Katie Wowers

Award-Winning, Best-Selling author … oh, wait. No, that’s somebody else!

Actually, I’m a debut author with a modest ambition to have some fun writing books, whilst making a difference … if I can.

When I became a mum in March 2020, just before the first of a bazillion lockdowns and social distancing rules, I started writing books for my daughter, Ammy. Not because a newborn can read, (though she’s very advanced – cue the winky face emoji) but because I wanted to keep my mind active. Being at home with her was a privilege and a joy, but I felt like my permanent bum print on the couch needed a double-worthy excuse. So, children’s books it was!

When she slept, when we went on our daily walk (lockdown 1.0 – yawn!) and when I was feeding her, I would rustle up silly ideas and jot everything down on my phone … I’d come up with characters, storylines, rhyming words, things that would make her think, things that would make her laugh … it gave me the chance to use my imagination in a whole new way and that was good for me. I had cabin fever, postpartum hormones and a lot of time to burn. Why not do something different? Perhaps it’d all be nonsense (much of it definitely was!) or perhaps I could actually have a crack at this.

20 months later (still counting in ‘baby ages’ – when does it end!?) I’m delighted to have published my first book, The Crocodile with the Crooked Smile. Thank YOU for giving me the time of day and reading this bio!

I should take a brief moment to thank my husband for the title. I wrote the entire book, but he came up with the title and therefore considers himself some sort of co-author, worthy of a literary throne. That said, he did put up with a fair amount of my bellyaching and did some excellent, unofficial copyediting work. He’s currently credited with 12% of my success (including our daughter) so I’ll bump him to 12.5% as a gesture of goodwill.

Back to the point – I wrote The Crocodile with the Crooked Smile because I thought it would be a unique way to teach Ammy kindness. Long before she was born, possibly even before she was a glint in my eye, my husband and I had a righteous childless persons’ conversation about how to teach a child ‘not to be an a***hole’ (cover your ears!). We both know what bullying feels like and like any decent adult, we know that it’s not cool. Then, along she came and suddenly it really mattered!

So, this book is about confronting the matter of bullying vs. kindness and teaching children not to be judgemental little monsters. Doing that in a way which makes them think hard about their actions, but gives them a good laugh at the same time.

Above all else, I want my daughter and anybody who gets their mitts on this book, to know that kind people can be bad-ass too! We’ve all known those amazing humans who have hearts of gold, yet people walk all over them. Not on my watch! May all children (and most certainly, adults) be kind and strong in equal measure.

If you like the sound of it and can scrape together some pennies to buy a copy, then from the bottom of my heart, thank you! Together we might have made a difference to somebody, somewhere.