Indie Author Interview

Kat Kraehen

Tell us about yourself, who you are, what you write!

Thank you for having me! My name is Kat Kraehen, and I’m a queer and neurodivergent writer of queer and neurodivergent fantasy. I’m also a visual artist, which makes marketing (slightly) cheaper :) All of the art found on my social media was done by me!

My debut, Hail the Rising Tides, contains everything I love: gods and goddesses, elemental magic, a cast of queer characters, and two main romances: one sapphic, one achillean. It’s coming out in April 2026, but I’m already releasing a couple of short stories featuring each of the main characters on my monthly newsletter <3 (juuuust saying!)

What inspired you to become an author?

I’ll credit my third grade teacher, who I also credit with a lot of fun things like learning about planets, Greek gods, the lunar new year, raising mealworms and trying sugarcane. That was like my last good year in school pahaha. She had us writing and illustrating a story of our choice, and I wrote some silly thing about my pet lizard. And afterward, she showed us how to bind our pages together into a little book, which we decorated ourselves with fabric swatches.

I just remember how proud I was to hold my own book and flip through it. I was a voracious reader at that age and it had never occurred to me that I could also write something, I could publish something, I could hold it in my hands.

I’ve written countless stories since then, but my magnum opus was the dumpster fire I wrote when I was eleven. It was like three- or four-hundred-THOUSAND words, sucked ass, HAD A SPICY SCENE (Excuse?? I was eleven!), AND I printed the entire thing out and had my fifth grade teacher read it. AND SHE DID. Help.

What is your favorite part of the writing process? Least favorite?

This is hard to answer – I think my favourite part is actually editing, which I think is not a common response. I love combing through the story after it’s been written and tweaking it, rewriting sections, moving things around. On the other hand, it means I can fall into a forever-hole of “I can’t move onto the next chapter, I’m still editing!”, which is less helpful.

For least favourite, I don’t think I have one! I’d say the most difficult thing for me is getting the words out the first time, since I put a lot of pressure on myself to write it “right” from the get-go, which makes the first draft of anything take sooo long. I don’t dislike this process, it’s just that I place a lot of stress onto my own shoulders about it. But once I get going, I love it!

How do you go about creating your characters?

I don’t think I have a specific process for this, actually; the most purposeful thing I do is think “Wouldn’t it be funny if…?” and then apply that to the character, haha. That’s why Ione, the mortal vessel for the moon goddess’s earthshattering powers, is actually only slightly above average when it comes to magical skill. And that, in turn, leads to her self-loathing and determination to become everything she is supposed to be.

Another funny one is Kai, who is a master wardsmith and hydromantic prodigy – a lot of spellcaster MMCs are kind of svelte and tall and emotionally unavailable, so I made Kai short and muscular and desperate for attention. After that, the rest of his traits, such as his loudness and need to prove himself, fell into place naturally.

I guess that all falls under subverting one’s expectations. You might expect a human chosen by the moon goddess to be ethereal and powerful, so I made Ione haughty and, at times, childish; you might expect a fire priestess like Lina, who was raised to slaughter the moon goddess’s worshipers, to be broody or self-righteous, so I made her quiet and gentle.

What does your world building process look like?

Vibes. I actually don’t know if I have a specific process for this, either: most of what I do is ask myself “What?” and “Why?” a lot. Most of Hail the Rising Tides takes place on Oseidos, a tidal island, and the characters are worshipers of the moon goddess who have been locked in a generations-long feud with the worshipers of the sun god.

So I think things like, “What would islanders who worship the moon and sea eat?”, and the answer would be, “They’d be strict pescatarians, because red meat smells like burnt humans, and most of the Oseidosi would have fought against pyromancers and perhaps been traumatised by that.”

Or, “What would these people wear?”, and the answer would be, “Lots of white and silver to represent the moon, and also light, flowing fabrics because the weather is hot. Laypeople would also wear clothes in various shades of purple and blue from dye made of shellfish.”

I think there are worldbuilding questionnaires that you can find online – I recommend starting there and answering every question with as much depth as you can!

Can you tell us about the magic system in Hail the Rising Tides?

