Kate Baker
Kate wrote a play once and directed her soft toy animals to perform it in front of her family. She was eight. A lover of stories, she became a voracious reader although failed to make time to read once marriage and children came along. She lives with her number one supporter - her farmer husband in Suffolk. Once the children moved out, she rediscovered her love of fiction and began to think about creative writing and how it might be a relaxing contrast to the business she had run for fifteen years; washing and repairing horse rugs for nearby clients.
She went on to join writing groups, attend courses and develop those early non-skills into something worth reading. During the pandemic, she continued to attend webinars online and re-wrote a novel she had drafted during NaNoWriMo 2019. Alongside the full length she began to dabble in short stories and entered many competitions. Achieving nothing was great practice for the rejections that then came in for the historical novel, although many were positive, and one even asked if she could rewrite it set in WWII. She was getting closer.
At no time was Kate put off but dug deep and sent the novel off for a third critique. While she waited, she struck lucky with a short story THE PROJECTIONIST which was published in February 2022 by Fairlight Books, an online independent publisher who release a short story every week for their subscribers.
The historical was edited once more and then submitted to The Book Guild after Kate had attended Troubador's One Day Conference in April in Leicester. She was excited by the prospect of the midway house that TBG represent. To her extreme delight, they did offer to publish MAID OF STEEL and she's been enjoying the process of seeing it come into existence.
Kate is drafting her next novel.
Kate Baker's Books
£8.99
Maid of Steel
28 Feb 2023It’s 1911 and, against her mother’s wishes, quiet New Yorker Emma dreams of winning the right to vote. She is sent away by her parents in the hope distance will curb her desire to be involved with the growing suffrage movement and told to spend time learning about where her grandparents came from.
Across the Atlantic – Queenstown, southern Ireland – hotelier Thomas dreams of being loved, even noticed, by his actress wife, Alice. On their wedding day, Alice’s father had assured him that adoration comes with time. It’s been eight years. But Alice has plans of her own and they certainly don’t include the fight for equality or her dull husband.
Emma’s arrival in Ireland leads her to discover family secrets and become involved in the Irish Women’s Suffrage Society in Cork. However, Emma’s path to suffrage was never meant to lead to a forbidden love affair…
Kate Baker wrote terrible holiday diaries as a child, which her husband regularly asks her to read out loud for their entertainment. She has since improved and has written with intent since 2018. Maid of Steel is her second novel; the first is lining drawers in the vegetable rack at their farmhouse.