About

Hi there! I'm Kaitlyn Deann, and this is the story of how I got to where I am today.

I have been telling stories for as long as I can remember. My love of writing began in childhood, and between the ages of 11 and 16, I wrote four novels—stories that, while written young, became an important part of discovering my style, my voice, and helping me grow into the writer I am today.

At 17, I self-published my debut novel, The Witches’ Sleep. The book went on to receive the 2013 Readers’ Favorite Annual Book Contest Gold Medal in the Fiction – Paranormal category, an early milestone that encouraged me to keep pursuing these wild stories that have always lived in my imagination, begging to be released.

The sequel, World of the Beasts, was released in 2014 as I was getting ready to start nursing school in January 2015.

I did very little writing from 2015 to 2018 as I got my nursing license, met and started a relationship with my now-husband, and then got my first job as a nurse on a progressive coronary care unit.

But writing never left my heart. I always longed for it, and I always knew I would come back to it one day. Come back to those stories still whispering at the back of my mind.

Fast forward to Summer 2018. I was going through a semi-dark hour of my life, feeling directionless and purposeless. I decided to give writing a serious go again. I missed it so much. (It was the least I could do for myself during that season I was in.)

Later that year, I self-edited and silently released a 30,000-word novella tilted The Brand of Anem. The plan was to write a 10-installment novella series (that series title was The Chronicles of Forgotten Countrymen). I ended up writing and self-publishing a total of 4 novellas in this series.

These novellas were unpublished in 2022 to prepare for a bigger project: novelizing (that is, rewriting the novellas into actual novels instead of novellas).

In 2023, Unravel, book 1 in The Forgotten Countrymen series, was published. Essentially, it contains the first three novellas.

And then in January 2026, I published Shatter, book 2.

This one was more challenging. I had to rewrite the 30,000-word novella Heart of Gold into a 100,000-word novel. The main plotline of the novella was preserved, but a lot more story happens in Shatter that wasn't in the original first iteration.

(Fun fact: the title Heart of Gold is remembered within Shatter as Part 2's title!)

My writing is rooted in a lifelong love of storytelling and a fascination with creating immersive worlds where readers can lose themselves—and perhaps find a little something of themselves along the way.