KL Kaine – Head Judge Q&A (Novel Prize 2026)

We’re very excited that KL Kaine has agreed to be the head judge for our inaugural New Writers Novel Prize, and here she’s answered some questions about her writing career, the types of writing that appeal to her, and the development of her (proudly AI-free) writing software, The Novel Factory.

Head Judge Q&A – Katja Kaine

Thank you for agreeing to be the Head Judge for the New Writers Novel Prize 2026.  First of all, congratulations on the publication of your debut novel, Blood of Gods and Girls, the hardback edition of which was published by Penguin in July 2026 (the paperback is due out in April 2027). As with almost all writers, your journey from writing your first novel to getting published took several years, so how did it feel to finally see your novel in the shops?

It’s funny because when I first set my intention, having my novel in the shops was absolutely the dream, and the goal that I visualised. But in reality, you don’t go straight from writing the novel, to getting the book deal, to the book being in the shops. It’s such an incremental process, where you see your book typeset as a PDF and then you see it with the cover as a digital document, and then you get a hard copy with a holding cover as a proof, and so by the time you see it in the shop you’ve already taken lots of tiny steps to get there.

So while it was – and still is – absolutely amazing to see my book in the shops, the moment where I really felt like my world had changed and my dream had come true was when I signed the book deal with Penguin. That was when I walked around in a daze, genuinely feeling like this must be a dream and I was going to wake up any time soon.

And then of course there was a two-and-a-half-year wait for it to actually get onto the bookshelves, but that is another story…

Your novel is billed as a “fierce feminist fantasy” and incorporates extensive world-building and memorable, powerful characters battling against an oppressive, patriarchal society, and contains some fairly heavy themes. How conscious were you of writing for a YA audience while exploring those more challenging themes?

I deliberately wanted to explore those themes with a YA audience, because I think that young adults are the people who are most learning about who they are, and discovering that the world is a lot bigger, darker and more complicated than they might have realised.

They are forming views about the world, and the older we get, the harder it can be to change those views, unless we make a very concerted effort to do so.

As you know, one of the main themes of the novel is about how the stories that we hear when we’re growing up (and beyond) shape what we believe about the world and, in turn, shape what we believe we are capable of, both as individuals and as humankind.

In our current society, a lot of those ideas are patriarchal ideas which do a disservice to women (and most men, as it happens) and limit what girls believe that they are capable of. I believe they also limit humankind to only half its potential.

I’m not looking to replace those views with my specific views; what I want is for girls and boys to question the messages they receive about female and male stereotypes, before they become too internalised.

Gender stereotypes are often presented as ‘The natural order’ when in reality it has taken massive concerted efforts to squeeze us into those shapes.

Your novel has a remarkably developed world, with its own mythology, social structures and systems of power. How much of that world did you have mapped out before you began writing, and how much emerged as the story developed?

I did have some ideas about the social structures and systems of power before I started but an awful lot of it emerged as I was writing. I practice mindfulness meditation, and I’m hugely interested in matriarchies and alternate systems of society, because let’s face it, our current system of society isn’t working that well. So I’m always reading and learning more about those things, and as I do that, they influence my writing. I weave little bits and pieces I’ve learned from the real world into the narrative, the characters, the rituals and the conflict.

As well as being an award-winning writer, you’re also the founder of The Novel Factory writing software. Initially, you began The Novel Factory to help you plan and structure your own novels, but now it’s grown into a comprehensive writing app (read our Review of The Novel Factory for more information). How satisfying has it been to produce something that began as a tool to help your own writing but has grown into something that helps other writers around the world bring their own novels to life?

It has been incredibly satisfying to develop the Novel Factory.

Before I started building the app I made websites for a living, and that developed into making software. I’m quite a contradictory person in that I love order but I am not naturally organised. So I have systems for everything.

For example, I used to lose my keys constantly and it drove me crazy. So now I have a specific hook, and I hang the keys on the hook as soon as I walk in the door, and with this system I never lose my keys anymore and my world is much better!

So the same kind of thing happened with writing my novels. I would have loads of ideas but I would put them down in the wrong place, or I wouldn’t be able to remember them at the right time, and I found it really frustrating.

