an island: the splinter of Chesil Beach attaches it to the mainland. When fog descends, you can barely make out sea from sky.
KEPT traverses the present and the past, and the stories of wartime London are inspired by my Grandparents’ generally upbeat tales. These were quite at odds with the silence that the war drew from the other side of the family.
When I visited the Old Lower Lighthouse in Portland Bill back in 2010, it immediately became the setting and gave me the inspiration to press on and sketch the entire story line. It's now a bird observatory, and you can stay in bunk hostel-style rooms in the tower, and wake to the sound of the glorious sea crashing on the rocks and gulls squawking overhead. You don't have to be a bird enthusiast to stay there, but it helps! The walls are lined with bird books, and the small bookshop in the courtyard has more books on the topic than you can ever imagine exist.
Now, KEPT is complete. I call it a Family History Mystery story set over three generations.
When a young woman finds a stolen painting in the Lighthouse she has inherited from her estranged grandmother, she is forced to make a choice. Take it straight to the police, or overcome her insecurities to uncover the truth about the girl captured on canvas. Katharine York embarks on a journey to unravel the mystery that has lain hidden at the heart of her family for six decades.
So that is the story of writing my first book, but what about my journey before that? Well, I have always written. As a child I wrote endless poems and short stories. I recently stumbled across a 'novel' I had penned with the worst possible title: 'All Right in the End'. Incredibly uninspiring and completely giving away the ending! I also wrote a lot of terrible song lyrics (largely about love I knew nothing about) and raps about dignity.
I
was good at most things at school, but I loved English. I
kept a diary throughout my teens, which was my excuse to write. I’m sure my sister
read it.
Someone told me you had to read lots to be a
writer, so I read a book a week. I read Mill
on the Floss four times. Someone else told me “If it was easy, everyone would do
it.”
I
studied English and Publishing at university, and since then Oxford , London and Essex . I'm passionate about education, and not just education in the way we mostly think of it, but improving skills for life: resilience, determination, tenacity. My current role is a global one, and I love the people that means that I work with, all across the world, and the places I have the good fortune to visit.
Thank you for joining me as I start the next stage of my writing journey - getting agency representation, and getting published. I can't promise that everything will be 'all right in the end', but I can promise that I will be determined and tenacious in getting to wherever I get to! Welcome aboard.
