So, who is kat korpi?

kat is a late in life lesbian who loves to write queer romances mashed together with her other favorite genres. She loves all things high-octane and blockbuster, probably because her story sensibility is a weird Venn diagram made up of imprinting too young on Letty in the fast and furious and reading Sarah dessen at her brother’s basketball games.

While she’ll occasionally find herself in our world, her favorite genres to write all have a whimsical or speculative bent to them. She also has yet to write a book without a strong romantic arc, because she believes that fighting villains and kissing baddies don’t have to be mutually exclusive activities.

As An Author

As A Human

kat lives in the PNW with her wife and her 64 pound German shepherd puppy who has 2 braincells and too much pisces in his natal chart. When she’s not writing, she’s often sewing, gardening, or trying to up level her sourdough game. She loves to find new coffee shops to write at, watch bad action movies, play cozy video games, and pull elaborate tarot spreads. She considers herself a disco witch, a cousin to types of witchery like garden or hearth witch. She loves casting spells (in fact every time she’s ever needed to find a place to live, a spell has helped bring it to her) and she is learning how to read natal charts for her friends.

Writer FAQs

  • I’ve been writing since I was young (my first novel-length creation was written in a spiral bound notebook about a girl and her wild mustang and read aloud to my family probably against their will).

    Throughout college and for about 6 years after, I didn’t write novels. I had transitioned to tv/film and was producing while writing a handful of short films and poems in my spare time.

    Then in 2019, when I was in a soul-sucking job, I was binge-listening to the podcast 88 Cups of Tea and remembered how much I love novels and that I wanted to start writing them again with the intent to publish. That was 7 finished novels ago and I’ve never looked back.

  • As far as inspiration goes — I love movies and TV and often draw from my favorites for inspiration. I also sometimes will take a song I love and try to think up what Kat Korpi book would have that as a theme song.

    I have several routines for coming up with book ideas. The first is from my friends at the Turning To Story podcast. They have a 50 bad ideas list they use, where essentially you sit down and write 50 book concepts, letting them be as bad as they need to be until one (or more) spark for you. I love to give myself specific boundaries with this. For example, I will make a 50 bad ideas list specifically for a speculative thriller with an enemies to lovers arc.

    I also do what I call my “Idea a Month Challenge” which is exactly what it sounds like. I come up with one book idea every month (usually the best ones from a 50 bad ideas list) and I write either a query or a synopsis for it. Not all of these get written, and even if they do they may sit for months or years before they see daylight, but it’s a wonderful way to keep my idea brain sharp.

  • I don’t like to box myself in, because there are many genres I love and would love to write at some point. However, I am most drawn to things with a speculative bent or a unique genre mashup.

  • It does! I have a longer explanation of what being a disco witch specifically means to me, but here we’ll just talk about writing.

    I use a lot of esoteric tools in my writing. Every project I work on has a tarot deck that feels connected to it and I’ll use that deck to help orient me as I create characters and plot and even on the scene/dialogue level. I will read my characters natal charts. I do spells throughout the many steps of writing/publishing. A lot of these are things I’ve learned from Andrea Hannah, who has shown me so much about myself and my practice and for that I am immensely grateful.