So I thought, there must be a way to use software or technology to help support my writing and to streamline my creativity and my process. As I was in the fortunate position of having a software developer working for me on websites and software for our clients, I decided to sketch out an idea of how I wanted to organise my own novel. This included being able to click a button to add characters and access questionnaires that I had created, create locations, and add plot cards, shuffle them around and then link them to the scenes.

Once I had created it, I thought it might be useful for other people. So I sold it for a very low cost. That was about 15 years ago, and in the years since then we’ve added features, developed the software we are now on the third completely new version. The software has grown from making about £100 a month to having a business with five employees and thousands of users all over the world.

It’s absolutely amazing to have my own software, where I can decide that I need something for my own writing and I can make it happen, and also it’s really fantastic to know that I am helping other writers. I genuinely enjoy helping other people and seeing other writers achieve success.

Has developing software for writers changed the way you approach your own writing?

I don’t know if developing the software has changed the way I approach my own writing, but certainly speaking to other writers – both users of the software and other authors and aspiring writers – along the way has shown me how many different ways there are to write novels.

When I first started, the idea that there would be people who would just sit down with a blank page and start writing the novel seemed completely insane to me, and honestly it kind of still does. But now I know that there genuinely are these crazy people who do such things and not only that, but they write amazing novels! Novels which are just as powerful as any novel that has been meticulously planned.

So learning that, and realising that there are as many ways to write a novel as there are people who would like to write a novel, has definitely influenced both how I develop the software and how I write my novels.

Now that I realise that it’s possible to write a novel much more instinctively and intuitively, I do try to relax a little bit on my planning and go with the flow a little more.

The Novel Factory incorporates a novel-writing Roadmap that takes writers from their initial ideas for a story, through the planning, characterisation and drafting, to the editing and eventual publication. How useful do you find it to invest some time in the planning of a novel before jumping into the first draft?

I find it incredibly helpful to work out the main beats of the plot before I start, so I know where I’m trying to go. I think that if you do that, you’re much more likely to end up with a powerful, satisfying climax, because you can start seeding the elements and journey from page one.

I also like to outline my main and supporting characters to make sure I have a colourful, varied cast – but all of my characters develop a lot during the writing process. At the beginning, I know the basics about them – personality type, what they want and need, appearance, occupation. But it is when I am writing scenes and their conversations are flowing that I learn a lot more about them, such as their hobbies, family background, backstory and sometimes quirks and mannerisms.

Despite the fact that I do a lot of planning, I still end up doing a lot of editing, rewriting and shifting around of story elements and plotlines – usually because I’m trying to pack too much in and I need to simplify a bit!

The Novel Factory is proudly and decisively AI-free. How do you feel about AI’s encroachment into the writing world and the creative arts in general?

I think that AI has a place in society – just like any technology – but at the moment it is not in a good place.

I’m not in favour of tech-bro AI being forced down our throats in areas where it does more harm than good.

A lot of laypeople aren’t aware of the damage AI has done to authors (not to mention other jobs, and the planet), so I understand why some people still think it’s helpful.

But AI has been trained on thousands of authors’ work without the authors’ consent, and without any sort of payment. For AI companies to then use that stolen data to profit and threaten the careers of authors is adding injury to insult.

Then you have the people who are flooding the marketplace with low-quality AI slop, hoping to make a quick buck. There are short story writing competitions which have had to shut down because their submissions have gone up orders of magnitude and they don’t have the resources to sort through it. So this reduces opportunities for aspiring and established authors.

There are genuine writers who are being accused of using AI to write their novels, and the ‘AI detector’ apps are making huge profits from this, even though they seem to be so easy to prove unreliable. A writer recently lost a $2 million contract because he was accused of using AI. There was no proof.

And of course, to make matters worse, the writers who find themselves accused of using AI are disproportionately from non-dominant demographics.

I know I’ve gone on about this for quite a while now, but one last thing I’ll say is that even if there were none of the ethical considerations listed above, I still find it very sad when people feel they want to use AI to ‘help’ them with their writing – either for planning, or grammar or editing. Some people say they need it to assist with various aspects, but my view is that they’re doing themselves a disservice.

Because the way you become a better writer is by making every mistake in the book. By learning everything from first principles so many times, it becomes completely internalised. And you find your own voice by writing every single word yourself.

