I’m delighted to
welcome writing colleague and fellow Scot Kate Blackadder to the Reading and
Writing blog today. I’ve long enjoyed Kate’s lovely short stories in women’s
magazines over the years, as well as a couple of her serials. Now it’s a
special pleasure that her debut novel, Stella’s Christmas Wish, is now
published by Black and White in Edinburgh.
Kate is sharing some
Christmas memories with us but first let me introduce her heart-warming novel. You can catch her other posts on the blog tour below.
Stella’s Christmas Wish
Six
days before Christmas, Stella must rush home to Scotland when her grandmother
is taken to hospital. As she reconnects with her past, old flames are
rekindled, and as Christmas fast approaches, Stella begins to wonder if her
most heartfelt wish can come true?
Uprooted
from her life in London and back in her childhood home of the Scottish borders,
Stella is soon faced with relationships which have lain dormant for years. New
opportunities present themselves, but will Stella dare to take them...
Stella’s Christmas Wish is set in Edinburgh and the Borders and is published as an e-book by Black
and White Publishing at 99p - click on the book title to buy!
Thanks for sharing
these delightful memories, Kate!
When Christmas
trees were tall … five childhood memories
1) A budding writer
from an early age (although it took me rather a long time to get past the
budding stage), one year I asked for a typewriter. I’m sure my disappointment
showed – sorry, Mum – when I realised that instead of a keyboard it had a dial
that you set to a letter before hitting a button. It would have taken months to
write a list for Santa, never mind the stories that filled my head.
2) We lived on a
large country estate and every year there was a Christmas party for the
employees’ children in the village hall. We played The Farmer’s in his Den, In
and Out the Dusty Bluebells – all the old, well-loved games. But don’t let it
be said that the Swinging Sixties didn’t reach the north of Scotland – there
was also a Twist competition (with Chubby Checker on the record player) and I
won!
3) Family friends and
relatives soon realised that they needn’t ask my mum what I would like for
Christmas – the answer was always books. It’s lovely to still have hardback
copies of Little Women, What Katy Did and
lots more, with inscriptions from some of my favourite people.
4) My dad had
Canadian relatives and two of them, unmarried women, worked in Eatons, a
department store in Vancouver. There was my sister and brother and myself and
around a dozen cousins on that side of the family, and these lovely ladies
bought and sent carefully chosen Christmas presents to all of us. The Eatons’
packaging and the contents seemed so glamorous but it’s the cousins’ thoughtfulness
I appreciate now.
5) One afternoon in
the Christmas holidays my mum had asked another family round – three children
and their mother. As usual, Mum made a huge amount of savouries and cakes and
after we’d finished scoffing she cleared the large load of kept-for-visitors-china
through to the kitchen and she and the other mother settled down for a chat by
the sitting-room fire, telling us to go and play.
Well, the older
girl in the other family was, it has to be said, a Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. No
hide-and-seek or Ludo for her. No. Her idea of ‘playing’ was that we should
give our mothers a nice surprise by – doing
the washing up. And we – all six of us under the age of ten – went along
with it. My mother was certainly surprised …
Thank you for
having me on your blog, Rosemary. I hope all your Christmas wishes come true.
And yours, thanks Kate! I really enjoyed Stella's Christmas Wish.
About Kate
Blackadder
Kate lives in Edinburgh
and has had around fifty short stories published and three magazine serials
(two now on Kindle). Stella’s Christmas
Wish is her first full-length novel.
