Kate Heartfield

@kateheartfield.com

7574 Followers 2704 Following

I write novels, games and stories. Coming in 2026: MERCUTIO and THE SWORDMASTER. Writer at CHEO Foundation (my views are my own). Former journalist. From Manitoba, now in Ottawa. She/her. Trans rights are human rights 🏳️‍🌈 https://kateheartfield.com

Kate is a middle aged white lady with glasses, obscured by a very possessive black cat.
Musicians on stage, watching Gwenifer Raymond on guitar.
A nighttime crowd with various lights etc on poles in front of a lighted stage
Main stage flanked with screens showing guitarist/harmonica player/singer Jesse Welles with folkies sitting on the grass and standing in the dancing area.
A festival stage with sunlit audience in low chairs and on stage in the shade, musicians.
Musicians on stage including a saxophonist and a bunch of hippies (complimentary) in the late afternoon sun
Heinz fèves à la Brittanique (brown beans)
Chapter 1: What fray was here? Steady, now. A line of men on horseback stretches across the dry valley. Mail reflects a grey sky. Pennants hang limp. The horses in their bright caparisons are patient. Mercutio, with his borrowed helm under his arm, wants to get on with things. His horse, too, is borrowed. Unbedecked, because Mercutio is not worth the money. The mail is borrowed, and the sword, and the surcoat with his father’s family arms. The minimum required for a citizen soldier of Florence. All of it provided begrudgingly by his uncle, who could not fail to equip the prodigal nephew who arrived on his doorstep three months ago and declared himself ready to restore his parents’ honour. By which Mercutio meant: fortune. To fight, his uncle asked? By which he meant: to die. In this summer of the year 1289, Florence is at war, as usual. Locked in a constant struggle of raids and sieges against the towns and families who support the Holy Roman Empire’s claims in Italy. The Republic of Florence says it does not need an emperor, and neither does Siena, or Lucca, or any of the other towns whose men are on God’s side of the field today.
A radar map showing a line of storms southwest of Ottawa, where I live.
A black cat cozy on a red couch but alert and looking off to the right of the frame
Renowned author Sylvain Neuvel in a large pink tentacly inflatable costume
Now there are chopped strawberries in the bowl
Chopped rhubarb in a stainless steel bowl
A square print flanked by two girls like the twins in the Shining, lines of downtrodden? children? and broken pieces of text about tears and sharing a womb. The central text reads "there is an emptiness I feel every day. We're glad we have you." To be clear I think it is very cool
A small box of timbits, otherwise known as doughnut holes, with a soccer theme
Two Writers. A Bookstore. And a Ghost Story. Join David Jon Fuller and Kate Heartfield to celebrate the launch of Venue 13. Tuesday June 16th, 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm. Perfect Books. 258A Elgin Street.
A Clues by Sam image showing under 16 minutes and a perfect solve.
The title page of Mercutio shows a red stamp of a fairy with outstretched wings labelled Queen Mab.
Clues by Sam showing solved in under 10 minutes with a perfect field.
Yummy plaintain on a festive plate.
A Victorian gasogene, a bottle with two glass globes and a siphon on top.
A graphic that shows a perfect solve in under 7 minutes.
The Charge play the Fleet at the Canadian Tire Centre
Black Forest cake.
Mercutio, a hardback novel with a purple cover, on a background of red roses
A drawing of a white man in late middle age with curly white hair and an unruly moustache.
A Clues by Sam board showing a perfect solve in less than 10 minutes
A paperback sits on a dark wood table illuminated by shafts of morning sunlight. It is The Public Scholar: A Practical Handbook, by David M. Perry.
Two women smiling and holding books behind a table in a bookstore.
Canadian Independent Bookstore Day 2026 Edition! Join us Sunday, April 26 and meet these amazing authors! Kate Heartfield & Amy Tector 10:00am to 11:30am Wayne Ng & Frances Boyle 11:30am to 1:00pm Misty Pratt & Manahil Bandukwala Alex Neve & Michelle Sinclair 2:30pm to 4:00pm 1:00pm to 2:30pm This weekend only! 20% off in-store gifts and books Grab bags Door prizes
A box of books and a black cat investigating
