How Covid sparked move to North Yorkshire for author inspired to write thriller after a nightmare

Published 18th Jul 2023, 11:50 BST

“I had no money, no idea if I’d get another book deal and the world had gone to pot,” 38-year-old Kate says. She couldn’t shake off the nightmare. “It felt so real, this sense of panic of being done for something I didn’t do and I became like a woman obsessed. I was like I have to write about this.”

Kate wasn’t put off by the fact she hadn’t written a thriller before. Her previous work, under the name of Katy Colins, had fallen under the category of commercial women’s fiction.

This was new territory, but within two months, her horrific nightmare had inspired the first draft of what would become The Honeymoon – and a book deal soon followed.

Set for release later this week, the tale follows two honeymooning couples whose paths cross after the death of a man. All parties say they’re innocent, but at the start of married life, they must work out who they can trust.

"I’m really excited but nervous,” says Kate, who has a degree in journalism and has previously worked in public relations. “You don’t know how people are going to take it. My readers have been so lovely and loyal to my previous work and I really hope they come with me to read this.”

The shift in genre was followed by another major change in Kate’s life when she, her husband, and two children, now aged six and four, upped sticks from Warwickshire and made Helmsley in North Yorkshire their new family home.

It was triggered in part by a bad dose of Covid for Kate. In Spring 2022, she was struck down by the illness, spending the best part of a month stuck in bed at her childhood home. The property had previously belonged to her father, who had passed away a couple of years earlier, and was full of memories of her youth.

But after weeks of staring at the same four walls, Kate felt overwhelmingly she wanted a fresh start, to move on and create new memories for her and her family. They had no connection to North Yorkshire, but had been there on holiday.

"I had a month in bed and I could never have imagined just feeling so poorly. For a whole month I couldn’t read, watch television, do anything. In life you have these moments where everything flips on its head a little bit...I thought I wanted to make a change in my life...

"We left the house and all the memories we had, and we knew nobody, no family, no friends. We just liked the area, that’s all we were going off. It was quite daunting.”

Now fully settled, Kate is set to launch her book at the Pickering Book Tree at 7pm this evening and is working on a second thriller to be released next year.

The Honeymoon by Kate Gray is published by Welbeck on July 20.