I’m delighted to welcome fellow Next Chapter author Kathryn Rossati to my blog.
Recently, she offered fellow NC authors the opportunity to be interviewed on her blog. I was delighted to accept her kind offer.
It’s wonderful discovering authors in this way and finding out that we share certain interests… can you guess what they are?
Poetry and writing of course!
Time for this fascinating interview… enjoy!
Author Interview: Kathryn Rossati
Website/Social media: https://linktr.ee/kathrynrossatiwrites
When did you start to write? And what have you learnt about yourself along the way?
I’ve wanted to be a writer from a very young age. I was always jotting down story ideas in primary school, and by secondary school, I had my first novel idea. I wrote two chapters, but due to schoolwork, I never got round to writing any more of it.
After college, I decided to take my writing seriously and took a mini course plus two creative writing modules with the Open University. My intention was to do a degree in English, but after the two modules, I decided that I just wanted to go ahead and start writing books, so I did. By that time, I’d been introduced to National Novel Writing Month, which I ended up completing several years in a row. I don’t do writing challenges like that anymore, as chronic pain and fatigue has forced me to slow down and really pace myself, but it was a good way to kick start my early ideas.
Tell me about your poetry collection Roar/Raw, which I believe is about AuDHD.
Roar/Raw was released in September 2025, but many of the poems I originally wrote in 2019 after I received my autism diagnosis at the age of 28. It was a lot to process, especially as I was extremely burnt out and my mental health was not good, so writing my thoughts down as poems really helped me with that. A few years later, I also got my ADHD diagnosis, and so I rewrote some of the poems and added in a few more to reflect that new knowledge of myself.
Roar/Raw is published by Lemon Jelly Press, who are a small publisher based on the Isle of Wight where I live. They’re wonderful to work with and brought my poems to life beautifully. One of their main aims is to champion diverse voices, which is one of the reasons I submitted to them.
I believe you have several books published with Next Chapter. I spotted a poetry collection, Magic! Hissed The Little Demons, along with Cosmic Witch, a climate crisis witch sci fi, and a children’s book, Wings In A Wounded Sky. Could you share a little about them?
I’ve been with Next Chapter since late 2017 – in fact, they published my debut, Half-Wizard Thordric: Unofficial Detective (published under an old penname, Kathryn Wells). So far, they’ve actually published nine of my novels, a short story collection, and four of my poetry collections (Little Tales: Poems for Kids is my latest book published by them).
Magic! Hissed The Little Demons came out a few years ago, and is a poetry collection based on the idea of personal ‘demons’, and explores some of mine (such as imposter syndrome around writing, and past negative comments having more weight in my mind than they actually did), along with general themes of mental health, determination, and friendship.
Cosmic Witch is a young adult science-fantasy novel involving witches in space. It’s set 400 years in the future, with the premise that Earth got so polluted and overpopulated that the world’s witches came forward and helped clean up the mess and pioneered living in space. It’s told through multi-POV, and follows Tia, a witch with unstable magic, and her two childhood best friends, one who happens to be the captain of the ship she works on (The Merlin), and the other is the ship’s engineer and the person who designed Tia’s prosthetic arm after she lost hers in a terrible accident.
Wings In A Wounded Sky is a quest fantasy for middle grade readers. The story follows Rae, an orphaned Ogg (descendants of ogres), who finds a new family with two humans who have been transported to her world by a great tear in the sky. More tears appear across the land, creating chaos and threatening the existence of everything Rae holds dear, so together with a rag-tag group of friends, she resolves to find out what’s causing the tears and put a stop to it.
I love the sound of your middle grade magical mystery about a neurodivergent girl from the present, Nic, and a boy from the past, Nik. What prompted you to write this?
Naturally Nic/k, published in late February 2025 by The Book Guild, was first drafted in 2019 during burn out and right after my autism diagnosis (much like Roar/Raw). It’s the first book where I’ve had a character identify as autistic on the page (one of my other books, The Curse of Earthias, written before my diagnosis and set in a fantasy world, has an autistic coded character), and this was very deliberate, as I wanted to write a character that my younger self would have loved and identified with. So that’s why Nic, one of the main characters, is autistic like me.
For the plot, though, there are two specific things that inspired Naturally Nic/k. The first is actually my husband, whose hobby is practicing magic tricks. I found his passion for magic really contagious, and though I never wanted to learn any tricks myself, I did think it would be cool for my characters to know some. That’s why both Nic (Nicoletta) and Nikolai, who live in different eras, both love magic tricks.