When you moved to Yorkshire, you started a writing group. How useful has giving and receiving feedback been in helping you develop as a writer?

Absolutely instrumental. When I started getting feedback from critique writing groups, that’s when I really started improving my writing.

For many years I wrote completely alone, and was terrified of showing my work to other people. There is this funny juxtaposition that we want thousands of people to read our books, but we don’t actually want to show it to anybody we might talk to.

The fact is you do need to show it to other people, and it’s incredibly helpful to get feedback… in the right context.

Just showing it to one person and asking if they like it is going to be of limited help. But the writing group I went to used the Milford method.

This method dictates that people take it in turns to take two minutes to give feedback on a piece of work, and during this period, the author is not allowed to speak. Then once that is complete, the author has two minutes to reply. This is really helpful because it means you don’t waste a lot of time with the author arguing or trying to explain what they meant. At the end of the day, an author is not going to be able to stand next to every person reading their book, so the words need to speak for themselves.

Hearing how my words had landed with multiple different people helped me understand where there were gaps between what I meant and how it came across, and also to understand how many different ways the same words could be taken.

You’ve spoken in the past about how writing competitions helped encourage you to continue writing, especially when you began to make it onto longlists and shortlists. How do you think writing competitions in general, and novel competitions in particular, can help writers who are working towards publishing their debut novel?

Yes, I am a massive fan of writing competitions!

I found them extremely useful as a way of staying productive and motivated – because I was working to an external deadline – and also as an objective way to validate that I was actually improving as a writer.

The people judging the competitions had no stake in my happiness, so when my work was longlisted or shortlisted, I knew it must be genuine, and not just someone being nice to me.

And when I did go from never placing anywhere to getting longlisted, then shortlisted, then winning – it was a great encouragement that helped me find the energy to keep going, when I was being crushed by the disappointment of being in the query trenches and being turned down by every agent in the western world.

Another benefit that I found from competitions was that when I started getting somewhere, it meant that I was making really useful connections which have paid dividends as my career has developed. Because of placements with Bath Children’s Novel Award, New Writers North and Writementor, when my book launched, those organisations were more than happy to support me in spreading the word and getting my name out there.

So I always advise people to enter writing competitions, and I often try to sponsor places in competitions in order to try to level the playing field that already favours people who have the funds available to support their writing before it makes them any money.

In general, how many rounds of revision do you go through before you feel a novel or story is finished?

I don’t know if I really want to answer this question, because honestly I go through so many rounds of revisions!

I feel like I’ve probably written about five novels’ worth of material for each novel I write, and have written and cut so many scenes, ideas and major characters.

But I think that’s just part of my process, and also due to the fact that I am so ambitious in my writing – I’m always trying to explore an aspect of the real world which I feel passionate about, and using fantasy as a metaphor to explore those ideas. Which makes things a bit more complicated than if I were just using any idea I found fun, because I like to make sure I’m constantly tying everything back consistently to the central idea.

So I honestly don’t know what the answer is to ‘how many revisions’ because sometimes when I redraft, I’m rewriting a third of the story, but sometimes I might be just going through doing a bit of polishing and tidying. To give you some idea, it’s not uncommon for my projects to be called ‘Version 11’ or even ‘Version 15’.

If your readers are horrified by that, then don’t worry! I have plenty of writer friends who also think I overthink it a lot, so not everybody writes that many revisions!

Do you have any tips for writers entering the New Writers Novel Competition? When reading the opening to a novel, what tends to make you want to keep reading? And are there any styles or genres that particularly interest or excite you?

Good question.

The first thing I’d say is that I want to be oriented really quickly – to know ‘whose skin I am in’. Within a few paragraphs, I want to know what character I am in, where they are and what they’re doing. Until that happens, I feel like I’m floating outside of the story, or sometimes feel frustratingly like I’m blind or deaf.

The next thing is that I want to care about the main character. I want to know that this is someone I can root for, and care about what they care about. If the main character is the kind of person I would not enjoy having a cup of coffee with, I’m not going to want to follow them around for a whole novel.

