Caitlin Breeze: On Confronting Power Systems Through Fantasy
In this interview, author Caitlin Breeze discusses the inspiration behind her new fantasy novel, The Fox Hunt.
Caitlin Breeze lives in London, in a tiny house full of books. After a BA in Classics & Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge—and a Creative MA from Falmouth University in Cornwall, her favorite corner of the world—she currently works as a creative director. The Fox Hunt is her first novel, and was shortlisted for The Cheshire Novel Prize. Follow her on Instagram.
In this interview, Caitlin discusses the inspiration behind The Fox Hunt, her advice for other writers, and more.
Name: Caitlin Breeze
Literary agent: Nicole Cunningham at Trellis Literary Management
Book title: The Fox Hunt
Publisher: Little, Brown
Release date: February 17, 2026
Genre/category: Fantasy
Elevator pitch: The Fox Hunt is a thrilling dark academia fantasy novel about the power of transformation. When Emma Curran’s mortal life is sacrificed to pay for the privilege of England’s most powerful young men, she discovers an ancient magic may be the key to regaining all she holds dear.
What prompted you to write this book?
The core of the novel had been in my head for several years. A friend had told me about a night in Oxford when a group of students held a human fox hunt. The male students styled themselves as hunters, chasing female students as foxes through the city. The image stuck with me.
I really enjoyed my time at university, but I think I still always had questions in the back of my mind. As this story took shape, those questions kept weaving themselves into it: about the enduring role of class in the student body, about where the powerful political leaders in the country have come from, and how they ended up receiving that power. Those invisible systems channeling power—like magic, I thought. Add in a swirl of paganism, rituals and secret societies, and The Fox Hunt was there, in front of me!
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
It took a long time from first idea to publication! I first began the book before the pandemic, although its progress was broken up by a few years of illness.
I really learned how to write a novel through the practical experience of writing—and rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting—this one. Plot arcs, characters, the functional bones of an opening chapter: I’d know something wasn’t working and have to figure out by feel and by trial what the manuscript needed to get better.
If you are a very patient person, I’d really recommend this process. If you are a sensible person, I think you can skip through stages 6-20 of my journey by workshopping with a group you trust or taking a writing course. I realize now that a course would probably have covered everything I learned through trial and error, but in a quarter of the time.
During the process, I'd say that the novel changed, but the idea did not. I had a strong sense of the feeling and personality of the story I was trying to tell. It was reassuring to find, as I went on, that plotlines, characters, and scenes could shift, sometimes hugely, and still tell that story. So, while only about 20 percent of the current plot appears in the original draft, to me it feels like exactly the same story at heart—only told better, I hope!
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
A wonderful surprise in the writing process for this book has been the (transformative! soul-affirming!) experience of working with both my agent and editors on the manuscript. Finding people who truly understand and are passionate about the world of the story and combine that with an innate sharpness and talent for feedback, is the best thing that can happen to any book. I have been amazed, in the best way, at how they’ve helped me shift the story exactly where I had wanted it to go, when I hadn't been able to figure out why it wasn't there already! Great feedback helps you make your book more like itself. When done well, it's not a process that pulls your work into a new shape: Rather, it reveals what's always meant to have been there.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
Fantasy stories are ways to understand our world and our choices within it. I’ve always loved transformation stories, like The Tiger’s Bride by Angela Carter: heroines who cast off their expected form to find their true selves, with the power and freedom to take their heart’s desire.
I hope my story helps readers explore that for themselves. What would it be like to lose the constraints of a human skin? To forget the meaning of “nice” and “well behaved?” I’d love readers of The Fox Hunt to come away feeling like they have sharper teeth and power within them, waiting to spring.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
I read somewhere that a novel’s setting and plot don’t necessarily reveal anything about the writer: but the core idea that lies underneath the novel tells you everything important about them. The piece called this lurking core idea: “the monster at the bottom of the well.”
Find the monster lurking at the bottom of your well! You may know what your novel is about, the story beats and so on, but do you also know what it’s *about*? (Heavy emphasis)
What’s the deep, sticky thing that’s driving you to write this particular book? Can you interrogate yourself and find out why you were drawn to this story, these characters, at this time? What matters to you about this book, what’s it giving voice to for you?
Once you have that, you have your compass. It’ll guide you when you get stuck on story arcs and point you back on course when you’ve crashed into a snowdrift and don’t know why. It’ll also help motivate you when writing gets tough, or revisions are painstaking. It’s a shortcut to remembering—that vivid full-body, felt sense kind of remembering—why you’re writing this book, and why it matters more than anything that you keep going with it.
