Q&A with Katie Huttlestone, Author of A Healthy Appetite

Katie Huttlestone made her literary debut this August with her dark tale of morality and mortality. A treat for weird girl fiction lovers, Victoria and Abi were delighted to sit down with Katie and delve deep into what inspired the novel and how it came to be published. We chatted about cancer treatment, medical misogyny, the process of writing feral characters and much more.

Read on for our Q&A with Katie Huttlestone....

Where did the initial story idea come from and what literature/media inspired you?

I started to write this novel on a dare to myself - to write the thing that most scared me. As a chronically ill writer, I’d always skirted around the topic of late-stage disease with my first two (unpublished) novels. They were also books about grief and loss at their heart but I hadn’t written anything quite as confrontational as A Healthy Appetite. Neither of those first two novels, in hindsight, felt like the stories that I was meant to tell. But when I finally landed on this idea of the pioneering drug trial and the terrifying unknown of patient zero, it felt like an amalgamation of lots of my own personal experiences but also a logical conclusion for all my other ideas.

I wrote A Healthy Appetite because I couldn’t find anything else quite like it when looking for a story that reflected my experiences living in the hinterland between wellness and sickness, this strange limbo. So I suppose A Healthy Appetite came from absence rather than any tangible influence.

That said, I read Mrs Jeckell by Emma Glass after writing my debut and I thought it was great to see another novel confronting the taboo of cancer and the way that we transform as a side effect of it. So I like to see my book as part of the same conversation.

I also love books about women’s bodies, desires and appetites so the likes of Woman Eating By Claire Kohda and Supper Club by Lara Williams were books that I saw myself in the same wheelhouse as.

In the redrafting process, did you make the story more feral as it progressed or did you have to reign it in?

The novel evolved over lots of different stages. After giving it to beta readers, I definitely leant into the feral and when I finally got my agent, she also encouraged me to feed that appetite (excuse the pun!). That was also what I loved about publishing with Dead Ink because they let you entertain all of your instincts since their whole brand is dark, subversive and spiky.

Since the start of the first draft, I always wanted to show a really clear and quite unforgiving shift in Hannah’s personality as a consequence of the demands of the drug trial.

I’m not much of a planner but when I did start loosely planning the novel, I sat in a coffee shop with a little notebook and I did a very simple table of before and after the trial and, in there, I was looking for extreme shifts of what Hannah’s behaviour might evolve into. So, leaning into the feral was definitely in my mind but, I also wanted to explore suppressed desires and let them bubble up and come to the fore!

But again, as someone who has to deal with chronic illness, I understand that sickness keeps you small. You lose appetite and you stop engaging in risky behaviour - your world becomes quite small. So the appetite, the hunger and the feral energy was a way of reclaiming autonomy for me and showing the extent of Hannah’s transformation.

From the drug trial, Hannah craves meat and becomes sexually frustrated. Do you think women’s desires are still suppressed and disregarded, and how did this influence Hannah’s character development?

I absolutely think women’s desires are still taboo! The book is set in the medical world and I’m acutely aware of how often women’s bodies are victim to neglect and generalisation there - we’re often ignored and not trusted. And whilst we don’t live in Puritan New England anymore, women’s bodies are still subject to restraint and surveillance and that’s where I wanted Hannah’s partner, Scott, to come in.

Scott attempts to monitor what Hannah is eating and how much she’s eating. He prepares carefully proportioned meals and he watches her eat. When her appetite grows, he is quite judgemental and uncomfortable with her appetite and I think that’s because it’s about her reclaiming space and autonomy. All of that to say, I think appetite and desire is meant to be subversive in the novel - I think that’s quite empowering.

In that way, Scott is an interesting part of Hannah’s character development. It’s complicated because I think it’s quite hard, in romantic relationships, for the partner to navigate loving someone with chronic illness.

They might have moments of startling generosity, kindness and love but I wanted the novel to reflect the complexity. Scott is flawed, he loves her but he’s also not comfortable with Hannah being free of their routine or his role as saviour. I had a lot of fun playing around with the nuances of that.

And, it was the nuances that made the process interesting. I knew I was taking a risk writing this story; people are scared of cancer and mortality and to be confronted with it is uncomfortable. But readers have said that whilst the book is dark, it’s also hopeful and that’s what I wanted. By the end, what Hannah is doing (or not doing) is morally questionable but she’s also really living for the first time in so long and, for me, it was a fantasy of what would it be like if I could suddenly unleash all of the desires and things I’ve had to suppress because of my own fears and limitations.

There’s also a maternal element and the comparison with her half-sister who’s younger than her but already has a supportive partner, a family and quite an idyllic life. Hannah feels like she’s back at square one and this intense desire to make up for lost time becomes dangerous, toxic and risky.

What has the writing and publication process been like for you?

I’m so grateful that a publisher took a punt on me and let me put this out into the world because I think more books should be taking risks otherwise we’re just writing the same stories over and over again.

As I said, A Healthy Appetite is actually the third novel I’ve written and I like to be really transparent about that. I think it’s ok if the first thing you write isn’t the thing that gets you the agent or the book deal. There were plenty of years of trial and error and rejection. I had to grow a thick skin but I think it made me a better writer! My first attempt at writing a book was quite self-indulgent, descriptive, sort of ‘all vibes, no plot’. Now, I’m glad that I didn’t get an agent for those books because they weren’t my debut.

Being on submission to editors was really hard as well because of the wait time and the conservative attitudes of certain publishers and their unwillingness to take risks. But Dead Ink’s whole ethos is taking risks on subversive stories and books that look at the dark underbelly of humanity.

I actually had a second publisher who was interested but I knew in my gut that Dead Ink was who I wanted to go with. They made me feel safe and supported. The process is inevitably scary but, so far, I’ve been having a good time! I know the harder parts are going to happen soo, when there’s a wider readership. There will be bad reviews, of course there will. It’s not going to be for everyone and that’s ok but I think it’s just about how I navigate that now the book is not mine anymore, now that it’s out there with a life of it’s own.

I’m proud that I kept going through it all though because there was a point after book two didn’t get an agent that I wondered if I could keep doing this. It’s so vulnerable and exhausting but I kept going - and that’s the only difference between me and an unpublished author - I just kept going. I have to pinch myself every day because I had two big dreams in life - one was to be a teacher, which I have been for 14 years now, and the other was to be a published author and I’ve done it!

What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Find community and find community early. Engage with other writers and support each other. Whether that’s through beta reading or being a critique partner. I’ve been part of a 2026 debut whatsapp group and I learnt so much through them. We shared opportunities and urged each other onwards. Publishing is scary and isolating and often quite disheartening but I think community can make all the difference.

It can feel impossible and some days you can feel hopeless but again, the only difference between a published author and an as yet unpublished author is perseverance, resilience and a dogged determination not to give up.

Keep writing, keep reading, keep sharing and enter competitions! Competitions are great opportunities! I was longlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Prize for Fiction and the Blue Pencil Agency Pitch Prize and that’s when I started to realise that maybe I can write and maybe people are interested in what I have to say. So I would always encourage people to enter those competitions, I appreciate not all of them are free and so it can get quite expensive but seize any opportunities that you can!