Celebrating Writing Friends 3 - Kate Hardy

Hmmm - I have the feeling that this post should really be entitled 'Celebrating Writing Fiends'

Okay, so it’s true confessions time. Kate Hardy scares me.
No, I’ll go further than that – she terrifies me.

Not in person. No, in person she is a wonderful warm, caring and generous friend. In person she is a generous and welcoming hostess, a great cook and full of fascinating conversation about her many interests. She’s also happily married, a great Mum to two great children – a boy and a girl – heavily involved with the parents’ side of her children’s schools, a dog-lover, local historian . . . oh, and she plays guitar as well and is taking regular lessons in that.

Now do you see where I’m going? It’s all that activity – all that multi-faceted activity – multi-multi-faceted . . . She’s so busy, so active, so efficient. She accomplishes so much. It’s amazing – and scary – and it exhausts me just to read about it.

Here’s Kate in a fairly typical blog entry –

My ed was delighted to get the MS yesterday (before deadline, note) and we had a
lovely email conversation about future books and the about-to-be-produced
contract. I was shocked to discover how few books I have out next year (five or
six, at this rate). Clearly I’ve been slacking *g*.

Slacking??! Five or six books? I have to go and lie down at just the thought. I feel I’m doing well when I manage my contracted three books, some teaching/critiquing, the conference(s) and maybe an extra like running the Writing Round Robin on eHarlequin – and getting a little bit of a life for myself. The other Kate is a phenomenon. A human dynamo and – notice something missing in that list above? I barely mentioned that she writes as well. Oh yes, she writes . . .and writes . . and writes . . .

When I first met Kate she was a newcomer to M&B and she wrote Medicals. She still does. (Kate has posted about our meeting here if you want to read about it). Now Medicals need research - they’re not just about writers playing doctors and nurses. The medical details have to be accurate, the diagnosis and treatments correct. Kate does that research. She also puts in the emotional intensity that makes her readers – and her editors – cry. Her 2005 Medical Where the Heart Is was short listed for the TNA Romance Award this year.

She also writes very sensually – and that perhaps is one of the reasons why she now has a second romance string to her bow – that of writing for the newest M&B line Modern Extra. Modern extras are not the same as Medicals – they need a very different approach, another ‘voice’, a different sort of hero - and Kate’s achieved that – and how - with her titles in this line. She started with The Cinderella Project which Kate describes like this –

What happens when two workaholics discover there's more to life, but try to
resist it and stay in their safe workaholic cocoons?

The Cinderella Project is the book that’s in the Bag of Books prize list – but since then Kate’s written 2 more – coming in July is my book (the one Kate has dedicated to me) Strictly Legal - and then in October there’s Seeing Stars. (This is along with new Medicals in August and November . . .) And I haven’t touched on Kate the Historian – or perhaps that should be Pamela the historian. Because titles like Norwich, Stories of a City and the best selling and fascinating Norwich Street By Street are written under the name of Pamela Brooks. When this Kate/Pamela and the BM get together it’s like watching a word-factory go into overdrive. They talk local history, true crime, history, history and more history until the air is thick with it. And then they discuss and swap publishers for books they’ve yet to write, books they’d like to propose . . .. In September I hope to introduce Kate H to Anne McAllister. Ardent and dedicated historian and researcher meets equally ardent and dedicated genealogist and researcher . . . I won’t even try to get a word in – just sit back and listen!

And did I mention some how to books on writing Advertising copy and newsletters . . .and the upcoming How To Research Local History – exploring archives , done for fun . . .

No, I think I’ve given you a flavour of the human dynamo that is Kate Hardy. Officially, I’m a founder member of the Slowing Down Police – those of us poor, merely human types who stand in awe watching the whirling dervish that is Kate and occasionally put in a plea for a little pacing of things - if only so that we can draw breath while reading her blog.(Waves to fellow S D P officer Diane if she’s reading this) But that’s Kate. And I wouldn’t have her any other way. I doubt if I could catch up with her for long enough to try to change her anyway.

Kate – once again thank you for the lovely dedication in Strictly Legal, and for your friendship. Love from T'Other Kate. Oh, and Mr Tickle and Freeze sends his love too.

Phew! Now I’m going to have to go away and have a stiff coffee to recover from just thinking about all Kate does before I get back to Sicilian wrestling for today.