Katherine Roberts

How could a unicorn resist? As part of the Independent Booksellers Week organised by the Torbay Bookshop , a group of mystics came to talk about their work in our fabulous ( new!) library, just opened last year: The afternoon covered past life regression, totem animals, and astrology. All very different ideas, yet all connected by their authors’ belief in the spirit world that lies behind our reality. The most interesting of the three talks for me was, obviously, the one about totem animals. My author needed no convincing, having already found me, her unicorn muse. Celia Gunn, who introduced everyone to the idea of totem animals, had spent time living with the Native American Navaho tribe, where she had a vision of a white wolf, the tribe’s totem spirit. (She had some cool Native American boots, too!) After returning home, she wrote Simply Totem Animals, published by mind, blody and spirit publisher Zambezi to help people find their own animal spirit. The...

The Unicorn is tearing out his mane! Usually Katherine’s publishers design beautiful covers for her books, and all she has to do is look at the artwork and say if she likes them (or not). Sometimes they let her suggest changes... which is not always a good idea, since she doesn’t know very much about marketing books. But now she is putting together a collection of short stories for you to read on Kindle, and it needs a cover image, so she has asked me to design one from scratch. Believe me, even though I am a muse, this is a lot more difficult than it looks! First of all it's an e-book cover, so it must work well at small “thumbnail” (or hoof) size. On a Kindle it will only display in black and white, so the contrast has to be good, although it’ll show in colour on most other devices so needs to look good on them, too. And, as if that wasn't difficult enough, there are seven different stories in the book and the design has to give a general idea of all of them. Here are a ...

The Muse has been trotting up the Wye Valley along the border of England and Wales. It’s the kind of place you might meet a unicorn in the woods on a misty morning, so it was no surprise to discover King Arthur Pendragon huddled in conference around a standing stone with King Offa, King Tewdrig, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Eleanor of Provence and the fish-tailed water sprite Hafren. A rather strange mix of characters, you might think, until you realise they are all local heroes and heroines. Offa was a Saxon chief who built the famous Offa’s Dyke to mark the frontier of his kingdom and keep out the Welsh, and King Tewdrig was a 6th century Welsh chieftain who may have been the grandfather of the real King Arthur. Eleanor married Henry III and influenced local architecture with her French style, while Geoffrey of nearby Monmouth wrote many fantastic stories including one about Hafren, a local girl who was drowned in the river and became a water goddess, giving her name to the River Severn. ...

You might be wondering why I have not written many posts on this blog lately. Well, that’s because I’ve had my horn – or Horn, since it’s magical? – dug into Katherine’s new series, while she’s been off writing posts for other people’s blogs! And meanwhile, other authors have been over here writing about their muses on THIS blog… just can’t tie an author down these days, can you? Since I’m a unicorn, I prefer to navigate the enchanted mists with my four golden hooves and my sparkling horn. But my author says the great thing about these blog tours is that she can now travel the world without leaving the comfort of her own home. No delayed flights, no carbon footprint (carbon hoof print?) and no travel sickness. You’ll probably see quite a bit of Katherine around the blogs next year, when her Pendragon books hit the shelves. So she thought she’d get in a bit of practice this year for her existing books, which she is determined people will still be able to read in e-format, even if h...

My muse is an ethereal thing, a spirit of the faerie world I think, often only glimpsed out of the corner of my eye, a blend of whirring fragile wings with a flash of rainbow colours. For the most part it lives in Tuscany – not that romantic place in Italy, much favoured by writers - but my rather more lowly writing shed, across the other side of my garden. It is a strange thing but my muse seems to have taken up residence there almost as soon as the shed was erected, as if it moved in with the furniture. As with most spirits of the Faerie world it is often elusive and can be mischievous at times, leading me on, making me think I am doing fine and then disappearing when I need it most. But the atmosphere in Tuscany is such that I can normally summon it up after a short while and I am aware of its presence just behind my right shoulder, or perched on the edge of my chair. It is a comforting presence, accompanied by a frisson of excitement for the work in progress. On the occasio...

While I’ve had my horn stuck into the copyedit of my author’s new series (wrestling with queries such as whether “sword” should have a capital letter if it is a magic sword, and dodgy spellings of the Celtic name Arianrhod), it turns out she has been moonlighting on another blog! Now normally I wouldn’t use my horn to point you over there, as it’s a blog about technological gadgets called Kindles and those new-fangled e-books, which (according to the votes on the right of this blog) 30 out of 35 unicorn fans DO NOT LIKE. But since an e-book is the only way you can now read her book “Spellfall”, which has several unicorns in it, I suppose I’d better give you the link... Kindle Authors UK Drop by if and leave her a comment if you must (though don’t encourage her too much), then hurry up back here. The good thing is she’ll only be blogging over there once a month, and the rest of the time she’ll be here with me. Authors, eh? Can’t live with them, can’t live without them… if you ...