Kate Milford

***"And when I asked why he supposed I might be able to do the impossible, he said, 'Because I believe you are special.'"*
Liao to Lucy on Blister, *Bluecrowne*, p. 133
*This article is on a subject existing outside the universe of the Greenglass House series.***

## Biographical information

### Family

* Nathan (husband)
* Griffin (son)
* Tess (daughter, presumably)
* Ed (dog)
* Sprocket (dog)

## Association information

### Story told

* *Greenglass House*
* *Ghosts of Greenglass House*
* *Bluecrowne*
* *The Thief Knot*
* *The Raconteur's Commonplace Book*
* *The Boneshaker*
* *The Broken Lands*
* *The Kairos Mechanism*
* *The Left-Handed Fate*
* *The Dapperlings*

****K******ate Milford** is the author of the Greenglass House series, as well as the Arcana series, and *The Left-Handed Fate*.

## Biography

Kate Milford is the New York Times bestselling author of *Greenglass House* (winner of the Edgar award for juvenile literature, long-listed for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and a nominee for the Andre Norton Award and the Agatha Award for Children’s/YA) as well as its sequel, *Ghosts of Greenglass House*, and five other books set in the same world: *The Boneshaker*, *The Broken Lands*, *The Left-Handed Fate,* the crowdfunded companion book, *The Kairos Mechanism,* and her newest release, *Bluecrowne*, which also began life on Kickstarter but has been reissued in a newly expanded hardcover version from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Kate has written for stage and screen, and as a contributing writer at nagspeake.com she has authored scholarly articles on subjects as varied as self-aware ironmongery and how to make saltwater taffy in a haunted kitchen. Kate grew up in Riva, Maryland, and now lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband Nathan, two children, and their dogs, Ed and Sprocket. She is also a frequent travel columnist for the Nagspeake Board of Tourism and Culture.

## Inspiration

### Nagspeake

Nagspeake's name is a combination of "Nags Head" and "Chesapeake". Kate Milford grew up near the Chesapeake Bay and often visited her grandmother, who lived on the Chesapeake Bay, near Sandy Point. She always enjoyed creating imaginative worlds, and particularly enjoyed this one, creating nagspeake.com for others to learn about Nagspeake.

### Characters

Most characters Kate Milford comes up with herself, though Brandon Levi is based on her boxing teacher. Kate compares herself to Marzana, saying that she, too, really wanted a mystery, and just like Marzana would go around with her friend, searching for one. Additionally, she is sometimes anxious in social situations. One of the reasons she wrote about Marzana, Kate said, was because she wanted to create a leader who wasn't the typical extroverted type, but a more quiet, while still compelling, kid leader. She says that she enjoys writing about things she likes, saying she definitely shares Lucy Bluecrowne's interest in the sea and Natalie Minks's *(The Boneshaker* protagonist) interest in automata. Milo was created because Kate and her husband, Nathan, were arranging to adopt a child from China (it appears that this is Tess). She was given a prompt ("stained glass") in a writing group, and thus Greenglass House was born, and subsequently the Chinese adoptee Milo Pine. *Ghosts of Greenglass House* started with the idea of Georgie and Clem pulling a heist-gone-wrong.

### Research

Kate Milford enjoys researching for her books. She spent a few years researching for *The Left-Handed Fate*, topics such as the War of 1812, and spent four years thinking about *The Raconteur's Commonplace Book*.

## Trivia

* Kate Milford receives upset emails from parents who'd thought Nagspeake was real.
* Her favorite book as a child was *The Westing Game*.
* The first book that she wrote was *The Boneshaker*, although *Greenglass House* was the most popular.

## References

1. ↑ https://clockworkfoundry.com/faq/about-kate/
2. ↑ https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3091721.Kate\_Milford
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/kate-milford-created-a-mysterious-city-before-she-wrote-her-first-book/2020/05/26/6edbf8b0-946d-11ea-82b4-c8db161ff6e5\_story.html
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 https://stonesoup.com/post/interview-with-author-kate-milford/
5. ↑ *Greenglass House* author's note
6. ↑ *Ghosts of Greenglass House* author's note
7. ↑ https://www.hbook.com/story/kate-milford-talks-roger