Catching Qat: Received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author K.T. Pike:
1. What is the name of the book and when was it published?
Catching Qat’s release date was October 28th, 2025.
2. What’s the book’s first line?
Why should I bother saving when I live between land and sea and can steal anything I want?
3. What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
Qat and Qrow were only eleven years old when their mother was murdered and Qat was abducted. Qat has no memory of the time before. Qrow can’t forget it. Fate brings them together twenty years later when Qat is on the run from both the law and Captain Rogen, the man who mentored Qat to be a successful pirate, assassin, and thief. The twins join forces with a motley crew, and as they race across the country, they discover they are all marked by a powerful legacy—that of the Drakkaen Nakkla. But for Qat, the journey isn’t about mysterious gems or ancient secrets. It’s about discovering what it means to be an integral part of a team and the profound emotional connection that becomes far more important than riches or vengeance.
4. What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
I went back to school thirty years into a retail management career. A class project reintroduced me to Dungeons & Dragons. To acclimate myself to the new rules, I started converting my LotRO gaming characters to D&D version 5e characters. As I did, their backstories came to me, along with their personality traits. One of my sisters asked me when I was going to write a book featuring them. I laughed because I’d never been a writer. But it sparked my imagination, and the next thing I knew, the characters were meeting. I knew right away that Kasaandra wouldn’t like Llani. And like ghosts who discover that someone can see them, my characters wouldn’t leave me alone. I started writing them down. Then I wrote thirty thousand words of a backstory when I realized I needed to learn how to write. When I transferred to UCSD, I added a creative writing minor. I wrote the first draft in the year after I graduated.
5. What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
Each character feels like an outsider in their family. I think many of us feel the same way at some point in our lives, especially as teenagers. The book is about finding those people with whom you truly belong and then figuring out how to work together. Relationships aren’t always easy, but everyone brings strength to a team. That’s why diverse teams are often the strongest. I think we tend to look for someone who’s just like us, but I believe there’s power in discovering our differences.
6. What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
Qat’s impetuousness is distinctive. I’ve never met anyone so unfettered by responsibility or concern for where they’ll be tomorrow. It’s frightening, actually. I feel anxious just thinking about not having a home, a job, or family and friends. A part of me admires Qat’s resourcefulness and self-confidence, but I know it came at a great cost.
7. When did you first decide to become an author?
2017. I was a late bloomer. I’d started journaling a few times, but it never stuck. I never found myself interesting enough to write about as often as a blog requires. I also get frustrated when writing on paper. I can’t write fast enough. Too often, I’d be halfway into an amazing thought, and before I could get the rest down, it disappeared. When I started the book, my typing speed was fast enough to keep up, so I kept going.
8. Is this the first book you’ve written?
Yes, this is my debut novel, but not the last. I have four that I’m currently writing. Two are within my fantasy realm. The other two are General Fiction and will be published under a different pen name.
9. What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
I’m a Library Branch Manager. I’m also now a publisher and marketing manager, although that’s still just for my books.
10. How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
That really depends. There are some months when I write nearly every day. I wrote 76k words during NaNoWriMo 2023. That was by far the most. There are other months when I can barely get in a few hundred words. Being an indie publisher takes a lot of time away from writing. Now that Catching Qat has been released, I can focus more on the next book.
11. What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?
The best part is having full control of what is published. I’m not worrying about how someone else is going to change it.
The hardest part is learning how to do it all…especially the marketing. And typesetting? I never realized how important fonts are, or orphans and widows. Kerning? Spacing? And just when you think you’ve learned it all, you find out that your cover has incompatible color profiles because you imported graphics from multiple sources, and now they aren’t accepted by the printer. But it was all worth it when I held the final product.
Now, I need to get the marketing piece down so everyone else can hold a copy of it, too.
12. What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?
Find a community of writers for support and workshopping. Join a writer’s guild or community writing club. Attend writing workshops, marketing workshops, and author talks. Start your author website and build your mailing list. Don’t underestimate the value of keeping in touch. And let people celebrate you.
13. Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?
Probably not, but maybe. I have big plans for the fantasy universe. There are six books planned for the Drakkaen Nakkla series. There are also sixty books already titled for a children’s series featuring Qrow and Talim as orphans who organize and run a street gang of spies. They solve mysteries, defend Riversmeet, and more. I also have ideas for an Ancestor series, some of whom date back 15,000 years before Catching Qat.
14. Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)
Healthy blood pressure? Writing makes me happy. I never discovered that as a child, and I never wrote as an adult. There’s something about getting lost in the words, the worlds, and the characters.
I’d love to make enough money to write full-time. It’s a challenge to switch my brain from work mode to writing mode when I get home. I’m most productive when I write in the early, early morning. The four to six o’clock hours are my favorite, when it’s dark and quiet, and still so early that my dogs refuse to get up. There are no distractions. No outside disturbances. Just me and my laptop. But that means going to bed by nine, and I’m still too keyed up from work to do that.
15. Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?
Brandon Sanderson…for so many reasons. I’m embarrassed to say I’ve come late to his work, and I’m still trying to catch up. The first book of his I read was a children’s book. It was just goofy enough to delight and encourage the imagination. I’ve been watching his YouTube videos for his writing classes, but I’ve also caught several interviews. I admire his business sense in taking some of the distribution in-house. I want to do that. Of course, I want my own coffee company, too.
16. Which book do you wish you could have written?
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking. Anyone who can imagine a bucket full of sourdough starter living long enough that it wants to defend you…is my hero.