Pope Leo XIV 2 @Pontifex . Apr 17 #Artificiallntelligence systems increasingly shape and permeate ou mentality and social environments. Like every great historica transformation. this too calls not only for technical competence, but alsc for a humanistic formation capable of making visible the logic behind economics, embedded biases and forms of power that shape our perception of reality . 85 420 2.8K I 80K Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex . Apr 17 Within digital environments -- structured to persuade - interaction is optimized to the point of rendering a real encounter superfluous: the otherness of persons in the flesh is neutralized, and relationships are reduced to functional responses. Dear friends, you, however, are rea persons! Creation itself has a body. a breath. a life to be listened to and safeguarded. 181 t2 710 4.1K 191K Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex g ... When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity fo discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We :hus come to live within bubbles. impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed tc encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth 2:31 PM • Apr 17, 2026 . 435.3K Views
Sex, gender and society in historical queer specfic. April 18, 2026. 12:30 p.m. to 1:20 p.m. EST. Online. Photos of Kate Heartfield, Lee Mandelo, Disco Barrington and Faye Gabriel.
Small wrinkly leaves and red tuberous roots
Perfect Books & the Other Hill present SEASONS OF GLASS & IRON by AMAL EL-MOHTAR OTTAWA BOOK LAUNCH Hosted By Kate Heartfield APRIL 20. 2020 ALLSAINTS EVENT SPACE 317 CHAPEL ST. OTTAWA DOORS OPEN 7:00 PM EVENT 7:30-8:30 PM TCKETS: $15
Eight email subject lines offering various opportunities related to Kate's books, with lines such as "Invitation to feature Mercutio in the 2026 Reading Challenge" or "Your book deserves a wider audience."
The cover for Mercutio, designed by Leo Nickolls, is purple with gold and silver elements including a rose, a sword and shield, and a tower.
A comic book panel shows Incendio, a magician in a flamboyant suit, creeping along a hallway. He thinks: "All those years working alone. I thought I'd finally found someone I could trust: A man just like me." He says: "You just couldn't help yourself, could you? Let's just hope no one noticed you're cheating."
Google docs file with a sentence beginning "In honour of S h a k e s o e" with a correction suggested to Shakesome.
Kate playing the hurdy-gurdy, cranking a wheel which acts like a bow against four strings, while playing notes with a keybox with her other hand.
A kitchen sink with a wooden cutting board over half of it. On the board is a paper towel with nine eggs on it. There is something slightly odd about the play of light on the eggs (because they're hollow!) and you can see a small pinorick of light on the end of one, where the insides were blown out. The egg carton is in the background.
One end of a full hockey arena with the Montreal and Ottawa PWHL teams on the ice
Kate and Deanna smiling near the neon Joie de Livres sign in the back.
Kate is a middle aged white woman sitting behind a signing table in a bookstore beside a shelf display of her books.
Open laptop on a train table, with the Via Rail Canada sign from the station visible through the window beside it.
Hockey game about to start
Mercutio's purple cover on a tablet on a background of wooden planks.
Kate cranking a hurdy gurdy
A hurdy gurdy with a wheel being cranked. No sound yet.
Mercutio cover, purple with gold elements including a tower and stars, on a background of red roses.
A laptop, a partly eaten cookie as big as a saucer, and a latte in a red mug.
Email subject line: "Invitation to Submit Kate Heartfield for Netflix Adaptation Consideration"
A keybox for a hurdy gurdy. Basically wooden pegs that will change the pitch of two of the four strings.
A drugstore shelf with branded Bridgerton Dove body wash. Whispering Wisteria and Moonlit Masquerade.
"This is Kate Heartfield's masterpiece. The historical fantasy I've been aching for since Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Reading Mercutio was itself a fever dream that was both grounded in its gorgeous 13th century detail, and also left me gasping at all of its fantasy elements. Heartfield long ago set herself on the stage of historical fantasy authors, but Mercutio takes the spotlight." - Jordan Kurella, author of The Death of Mountains
A short video showing wooden bars inserted through the holes in a long wooden box on the neck of the hurdy gurdy.
A cherry-wood stained laser-cut wood instrument kinda like a boxy viola with a lock box on the neck with Morse code looking holes along it for the keys.
A black cat curled up in a grey armchair.
A clamped and stained box a bit bigger than a violin.