Author Kate Long reveals how Robert Pattinson helped make her books a success

It has been six years since a little-known actor called Robert Pattinson appeared in the television version of The Bad Mother's Handbook, before going on to become one of the most famous actors on the planet.

Now The Twilight Saga superstar’s connection is attracting interest in her seventh book, Bad Mothers United, published earlier this year.

The follow-up to Kate’s best-selling 2004 novel catches up with characters Charlotte, Karen and Nan who are back — older, but probably not wiser — and as hilariously catastrophic as ever.

The 48-year-old said: “I’ve had some really nice interest, quite a lot from American readers as well.

“There’s quite a following in America: the Robert Pattinson effect.”

The Bad Mother’s Handbook was the mother-of-two’s debut novel and became publishing house Picador's best-selling fiction title in 2004, translated into 20 languages.

As well as a young Robert Pattinson, the 2007 ITV adaptation starred comedian Catherine Tate and Benidorm actor Steve Pemberton.

Kate, who went to Bolton School, said: “I did have a bit of a say in casting. He’d just been in the Harry Potter films so he was a rising star but we still made him read for the part. I’ve got a casting tape of him still, sitting in a portable building reading out the part.

“He was one of several people we made read for the part. It’s just bizarre when you think what happened.

“His character (Daniel Gale) is out and about on the internet. He gets lots of tweets. They call him ‘adorkable’.

“He’s a really bonny lad. I didn’t have a huge amount to do with him but I sat and had a coffee and a chat with him. He was only 19. I didn’t really take a huge amount of notice of him because there was that much going on.

“There was Catherine Tate, Steve Pemberton, Anne Reid, big names, people I really admire.”

When Kate was growing up, she has happy memories of making regular trips to Blackrod Library where there was a librarian called Mrs Quinn.

She said: “She was great with me. She was almost like another mother. I remember it in the days before it moved. It got rebuilt in the 1980s.

“I remember going with my dad when it was a room above the health centre with really uneven lino floors. There would be books I would take out again and again, the same books.

“My mum used to read to me from being young. I was just brought up like that.

“I remember being interested in words, repeating words, new words that I had learnt, thinking, oh what a great word. When I was 14 I remember copying out the whole of The Lady of Shalott for no reason at all. That was quite an obsessive thing to do.

“My mum used to read me poems that were beyond my years but something would go in.

“A lot of the books I had, had been passed down to me by my cousin who was older. Books from the 30s, 40s and 50s. Sinister, narrative poems, a lot of gothic texts.”

Between January and April last year, Bolton Council closed a third of its 15 libraries — Astley Bridge, Oxford Grove, Heaton, Highfield, and Castle Hill — in a bid to save £407,000.

Kate said: “It’s disgusting, absolutely disgraceful because they give so much.

“They’re a marker of civilisation. To have something like a free book lending area where people can gather is the mark of a civilised society. The idea of them closing is criminal.”

Kate, who now lives in Shropshire but whose parents still live in Blackrod, previously worked full-time as an English teacher, while also juggling motherhood and trying to pen her first novel.

“I had my first baby and I was so busy and so tired. It was taking all my time to get washed and dressed and I was working full-time as a teacher.”

She added: “I always liked the idea but I never thought that somebody from my background could be a writer. I thought you had to be a lot posher.

“It was a good 10 years between me starting to write and having a novel published.”

Her latest book, about a family with two daughters, one with anorexia, is due to be published next spring.