Katy Haye (she/her) lives in the UK where she leans into the Brit stereotype by drinking gallons of tea, and the writer stereotype by staring into space and letting a solid 50% of the tea go cold.
When not writing, she can be found enjoying her garden or spoiling her two indulged cats.
Author Links:
Newsletter sign-up: KatyHayeNL
Website: katyhaye.com
Twitter/X: @katyhaye
Instagram: @katyhaye
Facebook: katyhayewriter
Goodreads: Katy_Haye
Operation Olive Branch: https://linktr.ee/opolivebranch
GoFundMe’s Highlighted by Authors for Palestine Event: https://afp.ju.mp/#info
For the AfP event we have selected the following 3 families to help boost their fundraisers. The details below were taken from the OOB spreadsheet.
Mohammed’s fundraiser: GoFundMe
Mohammed’s Instagram: @mohammedalbaredei
Ibrahim’s fundraiser: GoFundMe
Ibrahim’s Instagram: @ibrahimwithi
Rula’s fundraiser: GoFundMe
Rula’s Instagram: @rula_mohammed
You were one of the authors involved with the Authors for Palestine event – can you tell us why you chose to get involved with this, and which of your works you put up as raffle prizes?
I’ve been a low-key supporter of Palestine for years (by which I mean, supporting a charity working in Palestine and signing petitions and sending the occasional email to my MP). Like many people, I was horrified by both Israel and the world’s response to October 7th and needed to do more.
I was thrilled when a young man in Gaza, Akram, reached out to me on social media (we followed each other on Twitter) and asked for help. Finally – something concrete I could do to help! I set up a fundraiser for him (https://gofund.me/11ce9bab – still open for donations which are so needed and so, so appreciated!) and have been posting about the genocide and boosting him and others ever since.
The Authors for Palestine event was another welcome opportunity to help. It also provided a much-needed sense of community. It’s hard not to feel isolated when the media is acting as though nothing extraordinary is happening while a genocide rages, and “normal” life continues relentlessly. It was a breath of fresh air to join a group of people all wanting to help. I offered a paperback copy of Assassin, the first book in my Prince’s Soulmate series. All participants could also get a download of my short story collection, Only One Bed.
Do you find your sense of social justice and activism informs the philosophy of your writing, in terms of narrative and character arcs? If so, how?
I believe one of the most important roles of stories is to debate who we are – as people, civilisations and as humanity itself. A key role for science-fiction and fantasy in particular is to tell us who it’s possible to become, on both a personal and a societal level. Especially with the world as it currently is, I want to read and write stories that give hope for what we’re capable of becoming. My stories are set in worlds with medieval-levels of tech, but I use that to develop ideas around cross-cultural harmony, gender equality and queer normality, largely because that’s important for me in the world I live in.
As I age, I’m getting more radical (or perhaps that’s just a reflection of the world right now!). I’m currently undertaking a course on non-violent resistance and I’m planning a new fantasy world with a strong element of community and collective action rather than the usual myth of a single, extraordinary hero who rises up and makes everything better. I’m starting to wonder if myths of a lonely hero who is the only one able to spearhead change have been promulgated deliberately to stop us understanding the power we have if we stand together. And if nothing else, it’ll be an interesting writing exercise!
In The Merchant and His Lout you have some strong themes of familial betrayal and abandonment – how does romance (and specifically pirate romance) give you space to explore these heavier themes?
Romance gets so much snobbish denigration, but I adore it! For a start, human relationships are a key part of everyone’s life and romantic relationships are a big element of that. And crucially, romance stories are a known quantity – as a reader, you know characters will meet, endure ups and downs, and end united.
With that pre-established, as a writer you can then have fun with what else is happening in the story. In The Merchant and his Lout, it meant I could have Zakaria’s family absolutely pull the rug out from under him with the assurance that everything would – somehow – work out okay in the end.
What appeals to you about queer pirate romance, and when did your interest in this subgenre start?
In the same way that Zakaria looks enviously at Ozzo’s laid-back, free-spirit approach to life, I may very well have chosen to write about a pirate crew because they’ve made their own community and are largely free of social norms, which is very appealing to someone still fighting “good girl” expectations from my upbringing.
I think we all like pirates because they represent that sense of freedom from social constraints that we’d all like to enjoy – at least temporarily! And my interest in writing the series started when pirate captain Hakan (who discovers his own happy ending in The Captain and his Thief) swaggered on scene in Hostage, the third in my Prince’s Soulmate series, and utterly stole the stage. He was the cliché of the side character begging for his own story from the moment he appeared!
What research have you done for your worldbuilding, and can you share something fun or interesting that you learned during this process?
I write medievalesque worlds because I’m fascinated by medieval Europe (on the woo-woo side of things I’m convinced I had a very happy past life in the middle ages!). So there’s a lot of background research that’s been on-going for years which informs my books and worlds. To counter that, I write fantasy because I don’t want to be constrained by what’s real or what actually happened. I was in conversation with a couple of historical writers not long ago and they were discussing how they research even the tiniest things meticulously and I was, “Yeah, I just do what I like and if the vibes feel right, that’s good enough.”
Researching for my pirate books was, naturally, great fun. My best discovery was that pirate crews provided an early version of gay marriage. Same sex crew members might pair off (resulting in the word ‘matelot’ for sailor evolving to become the modern ‘mate’ as in friend), and if one was then killed (it was a risky profession!) their partner would get their share of booty.
Do you have a favourite romance trope to write, and if so, what is it?
I have so many favourites! Looking at my books, though, I’d have to say I especially love Opposites-Attract or Fish-Out-of-Water.
I love putting characters somewhere they don’t belong or throwing them into a new world or a new relationship where they’re completely off-kilter and seeing how they get on. Assassin (and the rest of the Prince’s Soulmate series) was an extreme example of this.
Kit is off-balance from the moment he meets Prince Talal, and has to revise almost everything he believes about the world. Writing that was terrific fun – and, this being a romance, I gave him Talal for stability while he was finding his way in his crazy new world. Similarly, Zakaria upsets his own world, realises he’s way out of his depth, and learns to navigate a new reality with Ozzo and the rest of the crew’s help in The Merchant and his Lout.
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