Katja Kaine is one of the hottest upcoming Young Adult Fantasy authors, securing a major six-figure deal with Penguin Random House in 2024, and is the creator of leading software for writers; The Novel Factory.
Katja Kaine is celebrated for her compelling and immersive narratives that weave Asian-inspired fantasy with strong feminist themes. Her debut novel was snapped up in less than 24 hours in a major six-figure pre-empt with Penguin Random House, and is due to be published in 2026.
In 2023, Blood of Gods and Girls was longlisted for the Bath Children’s Novel Award and the WriteMentor Novel Award. An earlier version was runner-up in the WriteMentor Novel in Development Award 2021. Her other works have been shortlisted for the Bath Children’s Novel Award, won the Northern Writers Northern Promise Award, been selected for the SCBWI Undiscovered Voices Anthology 2022, been longlisted for the Guppy Prize, and reached the top 10% of the Bridport Prize.
Katja is half Singaporean and half German and spent a lot of her childhood visiting relatives scattered around various continents and having her future predicted by fortune tellers from Australia to Singapore.
Personally and through her business, Katja has contributed thousands of pounds to charities such a Room to Read (an international literacy charity focussing on fair education for girls) and Global Giving. She sponsors competition entries for writers on low incomes for competitions such as the Bath Novel Award, and donates to local and global wildlife charities and projects.
Katja resides in a crumbling manor house in Yorkshire, which is home to three generations, including her two young daughters, a ginger hurricane of a Labrador and two fluffy cannonballs that spend a lot of time meowing.
When she’s not writing, she can be found walking with her dog through ancient woodland, bending into pretzel yoga shapes, painting watercolour, performing Taylor Swift and Einaudi on the piano to an empty room and peering at tiny worlds through her microscope.
She is also the visionary behind The Novel Factory, a leading software for writers, designed to help novel writers achieve their dreams. This innovative app combines intuitive, purpose-built tools, in-depth resources and storytelling expertise demystified into practical guides, providing invaluable support to aspiring and established authors.
Katja has integrated a step-by-step guide into the software, based on her own writing process and experience, to help writers get from idea to finished manuscript – while learning the craft. The Novel Factory has helped thousands of writers take strides towards their novelist dreams and is one of the fastest growing apps for writers.
Quick Answers
I’m A Writer – Can You Help Me?
I can certainly try! Before I got my book deal I spent a lot of time working out what my process was, learning the craft of writing and packaging it all up in ways that could be used efficently by myself, and by others.
The culmination of all that is The Novel Factory. It’s an app that I built and that I use to write all my novels, and in includes a detailed guide to my process, where I go from concept, through plotting, character development and editing through to polishing a final manuscript.
Its free to try it out, and you can find out more here (https://www.novel-software.com/)
Where can I buy your book?
My debut novel is due to be released in Summer 2026. If you’d like to be on the list to find out when it becomes available for pre-order, please sign up to my mailing list. Don’t worry, I hate spam as much as anyone. Unless you mean the tinned kind, which is delicious.
How did you become a published author?
That’s a very long story, which you can read a lot more about here
https://www.novel-software.com/katja-kaine-how-i-got-my-agent/
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