The second thing that inspired the book, or rather, one of the main settings in the book, was finding out about the Thames Tunnel Fancy Fair. Very briefly, the Thames Tunnel runs under the River Thames between Rotherhithe and Wapping in London, and was completed in the early 1840s. It’s part of the trainline now, but back then, it was for pedestrians, and a few years after it opened, a big fair was held within it, full of performers from all over the world. The idea of an underground fair sounded so interesting that I had to use it in my writing!
What is your writing mantra? Or do you have a muse?
I don’t have a particular mantra; I mostly just try to show up and write when I can. When I’m actively drafting a book, I try to work on it every day, but with chronic illness and life in general, that’s not always possible. Recently, I’ve also had other writing projects take priority over drafting the novel I’m working on (like edits for an upcoming release, or completing my first commission), which has been frustrating at times yet also allowed me time to mull over different ideas I’d like to implement.
In terms of having a muse, I can’t say there’s anyone specific, but I can get inspired by things other people say in passing. I also get a lot of ideas from conversations with my husband where we mishear each other and end up giggling over whatever absurd scenario our imaginations then take us on.
How did you come to write poetry and stories? Do you have a preference for one type of storytelling, and/or poetry style?
Poetry has always been something I’ve done to help organise my thoughts or practice writing. I never really thought about having my poems published in a full collection, though, as my main goal was to be a novelist. However, in 2017, to help support my online presence as an author, I started a blog and ended up writing poems to share on it. After a while, I realised I had quite a body of work, and so approached Next Chapter about the possibility of putting it into a collection. They said yes, and so many of those early poems became A Book For Pandora. Since then, poetry has taken on a more prominent role in my writing career, and I think it compliments my novels very well. I don’t have a preference, either. Both mediums have their merits and work for different things.
Do you have a favourite quote from an author or poet?
I actually have a line tattooed on my arm from Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones. It reads:
Chrestomanci smiled and swept out of the room like a very long procession of one person.
I love it because of how smoothly it displays Chrestomanci’s presence. (Chrestomanci is an enchanter tasked with making sure no one misuses magic in either his world or worlds parallel to it, and is often seen wearing a flamboyant dressing gown.)
Have you any unusual hobbies, or interests?
I don’t know if it’s unusual, but I can play the ocarina, which is a type of vessel flute. I don’t practice much currently, but I used to. I’m also something of an artist, though I’m still refining my technique. I mostly paint with watercolours and gouache.
If you had the opportunity to meet one famous person from either the past or the present, who would that be?
Diana Wynne Jones. I’d love to have a conversation with her about world building and creating such intriguing characters and twisty plots. I’m not sure I’d be confident sharing my books with her though, as I’ve heard she was quite direct and critical when giving feedback.
When I first started querying literary agents (over a decade ago, now), I sent the book I was querying at the time (which went on to become The Door Between Worlds) to her old literary agent, Laura Cecil – who has since retired – and got some lovely feedback on my opening chapters and premise. It was so very encouraging, and is still one of the things that keeps me hopeful when querying new projects with agents.
There’s a wonderful talk that Laura Cecil wrote about working with Diana Wynne Jones, and it’s both fascinating and hilarious. For those curious, it can be found here: https://dwjconference.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Laura-Cecil-Talk-on-Diana-Wynne-Jones-FINAL.pdf
Bonus question! Is there anything else you’d like to add?
As of writing (November 2025), Next Chapter have just published my first poetry collection aimed at younger readers. It’s called Little Tales, and I’ve also illustrated it with sketch style drawings, which I’ve never done with any of my books before.
Here’s the blurb:
LITTLE TALES is a fun, whimsical collection of poetry for younger readers and the young at heart.
LITTLE TALES weaves magic and folklore with slices of school and family life, told with a cosiness and lightness reminiscent of bedtime stories. It also explores the confusion of being not quite a teenager, but not a small child either, and the expectations and challenges that go along with that stage of life.
Some poems play with silliness and humour, while others wield the sharpness of reality. Above all, LITTLE TALES maintains a soft touch of escapism to ignite imaginations and shed the seriousness of intense days.
Congratulations to Kathryn on her new release!
Here it is.
M J Mallon YA Author and Poet 