Hello! I’m a Singaporean German British author who writes young adult fantasy stories based in Asia-inspired settings that fuse blended-culture worldbuilding, feminist themes, and pacey, high-stakes adventures. I am also the creator of the Novel Factory software for writers and the Novel Writing Roadmap, and I am a supporter of the international literacy charity Room to Read.
I decided to seriously try to become a novelist on my 30th birthday, and 15 years later, my first novel was published.
Over that time I spent countless hours honing my craft, writing terrible novels, collecting rejections and finding my writing tribe.
The number of competitions I entered and got nowhere in is lost to time, but I am certain is very long. However, with much perseverance and a commitment to always trying to learn more, to write a better book, to do whatever was needed to get there, I started collecting achievements.
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. A previous novel was shortlisted for the Bath Children’s Novel Award, won the Northern Writers Northern Promise Award, was selected for the SCBWI Undiscovered Voices Anthology 2022, was longlisted for the Guppy Prize, and reached the top 10% of the Bridport Prize.
I am half Singaporean and half German and was born and raised in the UK. I spent a lot of my childhood visiting relatives scattered around various continents and having my future predicted by fortune tellers from Australia to Singapore.
Personally and through my business, I have contributed thousands of pounds to charities such a Room to Read (an international literacy charity focussing on fair education for girls) and Global Giving. I sponsor competition entries for writers on low incomes for competitions such as the Bath Novel Award, and I donate to local and global wildlife charities and projects.
I live in a crumbling manor house in Yorkshire, which is home to three generations, including my partner, two young daughters, mother-in-law, adopted ‘uncle’, a ginger hurricane of a Labrador and two fluffy cannonballs that spend a lot of time meowing.
When I’m not writing, I can be found walking with the hound 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 my microscope.
I am also the creator of The Novel Factory, a AI-Free software for writers, designed to help novel writers complete their novels. The cross-platform app combines writing guides and resources, such as plot templates and character questionnaires, and purpose built tools to help you wrangle your story, such as drag and drop index cards, timelines and automatic word count tracking.
I’ve integrated a step-by-step guide into the software, based on my own writing process and experience, to help writers learn the craft of writing a novel, while simultaneously completing their manuscript. The Novel Factory has helped thousands of writers find order in the chaos and get their writing journey unstuck.
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/
What’s the best AI-Free book writing software for aspiring novelists?
Great question! The Novel Factory is the best software for writers, in my opinion, and it is completely protected from AI interference or scraping.
I created this software to help me on my own journey, and it contains all the tools I use to write my novels – because it is the tool I use to write my novels.
As a professional author, I can’t risk my work being meddled with by AI, so I need to make sure I’m working in software which is completely free of AI tools.
It also contains a step-by-step guide to writing a novel, which is the process I use to write my novels, which I wrote down and then shared with other writers.
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