Guest Blog: Kate Baker -

Although 2023 was long after the end of Covid lockdowns, one of the many legacies were unboxing videos that authors shared with their followers when a new title was due for publication.

And so it was that in February of that year, I took a cardboard box into my workshop here on the farm, set up my phone on the selfie mode, grabbed the scissors and pressed record.

Being ‘present’ online has both drawbacks and positive moments. It’s time-consuming for a start, but it was through engaging with readers and other writers on (mostly) Instagram that I found support and encouragement to keep going when ideas and enthusiasm were flagging.

No-one was specifically waiting for this debut, let’s be honest, bar the few family and friends who’d been wondering what I’d spent the previous four years working on! But, outside that circle, not a soul knew who I was, except those loyal followers who were keen to read the results of all that effort that I’d been documenting.

Post-publication, the online community were key in spreading the word. There was the Blog Tour, organised by Rachel Gilbey (https://www.rachelsrandomresources.com) of Rachel’s Random Resources, where each day for ten days three bloggers posted about the novel, meaning all of their followers got to eyeball this new cover with its hint to Titanic, a nod to Brooklyn Bridge and an obscure title. (What do Brooklyn, Bridge, Titanic and a Suffragette have in common?)

And steadily, as the posts were shared, and the cover became recognised, other lovely things followed; invites to online book clubs where members would read the novel and at their monthly zoom, I’d be the ‘guest’ author, available to answer questions. I did lots of table events, even if they weren’t book fairs. Some of my biggest sale days were at farmers or craft markets where I’d be the only author amongst the cakes and woodwork items! Christmas events are the best, and I always take 2-3 copies pre-signed and pre-wrapped and ribboned, because where else can you find a present for Aunt Maud, or sister Susan, that is a) unique, b) signed and c) already wrapped and all for under a tenner??!

They were fun, and sometimes a further invite would arrive; would I speak at the local WI about my writing? Yes I would, and yes I did! I have since been added to the WI list of speakers, but it’s that personal contact that very often leads to concrete invites. Getting yourself out there is important, which is ironic considering the beginning of this paragraph is about being online. But one wouldn’t have come without the other.

My biggest supporter is my husband. While he doesn’t read novels and is more interested in Farmers Weekly magazine and weather apps, he’s seen how much pleasure this writing lark has brought me. Our adult kids have left home so this is what I healthily refer to as ‘my time’. (That may change if grandchildren come along, but for now the only patter of tiny feet are those of my miniature dachshund called Otis, who regularly appears on my Instagram feed.)

I took a trip to Ireland, where the book is set, and was delighted to find copies in Waterstones in Cork, which I signed.

There were local book signings, for example at Diss Publishing Bookshop in South Norfolk (check out that clever chalk work) and also Ipswich Waterstones, who had also given me a two-week window display prior to publication!

My publishers – The Book Guild in Leicestershire – continued to support my marketing and I ordered these wonderful book marks which included the QR code. And many people who didn’t buy a book might take one of these to think about a purchase later. And even if they didn’t go on to order, the fact that the bookmark might be spotted on a kitchen table or a sideboard; who knows might see it before its finally hurled in a bin?! I’m always very positive about this sort of thing. Your readers will find you.

Another bit of fun was buying a phone case with the cover printed on it. Costing less than £15, it’s been a great conversation-starter and my phone still wears it two years on!

I have to say that the biggest boost is hearing from complete strangers that have read and enjoyed the book, like this message which came in during the summer of 2023.

Feedback like that gives you the confidence to keep going with the very straggly manuscript that is the first draft of the next book!

2024 has been a year where writing has not been able to be a priority. First there was a hip replacement at the end of January, and while you might think all that sitting around would be perfect for novel-writing, I actually didn’t write as much as I’d hoped due to being shattered and full of medication. From end of March, I did juggle my way through to the end of a first draft but it resembled more of a patchwork quilt of scenes sewn together with not enough thought as to plot, nor the dual timeline which I thought was a good idea when I began writing The Projectionist four years ago.

My son’s wedding took place here on the farm in June. Then coinciding with harvest, my mother spent five weeks in Ipswich hospital with an infected foot and other diabetic issues, so a lot of that time I juggled taking dad in for visits, meals out to the combine all while washing and re-proofing horse rugs for my clients. The Rug Room has been my sole-trader business for seventeen years and provides the funds for this writing and reading habit of mine! Summer is The Rug Room’s busiest time, because it’s when the horses are not wearing their rugs, so my workshop becomes a storage park and my three industrial washing machines are on the go day and night and it’s all down to me to handle and label them for identity before returning them repaired and neatly wrapped to owners ready for the autumn.

