Kathy Rose is an American author of fantasy and science fiction from the Midwest, who by her own account started writing before she could even read, tracing full pages of books at a childhood desk with a light table, one of the earliest gifts she remembers.
A lover of dystopian fiction above all but drawn to every genre, and happiest reading outdoors, she publishes independently through Kindle, where most of her work lives on Kindle Unlimited.
Reborn, published in 2021, opens her five-volume My Life As a Merchant series, a gentle entry in the isekai tradition: Kirk, a middle-aged office worker who has already lost his wife in childbirth, is killed in a car accident on the way home from work, wakes in a sterile room with three doors and only one unlocked, and steps through into the body of a seven-year-old boy in a feudal fantasy world, run down and left for dead by a passing lord's carriage. What follows is slice-of-life rather than power fantasy, an adult mind negotiating childhood a second time, making friends, managing disability and slowly building a merchant's life, with readers praising its humour, methodical worldbuilding and refusal of easy wish fulfilment across the sequels Contracts, Family, Kingstown and War.
Her World of Fates series, beginning with Shutdown, turns to science fiction.
Away from the keyboard she hikes, travels, binges crime shows and defers to her cat, Nova.
