Jul 21

Jul 21 Kathryn Rossati (Kathryn Wells)

Author Kathryn Rossati

Biography

I spent most of my childhood in Essex, only moving to the Isle of Wight when I was thirteen. It was a difficult change, as the school system was very different, and as I have trouble in social situations (I didn't know it back then, but I'm autistic), I had few friends. It didn't particularly bother me though - I've always been a book lover and spent a lot of time with my favourite characters instead, and if I wasn't reading, then I was writing. If I think back hard enough, I recall writing my first short stories when I was about five.

Creating worlds and characters has always come easily to me, and I excelled in English over every other subject I took (though I did manage to grab an A* in Graphic Design for my GCSE's, which considering I was predicted a C, I'm still quite smug about despite how much time has passed). I wrote short stories and scribbled down ideas for books for most of secondary school/ high school, but sadly I was put off of writing for several years when a relative convinced me that being an author was not a 'proper' career and I wouldn't make any money doing so.

It wasn't until my last year at college, when my Performing Arts tutor took my class to an open day at Portsmouth University and I listened to one of the creative writing lecturers speak, that I realised how much I missed it, and that if you love to do something, then you should do it regardless of whether it'll make you money. This led me to taking three creative writing modules with The Open University and taking part in National Novel Writing Month six years in a row. The former gave me a clunky first draft for a story I'd been inspired to write by my father, and the latter gave me surprisingly clean drafts of all three books in my Half-Wizard Thordric trilogy, plus three other manuscripts.

All the while, I'd had a goal for myself to become a published author by the end of my 26th year, and in August 2017, just a month away from my 27th birthday, I achieved that goal when Unofficial Detective, the first book in my Half-Wizard Thordric trilogy, was published by Creativia Publishing (now Next Chapter). It was amazing to finally have my childhood dream come true, and I haven't looked back since.

My Half-Wizard Thordric trilogy and The Door Between Worlds are currently under the pen name Kathryn Wells, whereas my poetry collection, A Book For Pandora, and all future books will be under the name Kathryn Rossati.

Fun facts:

I have Synesthesia, most notably with weekdays - Mondays are pink, Tuesdays are dark blue, Wednesdays are green, Thursdays are indigo, Fridays are Sapphire blue, Saturdays are yellow and Sundays are golden/burnt yellow.

My favourite number is 7, which coincidentally is green in my mind, one of my favourite colours. The others are blue and purple.

I studied bellydance for over ten years.

I have a whole shelf of Diana Wynne Jones books, and aim to collect her entire written works.

I find the colour yellow nauseating, and find it hard to read books with yellow on the cover.

I can play a little known about ceramic flute called the ocarina.

I have an Amazon parrot who won't hesitate to alert me to how late it is if I've overslept. He also demands monkey nuts all the time and is sometimes a harsh critic to my work, choosing to screech at me if I try reading my books aloud while editing. I suppose you can't please everyone.