I’m delighted to welcome Kate Blackadder to Linda’s Book Bag as Kate’s novel Stella’s Christmas Wish is published today, 3rd November 2016, by Black and White Publishing. Stella’s Christmas Wish is available for purchase here.

To celebrate publication day of Stella’s Christmas Wish, I asked Kate what her three wishes might be!

Stella’s Christmas Wish

One phone call can change everything…

Six days before Christmas, Stella could never have anticipated the impact on her life when the phone rings in her London office.

The phone call is from a friend of the family informing Stella that her grandmother has been hurt in a fall at her home in the Scottish borders and is in hospital. Torn between her responsibilities at work and the need to be with her grandmother she decides she must return to Scotland immediately.

However, on her return to where she grew up, it becomes apparent that her grandmother’s health is not her only concern. Relationships which have lain dormant for years are re-kindled and fresh opportunities present themselves – if she will only dare to take them…

My Christmas Wish

A Guest Post by Kate Blackadder

There’s a (probably) apocryphal story about a radio programme presenter asking three Ambassadors what they wanted for Christmas. One wanted world peace, another wished for an end to famine. The British Ambassador said he’d like a new pair of slippers.

Unfortunately, he was the only one who was likely to find what he wished for at the end of his bed on Christmas morning.

My wish since I was a child was to be a published writer. And eventually Santa – in the shape of various women’s magazines and competition anthologies – granted the wish and wrapped it up in tinsel and other very sparkly stuff. I gave him a big hug and lots of mince pies.

This year though he gets hugs, mince pies, a whole Christmas cake to himself and a massive sack of carrots for Rudolph because my first full-length novel, Stella’s Christmas Wish, set in Edinburgh and the Scottish Borders, is published by Black and White Publishing today, 3 November.

So what’s left to (selfishly) ask Santa for?

1. Talking of slippers … my old sheepskin ones are moulting.
2. Ha, Santa – number 1 was too easy! Number 2 is that Stella’s Christmas Wish attracts readers from all over the world and I am invited to do book tours everywhere I’ve ever wanted to visit – Canada (coast to coast), New Zealand (north to south), and the Faroe Islands, just for starters.
3. Perhaps for these very northerly and very southerly trips one of those huge glamorous (fake) fur hats?

Thank you and Merry Christmas, Kate x

I hope you get your wishes granted Kate!

About Kate Blackadder

Kate Blackadder was born in the Scottish Highlands but now lives in Edinburgh. She has had stories published in The People’s Friend, Woman’s Weekly, The Weekly News, Writers’ Forum, New Writing Scotland and elsewhere. In 2008 she won the Muriel Spark Short Story Prize, judged by Maggie O’Farrell, and she’s been long-listed for the Jane Austen Short Story Award.

Wearing her other ‘hat’ she works two days a week for a museum publishing house, and in her spare time she likes reading, going to the cinema, history, and crying over the television programme Long Lost Family.

You can find out more about Kate by visiting her blog, following her on Twitter and finding her on Facebook.