Kate Harrison

Kate was born in Wigan but as her father was an IT pioneer, she spent much of youth travelling across Britain and even Europe, attending over 13 schools which gave her reams of material for Old School Ties. Her homes have included the Isle of Man, St Helens, Longniddry, Bramhall, Bracknell, Camberley, Newbury and Holland.

Despite the constant moving around, she still managed to pass her exams getting 8 'O' levels and 3 'A' levels although she did fail Art 'O' level. Something to do with a teenage obsession with just using black and white!

Determined to be a writer, she attended Highbury College in Portsmouth where she studied journalism and won the ESSO Young Journalist of the Year competition which included a trip to an off-shore gas platform in the North Sea. After a short stint at a news agency, she cut her journalistic teeth at BBC Bristol on local radio and on Points West, as a on-screen reporter and bulletins producer.

She then moved to BBC Birmingham as Midlands Today Education Correspondent before making the break to London and working as a director and producer on a number of programmes from Newsround to Panorama. She is currently developing new programme ideas for the documentaries and factual department.

Her previous writing credits include winning top prize in a short story competition run by Options magazine and features for the Times Educational Supplement. Kate also recently gained First Class honours in her BA from the Open University.

When not chained to her desk at BBC White City, techie-fan Kate enjoys surfing the internet, cooking and lounging in her West London home with her cat Ozzie (named because she looks like an Ocelot, not after Ozzy Osbourne!).

www.kate-harrison.com

Titles: Old School Ties (Piatkus); The Starter Marriage; Brown Owl's Guide To Life; The Self-Preservation Society; next: The Secret Shopper's Revenge (Orion)

The Self-Preservation Society

Staying alive in the 21st century is a full-time job . . . one which self-confessed scaredy-cat Jo Morgan takes very seriously indeed. As a little girl growing up near Greenham Common Air Base, she stock-piled baked beans in case of nuclear holocaust; now she works in accident prevention, trying to protect the rest of us from conker injuries, killer tea-cosies and death by chocolate. And if her ultra-safe existence is a bit boring, it seems a small price to pay. Fortunately her boyfriend shares her outlook on life, so everything they do together involves the minimum possible risk. From their social lives to their sex lives, spontaneity is not in their vocabulary.

Yet when Jo survives a hit and run accident, she realises she has beaten the odds. Maybe a bit of living dangerously is just what Jo needs. Bunt unlearning a lifetime of fears and phobias won’t be easy. That is, until she meets former World War II fighter pilot Roger ‘Frisky’ Freeman Van Belle, his mysterious grandson, and a rather hands-on doctor. Jo has a choice: Fight or Flight? She can carry on living half a life, or leave behind the people she loves. It’s the scariest decision she’ll ever have to make.

When I finished my novel, I was really excited but also unsure whether it was up to being published... Friends and family loved it, but of course they're biased! I sent it to a couple of agents who liked the writing but dismissed it as 'chick lit' - they thought the market was saturated... The benefit of sending it to Hilary was that an expert publishing insider would take the time to look at it carefully and give me an honest assessment. She told me the writing was very strong, advised me to keep sending it out but also to start something new to keep the momentum. Two months later I won a writing competition and gained a publisher and an agent within one day! The service gave me the confidence to keep going and pursue my dream... which came true in September 2003.

Kate Harrison