My First Time with...Kate Murray-Browne

Kate Murray-Browne is a freelance editor with over ten years of publishing experience. Before going freelance, Kate was an editor at Faber & Faber, where she worked closely with new (yay!) and established authors to develop their manuscripts. Since going freelance, Kate has worked with Unbound, Simon & Schuster, Orion, Weidenfeld & Nicolson and many more. Kate is also a visual artist. The Upstairs Room is Kate's first novel.

Kate is reading at The Riff Raff on Thursday December 14th along with Rosie Wilby, Laura Kaye, Clifford Thompson and Julian Furman. Come join us and be in with the chance of winning some lovely lovely books! Buy your tickets today>>>>

Here's the blurb for The Upstairs Room...

Eleanor, Richard and their two young daughters recently stretched themselves to the limit to buy their dream home, a four-bedroom Victorian townhouse in East London. But the cracks are already starting to show. Eleanor is unnerved by the eerie atmosphere in the house and becomes convinced it is making her ill.

Whilst Richard remains preoccupied with Zoe, their mercurial twenty-seven-year-old lodger, Eleanor becomes determined to unravel the mystery of the house’s previous owners – including Emily, whose name is written hundreds of times on the walls of the upstairs room.​

Describe the exact moment you decided to write your book?

I’d had the basic idea for a long time, but I could never get anything off the ground. The moment the characters came into my head, and the book really got started, was late afternoon in the office, in a particularly boring period at work. Frustrated energy often produces good things. I was so excited, I had to get up from my desk and walk up and down the corridor.

What’s the one thing you wish you’d known before starting to write your first book?

That I wouldn’t regret it. I worried a lot about whether writing a novel was a bad idea, when I sort of knew it wasn’t, and definitely knew I was going to have a go anyway.