Katja Kaine is a Yorkshire-based half-Singaporean, half-German debut author. She is also the creator of The Novel Factory writing software used by tens of thousands of authors. Her debut YA fantasy Blood of Gods and Girls has been acquired by PRH Children’s in a major six-figure pre-empt. Katja shares her query letter, writing journey, and how The Novel Factory helps her to create her own novels.

Huge congratulations again on your debut book deal. You’ve said it took thirteen years to get an agent, then less than a year to get the book deal of a lifetime. Is the deal all the sweeter for the years invested in becoming the writer you are now?

Absolutely! Now I’m here, I am grateful for how long it took because it meant that I was able to learn so much more and I feel like I’m on much more stable ground than if I had got more ‘lucky’.

This goes for my understanding of the craft of writing, and also the publishing industry.

With my writing, having all those extra years to experiment, fail and learn the nuts and bolts and the techniques means that I understand much more of why what I’ve written works, and it means that when I’m having trouble with a part of a story, I’m more able to identify what the problem is, and be able to find a way to resolve it.

Of course this doesn’t mean I’m immune to getting things wrong or totally getting stuck! It just means less of what I do is done on an instinct that I don’t understand and therefore am at the mercy of.

With regards to the publishing industry, my eyes are much more wide open than they would have been if I’d got an agent or a book deal within the first five years of writing. When I started, I assumed that the ‘end goal’ was getting an agent, and once you had that, then everything else would follow. Now I’m much more aware that getting an agent is only the first mountain you have to reach the peak of. Once you get there you see a range of more mountains stretching into the distance, and you have to keep climbing each of them in turn.

Because once you get an agent, a book deal isn’t guaranteed, and if you get a book deal, success of your book isn’t guaranteed etc etc. If I’d found this out after I’d used all my energy getting an agent, I think it would have been crushing. But because I saw getting an agent as one of the steps, I was ready to brace myself for the next mountain.

This isn’t to say that other people can’t have the same depth of knowledge of writing and the industry in a much shorter time, but personally it took me a long time to get to grips with these things.

“I found one of the most frustrating things about writing was not knowing whether I was actually improving. I definitely was, but I spend a lot of time doubting myself, because my own judgement couldn’t be relied on in the matter.” Katja Kaine

Over the years, you queried several manuscripts before receiving multiple offers of representation for Blood of Gods and Girls and signing with Maddy Belton at MMA. What was that experience like and how did you decide which agent to accept?

Yes! I had written so many manuscripts before I wrote ‘the one’.

Most of my previous manuscripts didn’t get any full requests at all, but a couple of them had one or two tantalising full requests that didn’t turn into offers of representation.

But with Blood of Gods and Girls, I had worked with a fantastic editor at the Golden Egg Academy, and I believe that it’s with her help that I managed to create a manuscript tight and consistent enough to leap the hurdle.

I did have a list of favourite agents when I started subbing, and Maddy was actually right at the top of the list in yellow highlighter – I’m not even exaggerating.

But I made the strategic decision not to submit to her right away. I wanted to prove that my submission package was up to scratch, and not blow my chances with something that could be tweaked to get it there.

This was definitely the right decision, because I got feedback from some agents that it was good, but that I should cut the prologue and move that section to after the first three chapters. I was sure that was a terrible idea, but I did it, and it was the best idea ever.

Once I did that, I did start getting offers, and soon I had multiple offers and my head was spinning. That’s when I subbed to Maddy, and experienced the longest week of my life waiting for her to reply – relentlessly playing through two scenarios in my head, one where she said yes, and the other where she said no.

Then she said yes and it felt completely surreal.

How did you pitch your novel and yourself in your successful query letter?

I’ll let my query letter answer this one directly!

Dear Maddy,

I am a huge admirer of the Madeleine Milburn Agency, and when I heard you had joined and were specialising in children’s and SFF, and read your bio where so much resonated with me, it felt like the stars were aligning. I am not exaggerating when I say you are number one on my list of preferred agents. I love MM for being female-led, bold and ambitious, and those qualities make it the perfect fit for me and my writing. Furthermore, I believe I have the skills, energy and attitude to become a great asset to you and the agency.

When She Bleeds, The Kingdom Falls.

A virgin sacrifice escapes and vows to free her island’s cursed Goddess, but the cruel Immortal King who stole her childhood will destroy everything she loves to stop her.

At five years old, Nisha was selected to be the Living Goddess – a mortal vessel for the great Goddess Shantavi: worshipped by day, subjected to horrific rituals by night. But on her twelfth birthday, Nisha caused a great scandal by fleeing before she could be sacrificed at the hands of the Immortal King. She has lived on the streets in hiding ever since. Until now, at nineteen, when little Ratna – the only family she has left – is chosen to be the next Living Goddess. Nisha will not let that happen.