October has been the first quiet month of 2025. The hip is a distant memory, the married couple are getting on with their lives, the field behind the house is returned to a grassy patch, mother is back home and the mountain of horse rugs are once more stored, waiting for use, in the tack rooms of north Essex and south Suffolk where my clients live.

I can finally focus on my writing and am doing so most days, even if just for an hour in the mornings. Because I’ve done it once before, I know that I should be able to do it again, by which I mean finish a novel! And this time around, due to all that support of the debut, I do this time have a group of people–perhaps 20/25– actively waiting for The Projectionist. This is a very exciting concept, but also slightly disconcerting. What if they don’t enjoy this story as much as the first? The expectation that comes with writing a second book is probably why there’s a known syndrome surrounding it, as there is “the second album” issue. But I’ll have to push through those worries and just see what happens if I don’t want to be a one-book wonder, won’t I!

I managed to have a private tour of the Electric Palace theatre in Harwich in 2021, when the idea for the novel came to me after watching the Michael Portillo Hidden Histories episode about Bradford City cinema. I amalgamated that with my more local Harwich cinema in order that I could incorporate the Floods of 1953. Both cinemas are important to the story and is why my fictitious town is called Bradwich!

The Projectionist is a dual time line and tells the story of Frank who, in 1952/3, is in the Suez Canal zone doing National Service while wife, Joan, is left on the East Anglian coast. She was the usherette at the cinema where Frank was projectionist but now she’s home looking after their young son. In January 1953 the great flood arrives and turns their lives upside down. In 2022, widower Frank is almost ninety and takes a daily walk from his Care Home, to walk past the disused cinema where he feels closest to his wife. He ensures he gets there at the very same time each day; the time she watched his message home on the Pathé News Reel. Frank doesn’t expect that meeting a lonely eleven year old boy called Toby will give his life meaning.

There is a short story of the same name that was published by Fairlight Books in 2022 and as a special extra, I’ll happily share it here for the readers of Ruth’s blog:

THE PROJECTIONST

Frank hadn’t thought about killing anyone for forty years. Not since he’d closed his left eye and looked down the barrel of his Lee Enfield. But sitting in the dark, the projectors’ hum silenced forever, snapshots of an enemy halted gathered behind his eyelids like a gallery of police evidence.

He rubbed his face and smelt the acetate’s chemicals embedded in his skin. A career spanning more than half a century as the cinema’s projectionist yet he couldn’t save the place from the ravages of time and weather. A man from the Council, wearing an ill-fitting suit, had spent the day before walking his way through Frank’s lifetime of endeavour, inking ticks and crosses on a form which would decide the building’s future. A tyrant in paper form. A man intent on gaining power at any cost.

 The opposition in the Suez Crisis had been less obvious. Bullets and fear had rained into camp some nights; darkness illuminated only by fire and retaliation. They’d named their khaki tent the Dessert Palace. It kept out most of the dust and some of the scorpions. Joan’s photo and smile pinned to the canvas wall. His first and only love. The love who would wait for his return, the love who would give him a son they called William. The love who would spend her nights by William’s bed when his whooping cough got so bad it turned to pneumonia. 

He stood, ignoring the pain in his hip. Age was no hindrance to grit. There must be something he could do. The town was full of folk who loved the heritage of their oldest building. Generations had enjoyed in turn, jive-dancing in the fifties, live music in the sixties, then cinema from the seventies. They would not see it demolished. He touched the back wall of the building. There was no denying a trace of damp silently eating through decades of paintwork. The sea air had a way of securing its way in. 

The next day, from sunrise to dusk, Frank and his army put forms of their own through every letterbox in the town. The Post mistress had agreed to make as many copies as was needed and had worked through the night.

‘They want to what?’ exclaimed Mrs Myrtle in the end cottage near the harbour.

‘I read about this in the papers.’ Grumbled Mr Smith, one of the three local fisherman who still took a trawler out into the estuary on cold mornings to bring the town fresh produce from the north sea.

‘Can they do that? Just take it away?’ asked Sally who ran the children’s early years nursery and insisted everyone be on first-name terms.

‘Did I hear that’s where you got married, Frank?’ Jim, the harbour-master asked.

The Vicar had arranged to marry the couple on the stage of the cinema. The whole town had turned out to mark the occasion of one of their sons, not only returning from a campaign in the dessert, but to marry his sweetheart whom he had met four years before when they’d both started working there.

On the third day, as the sun rose over the rooftops, troops of support started arriving outside the century-old Electric Palace. A uniform not of one colour, but a rainbow army of young and old, dressed in tweed, lycra, wool and fleece. Boots and trainers marched from all corners of the town and a regimented line began to form around the perimeter of the tired theatre.

