Hello - thanks so much for visiting. If you like stories which bring to life forgotten history and weave together amazing true events with page turning fiction you've come to the right place. I'm always looking for the 'diamond in the dust heap' as Woolf put it - those irresistible events which make you think: why does nobody know about this?

Like most writers, I've always loved reading. In fact my earliest memory is reading a Ladybird book in a wildflower meadow, wearing a pair of red shoes. I've always written since I was a child - diaries, plays for toys and I was roped in to write love letters on the school bus for friends to give their boyfriends, which may well be why I ended up writing hist fic with a strong romantic element. Later on I joined a writers' group in London which used to meet in the basement of Nomad travel bookstore once a week, and I began writing my first novel. I used to get up an hour before work and type away in the corridor of our studio flat with my keyboard balanced on my husband's sock drawer.

Wherever we have travelled our books have come too, and after twenty three moves around the world I've finally unpacked them in a library in the old Georgian house we've just restored. I love the research for each book, and they all have elements I most enjoy reading about myself - family secrets, real historical figures making cameos, beautiful houses, amazing locations and the fight for love.

Every book starts with a question, and writing the story is a way of answering that. Each story also has at its heart something I love, whether that's travel, or photography, or perfume. I've written about the girls who flew Spitfires, the little known 'artist's Schindler' in the south of France, and the women who fought and reported the Spanish Civil War. Historical fiction is like time travel and I love how it lets you see how people made sense of their lives in difficult times.

Writing is part of life. I've always written with children and animals coming and going, and I like Stephen King's advice to stick your desk in the corner of the room and just get on with it. I've never bought in to that old idea that the 'pram in the hall' is the enemy of writing. I've worked, and raised a family, and have just finished my ninth novel, spending the summer editing on the beaches of Devon's Atlantic coast while my children surfed. Thanks to you all, nine books on I've gone from writing on a sock drawer to being an international bestseller, and I am really grateful for that.

Writing is a conversation - when you finish writing a story it belongs to the reader. What I hope is that when you reach the last page you feel this is a beginning, not an end, that these characters will live on in your imagination and you might find yourself wondering what they are going to do next.

Now these stories are yours, and I'd love to hear what you think. You can find me on social media or at www.katelordbrown.com

Happy reading -

Kate