YA crossover Blood of Gods and Girls (86,000 words) is a fiery feminist fantasy set in a Singapore-inspired melting pot of Eastern culture. It features powerful female friendships, romance, betrayal and action-packed adventure. Nisha must win the respect of a matriarchal Golden Eagle warrior; navigate her feelings for a holy man who represents those she hates – but claims to be on her side; and find the weakness of a King who possesses immortality – while travelling across sweeping landscapes of snowy mountain ranges, dusty red cities set into canyon walls and and towering stone forests. I believe it will appeal to fans of The Gilded Ones, Children of Blood and Bone and Girls of Paper and Fire.

I am half Singaporean and half German, and I live in Yorkshire. I am the creator of the Novel Factory software for novel writers, through which I have a mailing list of 60k writers, who have been following the highlights of my writing journey. I recently presented a webinar on Plot Structure which was attended by about 500 writers. When I’m not writing, I think about stories while taking long walks through ancient forest with my dog, trying to get into impossible yoga poses and travelling to faraway lands.

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. My other works have been shortlisted for the Bath Children’s Novel Award, selected for the SCBWI Undiscovered Voices Anthology 2022, longlisted for the Guppy Prize, and reached the top 10% of the Bridport Prize.

Sincerely,

Katja Kaine

Have your competition listings been an important part of your author journey?

I am a huge advocate of using writing competitions on your path to success.

Initially, one of the main benefits is external accountability. Writers are famous for procrastinating, and knowing there is a deadline out there that is not going to budge for you, can be really helpful in making you actually sit down and write something.

Then, as you progress and improve, it’s one of the only ways you can get fairly reliable feedback on whether you’re actually getting better.

I found one of the most frustrating things about writing was not knowing whether I was actually improving. I definitely was, but I spend a lot of time doubting myself, because my own judgement couldn’t be relied on in the matter.

And it’s all very well asking other people, but what if they’re just being nice?

But with competitions, you have an impartial judge of you work, who is not going to give you a listing just out of kindness.

I started entering competitions early on, and in the early years I didn’t get anywhere at all. But then, after a while, I started getting longlisted, and then I started getting shortlisted.

When I got shortlisted for the Bath Children’s Novel Award it was a huge deal for me, as this is one of the most prestigious and well-respected awards for unpublished writers. It really strongly indicated to me that my work was of a good quality and had real potential.

One thing to note is that while they are more impartial, the judging of competition entries is still massively subjective. So while I was edging my way up the listings, I was still having competitions where I didn’t get anywhere at all. I say this because I don’t want people to enter only a couple of competitions and think that if they don’t get anywhere that means their writing is no good – that’s not the case at all.

Of course, not everyone can afford to enter competitions all the time, as they can be expensive, which is why I strongly support initiatives such as the one Bath does, which offers sponsored places to people on low incomes.

I feel so strongly about this, that my company sponsors some of these places, and we sponsor places in some other competitions as well.

Tell us about The The Novel Factory: how and why did you create it, and how does it work?

I have always been the sort of person who, if I find that there’s something I’d like and it’s not out there, I will create it myself.

So when I started writing, I was having a lot of trouble keeping track of all my character notes, my master documents, and also holding onto all the knowledge I was learning from various books and courses on the craft of novel writing.

I was running a very small (just me and one developer) website and software design company at the time, so I made a design of what I wanted the software to do for me – I wanted to be able to click a button which would add a character with all the important prompts listed and easy to fill out, and I wanted to be able to click to add a bunch of scenes in an established story structure, that I could then flesh out, and I wanted to be able to set a word count goal and then have the software track my progress against that and show it on a graph.

I also designed it to have dedicated sections for premise, synopses, locations and notes.

At the same time I was trying to create a repeatable process for writing a novel, in order to be more productive and waste less time wondering what I should be working on next, or working on things that weren’t useful. I read about quite a few different approaches, and the one that made the most sense to me was the Snowflake Method, proposed by Randy Ingermanson, where you start with a core idea and then keep adding layers and detail. I started by using Randy’s steps, but then soon found I wanted to add a lot of my own stages, and weave in many of the techniques I had learned from other writing craft books. After a while I had pinned down my own 16 step process to go all the way from idea to submission package, via plotting, character development, location development, multiple drafts and more.

When I had it all written down, I integrated it into the software, and made tweaks to the software to make sure it had the right spaces to made it really convenient to go through all the steps.

I started selling the software alongside my normal website and software development business, but I didn’t have any spare money to market it, so our community has grown pretty much only through word of mouth over the years. But enough people have liked the software and recommended it to others (I have pages and pages of testimonials from people saying how much it’s helped them organise their thoughts and become so much more productive and in control of their novels) that that side of the business grew until I gave upon doing the websites and software development altogether and focussed all my energies on improving The Novel Factory, and on my own writing.

The Novel Factory is known for helping writers to write more efficiently by staying organised and on task. Is it more suited to planners, pantsers or both?

So, I always assumed that The Novel Factory is a natural fit for planners, and it definitely is. Planners love all the different places to keep all the planning data and all the information that builds up the layers of a complex, interesting character. They love the plot templates and all the prompts.

