About the Author

Welcome to our blog, Katy! Can you tell me more about yourself, where you live and who you live with?

I live in the most beautiful estate in the UK! It’s called Hattersley and its surrounded by rolling hills and stuffed with wonderful people. I live with my husband who leads our church, St Barneys, and my two children, Eva and Josiah who fill my life with hilarity, kindness and football.

So, why did you start writing?

I had my first proper go at writing a children’s book when I was at university. It was called, ‘Mr Gribbly and the Dribbly Chicken’ and I am still wondering about sharing it with the world one day. It was hilarious. I was then told that publishing children’s books was next to impossible, and I folded that dream up sadly and placed it on a very high shelf. 

From Chronic Illness to Christian Children’s Author

When I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue in 2018, my imagination was up on that shelf too, getting dusty and ignored in the fast pace of life. I had especially forgotten how powerful imagination had once been in meeting with Jesus. In the season that followed, most of it spent lying in one bed or another, Jesus pulled my imagination down off that shelf, dusted it off, and gave it back to me. My writing – and painting – came out of recording hours meeting him in that secret place. I wanted to hold on to the things he was saying and treasure them.

What do you want your writing to communicate? 

I wrote The Place of Endless Lights as a way to talk to my little girl about feelings of fear and anxiety. I wanted to show her how to hold those big feelings, and how Jesus can meet us in them and transform places of fear to places of light.

Writing for Children’s Hearts

At the very heart of it, I want my writing to help people feel their hearts pulled towards Jesus. I think there are lots of resources that appeal to people’s minds, but I want my writing to sneak into people’s hearts and leave treasures there for dark days. I want people to feel the truth of who Jesus is and how loved they are.

What keeps you writing on your darkest day? What’s your passion?

I long to see children’s imaginations come alive with Jesus, like mine did; for Jesus to meet them there and fill their imagination with the wonders of his love. 

What’s next for you?

There’s another story from the world of the Trailmaker revealing itself slowly in the back of my head. I am also very excited to begin work on a children’s picture book with a friend, illustrating her beautiful poem about God’s love. It’s set by the sea, so I’ve been collecting up paintings of the beach this year to get ready.

Sound brilliant! Thanks so much for joining us, Katy!

Inspired by Katy?

At Broad Place Publishing, we operate on a partnership model where we ask people like you to partner with us to support our authors in their ministry. We don’t believe they should have to pay thousands of pounds to bring amazing, God-honouring content into the world, but sadly, that’s the reality with most publishing models in these challenging times. If you want to support Katy with a regular or one off donation, you can do so by joining her VIP club here. If you want to pray for Katy, you can sign up to her prayer team here.

Interested in The Place of Endless Lights?

You can also support Katy by purchasing her incredible book. We give a high royalty percentage back to our authors because, quite frankly, they deserve it! Writing a book takes hundreds of hours of work, and you get to benefit from their craft for just a few pounds (better than a cup of coffee and slice of cake).

While you’re considering that, why not pray about someone who could benefit from the message of The Place of Endless Lights and buy them a copy as a gift too? We also have sponsorship options where you can sponsor a book to go into Katy’s estate, gifting it to someone who perhaps can’t afford it.

Find out more about how to purchase or sponsor here.

Read more about The Place of Endless Lights here.

Then enjoy!