#Author Feature with Kate Blackadder @k_blackadder @bwpublishing ~ Stella’s Christmas Wish #Fiction

Today on the blog I have the lovely Kate Blackadder with an exclusive guest post. Stella’s Christmas Wish is out now and available in eBook and a large-print library edition.

 

I didn’t set out to write a Christmas novel.

I’d written a story about a young woman, Stella, who is working in London, but was brought up in Melrose in the Scottish Borders. One afternoon she gets a call to say that her granny, Alice, has had a fall. Stella and her younger sister, Maddie, are very close to Alice as they went to live with her when they were small. But now Maddie, although she’s based in Edinburgh and so geographically much nearer Alice, isn’t answering Stella’s increasingly frantic messages. On the train going north, Stella worries about her and of course about Alice who is in hospital unconscious.

And she has another reason for concern – she really doesn’t want to come into contact with her ex-boyfriend Ross who runs a business in Melrose. In that small community, he’s going to be very hard to avoid, especially as his grandfather and Alice are old friends.

Now Edinburgh, where I live myself, is a vibrant city at any time of year but it has added to its August Festival fame by becoming a Christmas and New Year destination. St Andrew Square becomes a winter wonderland of delights. Part of Princes Street Gardens are flooded and frozen to become an ice-rink. There are stalls alongside selling mulled cider, hot chocolate and all sorts of other goodies.

A giant wheel takes visitors up near the top of the monument to Sir Walter Scott, and on the other side of the monument a colourful fairground ride whirls up and down. I’ve often wondered what Sir WS, sitting stony-faced at the bottom of his monument, thinks about that!

Stella has to divide her time between Edinburgh and Melrose. Why not, I thought, as I was rewriting my first draft, have the phone call about Alice coming just before Christmas? The backdrop would then be Edinburgh and its Christmas festivities, and the Borders – beautiful all year round but with the extra magic of a covering of snow.

And there’s no getting away from the lead-up to Christmas even if you have a lot of other things on your mind – like a much-loved grandmother in hospital, a missing sister, a mystery relative, and a childhood sweetheart you don’t want to see.

Stella could be remembering other Christmases – happy times when she was still with Ross; and earlier, when she was little, making a wish as the fairy was put on the top of the tree. Yes! And so the story I’d given a working title of The Road Home became Stella’s Christmas Wish.

Stella’s Christmas Wish by Kate Blackadder is published by Black & White Publishing https://blackandwhitepublishing.com/ It is available as an e-book on various platforms including Amazon Kindle. http://amzn.to/2dYQOrY

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Book Synopsis

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…

Fans of Christie Barlow, Jenny Hale, Holly Martin and the festive glow of Christmas lights will fall in love with this romantic Christmas treat.

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