Kate Moore is a third generation Californian from a large family with roots in Dorset, England. She began writing stories as soon as she could write. When she's not writing, Kate chairs the English Department at an independent school, watches her systems analyst husband surf, and keeps in touch with her grown son and daughter.
Three careers always appealed to me--teacher, writer, stationer. Each allows one stacks of fresh paper, newly sharpened pencils, and folders and binders to organize all one's ideas.
The idea of being a writer first occurred to me when I was ten and living in a neighborhood carved out of an apricot orchard at the foot of some golden California hills. I was still playing with dolls and trying to ride a bike and throw a ball, an apricot pit, or a punch as hard as any boy in the neighborhood. My parents were in the first phase of their interest in Napa vintages, and as the oldest child, my place at the crowded family table was in "the shadow of the wine bottle." I collected the phrase in a notebook and envisioned writing a great saga about the rise and fall of a California family.
But romance was destined to be my subject. At the end of seventh grade I fell into unrequited love with the class golden boy, and the situation kept me focused more or less on academics for the next ten years. I went east to college, where the curriculum, the professors, and my more sophisticated peers subtlety persuaded me that good writing was not about the things I wanted to write about. Still, Ellen Melton, at Economics Research Associates in L.A., where I worked summers, gave me reports to edit, and the gleam of a career working with words stayed alive.
Tutoring Lonnie Gilchrist at the Roxbury Community Center in Boston showed me the joys of teaching, and I embraced it and enjoy it still. I came home to California for graduate school, and in Santa Maria met my husband, who, as chance would have it was the son of one of my mother's tennis partners, just returned from the Peace Corps.
For awhile, it seemed teaching would lead away from writing, but eventually it led me back. Teaching Jane Austen to tenth grade boys started me rereading all of Austen repeatedly. I pulled out my Olympic portable typewriter and wrote a story. My mother-in-law Fay Moore gave me all of her Writer's Digests. An article in one of them directed me to Georgette Heyer's work. A book store clerk in the local mall showed me a shelf of Regencies, and I knew what I wanted to write--marriage plot stories set in the English Regency.
When my husband's work brought us back to northern California, a friend encouraged me to take Margaret Scariano's course in Writing Romance at the College of Marin. Through the class I met my critique partners of ten years Pam Collins, Joanne Pence, and Barbara Truax. We joined our local and the national chapter of Romance Writers of America, and I later joined the Beau Monde Chapter as well, and through the efforts of many women working together we have learned the craft of writing and the workings of the publishing world. Still there were classes to teach and children to raise. I wrote my first romance long hand on green legal size paper sitting beside my daughter as she fell asleep each night.
With a second manuscript I won the RWA's Golden Heart contest in 1988. With the help of Jill Barnett I met agent Pamela Ahearn and with her help negotiated sales of my books, not without the usual ups and downs of the business but with some great editors along the way, Carrie Feron, Maggie Crawford, Marjorie Braman, and Lyssa Keusch. And along the way I have appreciated readers' letters. There are no more magic words for a writer than "I stayed up all night reading your book."
My daughter and my son are both grown and successes in their own right. My husband surfs and supports and inspires me. I have a garret of an office under the gable at the top of my house, a new lap top, and lots of ideas. Writing and teaching continue to be consuming rewarding careers, so I may wait to try being a stationer.