Frank thanked every person in turn, shaking their hands, touching the childrens’ shoulders. The father and son from the butcher’s who came every Saturday to watch a matinee after they stopped serving.

‘It’ll be okay, Frank.’ The nineteen year old said.

Frank nodded and noticed sawdust in the boy’s hair. ‘I hope you’re right, lad.’

He shook hands with the butcher, ‘Good to see you here, John.’

‘Nowhere else we’d rather be, is there, son?’ he said and put his arm around the younger version of himself.

Local reporters turned up to ask questions and to tap on ipads. Cameras snapped and lenses lengthened. By eleven, flashing blue lights bounced off buildings which stood sentinel as guardians might an ageing film star. The crowds had grown and swelled through the small roads of the town which nestled on the coast. Seagulls preened and stamped their feet on the rooftops. Police perused and talked, reassured and waited.

The Council sent the man in the ill-sitting suit.

‘What are you doing?’ he said to Frank, his clipboard pinned against his chest like plastic body armour.

‘Showing you that you’re wrong.’

The Council man’s expression softened, ‘Look, Frank. It’s not personal---’

‘Oh, but it is!’

Frank stepped forward and the Council man stepped back, delivering the same lines he’d quoted in the newspaper. ‘We have to move with the times. This end of town needs a supermarket and this is the best place for one. It’s simple economics.’

Chanting travelled along the human chain of protection like a wave. The Council man wiped his forehead with a handkerchief which had once been white but looked like it had given up trying.

An outside broadcast van arrived and sent up its antennae towards the midday sun. Local news showed roused townsfolk, their backs shielding the cinema’s crumbling exterior, and the story made the front page of the Nationals. The people had spoken.

The man with the clipboard admitted defeat and a week later brought Frank a new form to sign, his face blank of emotion, but smothered in beads of sweat. A community venue with a ten year deadline. They would have to repair the building themselves, he said. Raise their own funds and make it viable.

The man from the Council walked around the front of his car. ‘Ten years and then you’ll be out.’

‘We’ll see.’ replied Frank and went back in through the door with Sixpence embossed across the top. He would make sure the Electric Palace survived and thrived. It had been more than a place of work. It had been his life, his and Joan’s. William would have taken over from him, of that he was sure. And in his son’s memory, Frank would fight his final battle. The deaths of war were too many. Films and stories were what people truly lived for, be it their own or that of others.

The only way up to the projection room was the metal ladder on the outside of the building. Frank knew every dimple in the paint on every rung and climbed it now with warmth in his heart. He’d lost everything dear to him, but not the bricks and mortar. And though them, he could be with Joan.

He closed the soundproof door behind him, and with it the screeches of gulls ceased. He switched on the nearest projector and a familiar hum filled the small room from which dreams were delivered. He slowly and carefully wiped the surfaces, checked the lamp, adjusted the leads which snaked across the floor. The multiplex twenty miles away had donated the two Kalee projectors to the tiny cinema by the sea, with speculations they’d last him a decade. That was thirty years ago. Still they played for him and shared the windowless room at the highest point of the building.

He allowed himself the memory of Joan in her usherette’s uniform, knocking gently on the door before delivering him that cup of tea, the first of many. She’d been just sixteen. Weeks later, he’d cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, right there in his tiny castle turret and made her giggle. You’ll mess my hair up, stop it!  He had allowed William, aged eight, to spend time there with him. Had taught him how to rewind the twenty-minute films and store them in the correct order ready for the next showing. That was before the pneumonia had stolen him from their lives and left them stricken with grief.

He found the spool with torn holes where metal teeth had carved into the acetate over the years. It would play one more time. He lit the screen below and searched the empty seats welcoming the fizz of excitement tinged with heartache.

She was there.

He watched as she turned her head to the left, saw the earring swing and bounce against her neck. Held his breath because he knew what came next. She leant across to the young man sitting next to her and kissed his cheek. A lifetime ahead of them. A child to make. Each other to nurture. Age is no hindrance to grit, he whispered down through the small square window.

The short film came to an end. Frank rewound the tape until its tail flack flack flacked against the machine. He laid it back inside the tin and kissed the black and white photograph taped to the lid, sand forever engrained in its surface.

We’ve saved our Palace, my love.

Thank you to Ruth for the chance to chat about my writing journey and thank you to you if you’ve read to the end!

Do feel free to follow me on Instagram at KateFrancesWrites where you can see pictures of Otis and the progress of The Projectionist.

Lots of love

Kate xx