Former Waukee Elementary Teacher Kate Mathias Publishes First Book

Kate Mathias, a former fourth grade teacher, recently published her first novel in the Silver Oaks Series, Worlds Apart.  Kate was born and raised in Waukee and attended Waukee schools until she graduated in 1995.  She attended The University of Nebraska-Lincoln to study elementary education.  Kate moved back to Waukee shortly after to do her student teaching. 

“Waukee has always been my home and I wanted to come back and teach in the community where I grew up.”  Kate taught 4^th grade for three years and then switched her career to work as a real estate agent with Iowa Realty out of the Waukee office.  She continues to be involved in the community as she helps friends and clients sell and purchase their homes by working closely with the Waukee Iowa Realty branch manager, Matt Andersen on a referral basis.

Kate worked as a real estate agent for seven years until she and her family where relocated to Phoenix, Arizona with her husband’s job at Principal Financial Group.  “It was hard to move away from my family and the community that I loved, but we needed to go where the job was.”

She dove into life as a full-time mom of three young children ages 3, 6, and 8 and found life kept her busy running kids to activities and school functions with her husband traveling heavily.

In January 2012, Kate decided now was the time to make her dream a reality and start to put down on paper the story that had been stuck in her head for three years.  “I struggled with the idea of writing my novel at first.  The last few years I was consumed with being a good mom and wife and felt guilty writing.  I worried that it may take away from time with my children, but I decided that a piece of me was missing and writing filled that for me.  So I set to work and would write after I got my kids to bed usually from nine to midnight every night.”

After three months, her novel was completed and she shopped for literary agents in the traditional publishing fashion.  When a few rejections came in, Kate became frustrated.  Her mom sent her an article about Tracey Garvis Graves and how she had self-published On the Island and was having a lot of success.  The article pushed her to reach out to Mrs. Garvis Graves and seek advice.  They correspond occasionally and what she learned from Tracey encouraged her to self-publish her novel with Xlibris in May.

Worlds Apart was published on June 28^th and is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Xlibris, and iBooks.  Her two main women characters were formed from Kate’s Waukee experiences and one of the women is a 4^th grade teacher while the other woman is a real estate agent.  Although the town is fictional in the novel, it is based off of the city of Waukee.

This suspense novel opens when Piper Reynolds uncovers that she is not alone each time a crisis arises in her life, for in another parallel reality, an identical woman named Pip stands by to help her. Exploring Pip’s dimension, Piper soon realizes that although several aspects of their lives appear to be the same, small choices have significantly made their realities far different from one another.

As they both try to understand the dynamics of each other’s lives, things began to turn from fascinating to frightening as Piper faces her own death in a car accident, and at the same time, she discovers that her son has leukemia. On the other hand, Pip is confronted by her own dilemma as she becomes a target victim of a dangerous stalker who relentlessly threatens her safety. Together, the two women heroically join hands in trying to resolve each other’s crisis.

Kate is already deep in the second book of the series, Hiding in Plain Sight set to be released in 2013.  “This has been an extremely fun and satisfying journey so far.  I love hearing responses from my former Waukee teachers and friends.”

Kate Mathias can be followed on Facebook and on her website www.katemathias.com.