It’s water magic! It’s fire magic! It’s your run-of-the-mill elemental magic system and I don’t care if anyone thinks it’s overused haha. I was in my formative years when Avatar: The Last Airbender aired on TV and I never got over it apparently. My magic system isn’t based on martial arts like it is in AtLA, but it is very “I wave my arm and boom, ice happened.” It’s simple, effective, and allows me to focus on the characters and story without getting us all bogged down with complex rules.

I would be remiss not to mention ward magic, which is something the POV character Kai specialises in. Both hydromancers and pyromancers can learn wards (although there are water- and fire- versions of each spell), which is a more esoteric and difficult sort of magic. It also means my over-literal autistic brain can include silencing spells and protective barriers without getting distracted by thinking “But how is that WATER-related?”

"What magic class is this? *slaps duct tape on it* It’s ward magic."

What was the inspiration behind Hail the Rising Tides?

HtRT was born from me literally going “fuck it, we ball.” I’d written, queried, and shelved two manuscripts before that (and they both sucked tbh let’s be real) and I had been feeling really disillusioned with the publishing industry and my own skills. I’d been reading about books getting passed on because of overused or unpopular tropes, and worse, queer books (especially sapphic) having to be watered down to be made more marketable.

I got to a point where I thought, fuck the industry, fuck the market, let’s just write what I enjoy reading. Elemental magic systems are overused? Who cares, throw it in. Sun and moon gods are trite? Not to me. Readers don’t like books featuring both sapphic and achillean couples? Big wompity womp, I like it, it’s going in.

My book might flop. Who knows? But it’s the book of my heart, written the way I wanted it to be written, and overall I love it, I would buy it, I would fangirl fanfic AND fanart about it. This book is me, and I happen to like me <3

What's a fun fact about your book that you don't get to share often?

This doesn’t exist, since now that I’ve started an author Instagram, I can scream about fun facts all day long haha. I LOVE a fun fact, lads. Here’s two: first, Hail the Rising Tides was originally a dual-POV, and despite Ione & Lina being the main couple, the two POVs in the first draft were actually Ione and Kai! I had them both sort of leading their own stories and finding their own loves, but early readers let me know that this might put some people off since 99% of the time, the two main POVs end up together, which Ione and Kai most certainly do not.

Thankfully, an entire rewrite with Lina’s (and River’s) POVs added made the story a thousand times better. I also feel SO much closer to Lina as a character after having gotten up close and personal to her during her narrative.

Fun Fact number 2: this is for anyone who reads the book, but I wrote chapter 17 first. I also, funny enough, wrote it while I was at my day job (shh).

Do you ever get writer's block? How do you handle it?

All the time! I’m lucky that I have other hobbies to fall back on, which is what I do if “pushing through” doesn’t work. For me art block is usually caused by stress and self-imposed pressure from really reeeeally wanting the first write-through to be perfect (which is impossible), so if I can’t shake myself out of that, I work on short stories where the pressure of perfection and word count don’t exist. Like once when I was struggling with my current wip, I took a break and wrote a 25k-word AU merman story. In like four days. Four DAYS. Meanwhile my wip got like 600 words that week.

Aside from that, I’m also a visual artist and can be found drawing my characters if not writing about them, which does wonders for me when I’m not able to write and am feeling unproductive.

What is your current read or next up on your TBR?

I’m a mood reader, so my “next up” is whatever strikes my fancy at that moment, but I have a long list of indies to choose from! As for my current read, despite my background in fantasy, funny enough I’m reading We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. It’s very dense and not exactly a “fun” read, but it’s extremely interesting from the perspective of child psychology and unreliable narrators <3

Tell the people what you're working on and what you've got coming up!

I’m working on a rewrite of a manuscript I finished years ago tentatively named All the Quiet Gods. If Hail the Rising Tides is the book of my heart, then All the Quiet Gods is the book of my soul: I let myself get silly and emotional in HtRT, but AtQG is much darker and angrier. And it’s a standalone, unrelated entirely to my debut.

It will be a dual-POV sapphic fantasy with horror elements. One thing I’m particularly excited about is that one of the POV characters is nonbinary, which allowed me to dive into what that means for myself and my own identity. Aside from that, AtQG will feature the gods and mythology I can’t live without, a dying world, a witch who specialises in summoning gods, and a priestess desperate to fix her mistakes.