{"id":4315,"date":"2022-10-20T15:55:39","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T04:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/?p=4315"},"modified":"2025-03-21T14:58:52","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T03:58:52","slug":"meet-kathryn-hore-author-of-the-stranger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/meet-kathryn-hore-author-of-the-stranger\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Kathryn Hore, author of The Stranger"},"content":{"rendered":"

She works behind the scenes as an Information Manager at Deakin Library, but today we\u2019re putting Kathryn in the spotlight as we celebrate the release of her debut novel <\/span>The Stranger.\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How long have you been writing fiction?\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been writing fiction since I was old enough to hold a pen. I was about 12 or 13 when I wrote my first novel, a wild fantasy adventure that will never see the light of day, but which I still do have a copy of in the bottom drawer. However, it wasn\u2019t until I was in my thirties that I started seriously writing for publication, sending off short stories to open markets and writing the novel which eventually became my first published book, <\/span>The Wildcard<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What made you want to be a writer?\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Stories. I fell in love with reading stories as a child and then wanted to write my own. To this day, I remain fascinated by how stories work, how they\u2019re structured, how they have such emotional and psychological impact on us as human beings, and how we use them as individuals and communities to help make sense of ourselves and our world.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Author

Author Kathryn with a copy of The Stranger.<\/p><\/div>\n

How do you balance writing with your full-time work?\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I get up very early in the morning, basically. I\u2019m usually up between 5-5.30am to get in a couple of hours writing time before the rest of the day calls; kids, work, other responsibilities. The story then kicks about in the back of my head throughout the day\u2014the thinking is as critical as putting words on the page. I\u2019ll also take advantage of every opportunity to write: whenever there\u2019s ten minutes to spare, I\u2019ll use it.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve mostly written short fiction up to now \u2013 what made you want to write a full novel?\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Novels were always what I loved most and what I\u2019ve always written, ever since childhood. However, I began with short stories in order to build a publishing history first, to help with later landing a book deal. Short fiction is also faster to write and publish than with novels, which take years. I found writing short stories fun, but it\u2019s not my natural home. I have a huge admiration for the great short story writers out there, who can tell a complete character-driven story in only a few thousand words. I usually need tens of thousands of words (or more) to do the same thing.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is The Stranger about?\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Stranger has been billed as a feminist western. It\u2019s also a speculative fiction novel, set in a dystopian near future. It\u2019s about a young woman, Chelsea, trying to survive in an isolated walled town where the food is running out and the water is drying up and there\u2019s secrets being kept about the past.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then a stranger rides into town. Who turns out to be a woman. She has a gun on one whip, a bullwhip on the other, and unfinished business to settle with the town leader, who happens to be Chelsea\u2019s lover. As Chelsea gets drawn into someone else\u2019s frightened quest for revenge\u2014or maybe it\u2019s only justice\u2014she has to figure out what she wants, and how far she\u2019s willing to go, to find her own autonomy.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Kathryn

Kathryn with copies of her book in a bookstore.<\/p><\/div>\n

What gave you the idea for the book?\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I grew up watching westerns. My dad would watch them when I was a kid, mostly the revisionist westerns of the 1960s and 70s, where the grime was palpable and the blood splattered. I first met the Man With No Name in a comfortable 1980s suburban Melbourne lounge room. That\u2019s where I fell in love with these clever, sly, if violent, stories.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They were also very masculine stories. Women didn\u2019t have much of a place in them. So what interested me most was interrogating the genre I loved for the gaps I saw in it, and trying to figure out what the appeal of these stories was to someone like me, who did not seem a natural fit. I wanted to ask the questions: where did women fit within this kind of world? What might it take for a girl to survive, or thrive, in such a place? What does it mean for justice, when revenge seems to be all that is left?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What do you hope people get out of reading it?\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I hope they find a rollicking good story that keeps them turning the page. That\u2019s the most important thing. I also hope it subverts their expectations in the most satisfying ways, and maybe makes them question why they had such expectations in the first place.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How did you get your book deal?\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I was a recipient of the Australian Society of Author\u2019s mentorship prize back in 2018 (after I\u2019d tried and been unsuccessful at least three or four times before that year). The mentor I chose, Melanie Ostell, was someone I knew about from my previous creative writing studies. I knew she had a long and successful career as an editor before she\u2019d become a literary agent, and that she knew the industry extremely well. So I felt confident I could trust her as a mentor and that she would also be able to give me industry advice.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I worked with Melanie on a draft and she signed me as a client. As my agent, she then brokered the book deal with Allen & Unwin.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What advice would you give to people who want to write a novel?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Write. That\u2019s the first and only real rule. Put words on a page and keep on doing so until it\u2019s done. Persistence, more than anything, is key in writing and publishing, and for me, that means allowing myself to write badly in the early drafts. The only thing a first draft needs to be is finished; after that, it\u2019s about fixing what you\u2019ve got and polishing until it\u2019s ready. The best writing happens in the redrafting.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You can find <\/span><\/b>The Stranger<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/a> in our Deakin Library collection. You can also join us for a book launch celebrating the release of The Stranger at 5.30pm on Wednesday 26 October \u2013 find out more and register here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She works behind the scenes as an Information Manager at Deakin Library, but today we\u2019re putting Kathryn in the spotlight as we celebrate the release of her debut novel The Stranger.\u00a0\u00a0 How long have you been writing fiction?\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve been writing fiction since I was old enough to hold a pen. I was about 12 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24799,"featured_media":4316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[145,111,23,155],"class_list":["post-4315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-library-services","tag-collection","tag-deakin-author","tag-event","tag-interview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/326\/2022\/10\/stranger-banner.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pao1A6-17B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24799"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4315"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6048,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315\/revisions\/6048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.deakin.edu.au\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}