About

Kate Mackay was born in Suffolk, England, the eldest daughter of a nurse and an engineer. Introduced to books at an early age she has vivid memories of sitting quietly in her local library watching the dust motes swirl in the sunshine as her mother chose her weekly reading books. She devoured the Enid Blyton series, The Famous Five and often read by torchlight under the covers. As a teenager, she graduated to the Judy Bloom books before moving onto adult fiction, sometimes spending whole days of the summer holidays with her head in a book.

For college, she headed north to Yorkshire, and after graduating she began working for the NHS in a research role. Kate started to write articles for peer reviewed journals publishing many under her maiden name, Kate Mudge. She wrote a Research Guide, published by North Derbyshire Health Authority, during this time which sold several hundred copies both nationally and internationally to health and academic institutions.

She has ridden a camel in the Sahara, an elephant in Rajasthan and a horse in The Rockies before she ever rode a snowboard. But once strapped in, she never looked back and took up writing for pleasure. A contributing author to www.powderroom.net – the only English-speaking, website dedicated to snowboarding for women, she discovered the ease and freedom of informal writing away from the constraints of academic restrictions. Realising she wanted more, she set up her own blog www.mummysnowboarder.com to cater for women like herself.

Kate lives near Newcastle in the North East of England with her husband, Gordon, her pre-teen daughter and an aged cat and her beloved, shaggy-haired dog. When not walking on her nearest sandy beach she enjoys coffee and cocktails with friends and fantasises about long lie-ins. Most days she sits at her computer watching the sea whilst working, but occasionally dreams of the mountains and riding that perfect turn.