A letter from Kate Morton to readers of The Shifting Fog

Read a letter penned by Kate Morton about the 20th anniversary edition of The Shifting Fog.

July 2026 will mark twenty years since my first book, The Shifting Fog, was published in Australia.

I’d already finished two manuscripts when I began writing it, but this one felt different from the start. I’d given up on publication by then and wrote with no expectations. I also wrote with a small baby—my first—on my hip. Literally, at times. I wrote for the love of storytelling and wordplay, and the joy of escaping into my own imagined world.

The Shifting Fog, like all of my books, reverberates with the many things I loved and felt and thought while I was writing it. Looking back at it now is a bit like watching a home movie I’ve only recently rediscovered, or leafing through an old photo album. I see the scenes for what appears on their surface—the story of the Hartford sisters and Grace, the passing of a particular time in English history, the elegant and inevitable decline of Riverton Manor—but I see other, deeper layers, too. Shadow imprints that cast me back precisely to the place I was in, and the person I was, when they first came to mind.

When I read the name ‘Riverton’ in the pages of my novel, for instance, I am here in the present, but I am also sitting on my bed twenty-two years ago with a notebook on my lap, scribbling ideas for a yet unwritten story. I’ve taken a brief break. My baby son is asleep in the room across the hallway of our tiny wooden workers’ cottage in Paddington, and I dial the ‘Riverton’ Child Health number, given to all new parents in Queensland, to ask advice on when he should be feeding, sleeping, burping.

As I speak to the stranger at the other end of the line, as her warm voice tells me I’m doing a good job, that everything will be all right, that my little boy is fine, I think about this wonderful place, this ‘Riverton’, from where advice is dispensed, and I picture a beautiful country residence in the middle of serene green grounds, where kind women are waiting near antique telephones, ready to allay the fears of nervous new parents. Riverton. I sketch the word in my notebook, and afterwards, when I return to my story, I remember my vision and know that the English manor where my characters live will share this lovely name.

 Each scene, each page, each thought within the book could tell a similar tale. I don’t remember them all. Some inspiration is fleeting. Some ideas barely leave a trace. Nevertheless, the finished book is a time capsule; a tapestry of threads discovered along the way and entwined to present a story that would have been different without any one of them.

I’ve learned over the past twenty years, that being receptive to the world and its suggestions, noticing and collecting useful threads, is essential to my writing process. I’ve learned, too, that the act of creativity doesn’t end with me. When one of my books is opened by another person, it becomes something new again. For while my experiences underlie the text, each reader overlays her own, transforming the book into a living, breathing story unique to her.

This, I believe, is the magic of fiction. This is its beauty. It is a conversation between two people, a place where two minds meet across time and space. It is alive and it is intimate, and it gladdens me enormously to know that a book will tell a different story depending on the day it’s written and the day it’s read; that you will bring my story back to life even as you make it your own.

So, whether you are a new reader, discovering The Shifting Fog for the first time (welcome!), or an old friend, returning to Riverton after many years, thank you. Writing stories, publishing books, and connecting with readers like you is a great privilege and joy, and I wish you much happy reading until we meet again.

KM

July 2026

---

The Shifting Fog 20th Anniversary Edition

by Kate Morton

Discover Kate Morton's multi-million copy bestselling debut novel, The Shifting Fog, with this stunning 20th anniversary edition. A rich and engrossing story of love, passion, tragedy and lies set in the gaiety, glamour, and grand country houses of post-war Edwardian England.

FIND OUT MORE

FIND OUT MORE