After that, I’m looking for conflict and stakes to keep my interest. It’s no good being oriented in a likeable character, but then being asked to follow them round their boring, uneventful day. Conflict doesn’t have to be life-threatening; it can be quite mundane and everyday – but it does need to be there to keep the story moving.

Finally, as a bonus, I would say you are more likely to get me if you can surprise me, make me laugh, or present an idea or concept which feels fresh, unique and intriguing.

While my favourite genres are fantasy and psychological thrillers, I will read in absolutely any genre if the story and characters are good enough.

What is your earliest memory of either reading or being read a story, and were there any early stories you were exposed to that had a lasting impact on you?

It certainly isn’t my earliest memory of reading or being read a story, but one that has stayed with me ever since I read it as a teenager (literally, because I have kept the book all those years) is a Point Horror novel called Monster.

Skip to the next question now if you don’t want spoilers, but it’s about a bunch of teens who start getting infected with something that turns them into monsters, and the heroine gets bitten. In the end, she saves her friends and boyfriend, but in the final scene it’s clear that while she has saved them, she has actually turned into a monster and is staring at her old gang from the shadows.

I was so used to happy endings in stories that the idea that the heroine could actually turn into a monster – but still sort of be okay – I found totally thrilling.

You mentioned Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women in a podcast interview in May as a must-read. Are there any other books, fiction or non-fiction, you have read that you would particularly recommend?

Naomi Alderman is one of my novelist heroes and influences. She explores aspects of our society, culture and philosophy with razor-sharp insight and clarity, challenging the beliefs we take to be facts, shedding light on how we came to believe so many flawed things, and offering ideas for ways out – all embedded in totally thrilling stories with flawed, complex characters.

I read The Power a long time ago, and I think that’s a fabulous book for unapologetically slapping the reader in the face with exactly how annoying it is to be a woman in a world which constantly patronises, undervalues and hushes female voices. Men should read it if they want to get a sense of what that feels like, and women should read it for the satisfying joy of momentarily living in a world where the tables are turned.

More recently, I read her book, The Future, which I found equally thrilling for its shocking twists and fascinating biblical analysis!

Finally, can you tell us anything about what you’re working on at present, whether that’s your next novel or perhaps new features you’re planning to add to The Novel Factory?

Yes! I am working on book two of my female power series, which is already in its fifth major redraft!

It’s been a hard job, and I keep thinking of it in terms of  ‘the difficult second album’. It’s funny how the pressure of knowing that this book is actually going to be published makes the experience of writing it completely different to all the ones before.

However, I’m pleased to say that I recently had some breakthroughs with the story (and simplifying it), and I’m very excited about how it’s going.

I’m always working on new features for the Novel Factory, and we are working on emphasising our Zero-AI stance, as we know that is becoming increasingly important for writers – both to avoid the meddling of AI in their work, and also to prove that their work is human-created.

On the topic of AI, we have been very negatively impacted by the AI disruption of the search results (Google cutting how much traffic it delivers to websites in favour of its AI answerbot) and, as such, have recently reassessed how we reach the people who would benefit from our software.

So we are planning a return to grassroots outreach in the coming years – getting in touch with writing groups, writing courses, and writing competitions like this one to offer special deals and demonstrations to aspiring writers who would like to have an app to streamline their process and help them write better novels. So if anyone reading this would like to know more about that, let me know!

About our Head Judge – KL Kaine

Katja Kaine is a Yorkshire-based writer of fantasy novels. She is also the creator of the Novel Factory software for writers and the Novel Writing Roadmap.

She has won multiple awards for writing, including the Northern Writers Northern Promise Award, the SCBWI Undiscovered Voices competition and has been shortlisted for the Bath Children’s Award and the Write Mentor Novel-In Development Award.

Katja is half Singaporean and half German and when she’s not writing can be found cooing over forest fungi, bending into pretzel yoga shapes and raging against the patriarchy. 

Katja’s debut novel, Blood of Gods and Girls, was published by Penguin in July 2026. You can read more about Katja on her website, klkaine.com.

A massive thank you to Katja for answering our questions, for agreeing to be the head judge for the inaugural New Writers Novel Prize, and for throwing in some extra prizes in the form of licences for The Novel Factory writing software. Note that every entrant to this competition will receive a 30% discount code to use when purchasing the software too.