What I wasn’t expecting was to get such positive feedback from pantsers, because I thought – all they need is a black page, and then they just get on with it, right?

But what often happens is that many pantsers actually want to have a little more structure in their writing. They don’t want to get mired in excel spreadsheet hell, but at the same time, they are aware that writing with no plan at all often means an eye watering amount of editing and reworking.

I’ve had quite a few pantsers write to me saying they really enjoy doing some of the planning stages before they get into the free flow of writing – they still don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in the story, so it doesn’t take the mystery away – but they have a clear direction, and their first draft is in much better shape than otherwise.

Another thing that pantsers have told me is that they still like to write their first draft completely blind, but then they will use the software to retroactively assess the structure and the story beats, pacing etc. It can help people identify the issue, in cases where they know something is wrong, but they’re not sure what.

What part of the software are you most proud of?

That’s a really tough question!

It would be hard to pin it down to one section or feature of the software, because I think it’s strength lies in the fact all of the different aspects and stages of writing a novel are covered (or tried to!) in a holistic, integrated way.

I am very proud of how intuitive it is, because that was what put me off using Scrivener back when I wanted something to organise my work. I think Scrivener is an incredible app, and loads of writers swear by it, but I wasn’t willing to invest hours in learning it without being sure it was going to help me, and I found the interface quite busy and cluttered, and I found that really affected my concentration. I’m the kind of person that can’t focus if my desk is covered in clutter, and the same goes for software I use.

So I’m proud of the fact that in my opinion the interface is clean, elegant and intuitive – and while there is a great detail of functionality, it’s all tucked away so it doesn’t break your flow when you don’t need it.

How did you build in the flexibility to make the software work for all kinds of writers?

To be honest, in the beginning I wasn’t thinking about making something that would suit lots of writers. I was only thinking about making something that would suit me.

But over the years, as our userbase has grown, that has definitely shifted, and while I am still largely guided by what I need as a writer, there are now other voices in there too, as many of our users regularly email us with their feedback and feature requests. We take each of these seriously and they go into our development queue, and if a feature is requested more than once, then it gets bumped up the list.

We’ve also added a lot more customisation features in recent years, to allow users to set the software up to meet their unique flow – such as being able to add custom panels with their own preferred questions and content.

Is there a ‘typical’ Novel Factory user?

That’s another hard question to answer. We have very young users taking their first steps in storytelling, all the way up to retirees working on their memoirs and cowboy stories!

I think the majority or our users are people who have just started pursuing their dream of writing a book, and are looking for guidance on how you’re supposed to navigate such a gargantuan task. The next large group is people who have already written one or more novels, but can feel something is missing and are feeling frustrated, and like they could be a lot more productive.

People who feel lost and confused in their novel notes, or aren’t sure the best way to structure their stories, or develop three dimensional, interesting characters are the ones who find the most value in our software.

Is the program best suited for new manuscript projects, or can you make it work if partway through a draft?

The software is designed to help you from the very first stages of having an idea, and it has prompts and guidance and places to keep all of your ideas in order, so it’s really got a lot of value if you can start using it from the very beginning.

However, it does also have an import feature, so if you have already started writing your novel, you can bring it into The Novel Factory and then keep going from there. It also has a clever feature where you can get the software to scan your data and automatically link your characters with you scenes.

Can you share some books which have been written with The Novel Factory and gone on to find publishing success?

My own is the obvious answer!

There are also quite a few other traditionally and self-published authors whose details can be found on our website, people writing everything from thrillers to mysteries to adventure and children’s books.

Do you offer a trial so that writers can try the software out to see if it’s for them?

We do!

We offer a free trial for 30 days, and we don’t take any credit card details for that, so people who try it don’t need to worry about remembering to cancel anything.

The free trial has all the features included, and if do a lot of work in it, but ultimately decide not to continue, then you can export every word, you’re not locked into it.

Do you have versions for both desktop and Mac?

Yes!

You can log into the software directly into your browser, and you can also download it to your desktop – both Windows and Mac, and also to your phone.

How do you combine your own writing schedule with running the Novel Factory?

I have a colour coded spreadsheet with every half hour of my week blocked out and dedicated to either writing, the Novel Factory, taking care of my children, waking the dog, and other regular activities!

I normally spend most of the morning writing and then come in to work on the Novel Factory business just before lunch and then for the rest of the day until I need to take care of my daughters.

I have the spreadsheet to make sure I spend as little time as possible wondering what I should be working on, and also so I have a clear idea of how many hours I’m going to have available each week for my various commitments and passions.

But I could really do with about twice as many hours in every day!

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I just wanted to thank you for allowing me to share a little about my writing and software, and I want to say what an honour it has been to be placed with such a prestigious award as the Bath Children’s Novel Award.

And I’d love to offer your community an exclusive code, if they do try The Novel Factory and decide they would like to subscribe.

They can enter: BATHNOVEL during the checkout to receive a 30% discount on the first year of any annual subscription at https://www.novel-software.com/

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