KT Hoffman: Pay Attention to the Things You Care About

KT Hoffman is originally from Beaverton, Oregon and currently lives in Brooklyn. He received his bachelor’s degree in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University. If he isn’t writing about trans hope and gay kissing, he’s probably white-knuckling his way through the ninth inning of a Seattle Mariners game. Follow him on Instagram.

KT Hoffman

In this interview, KT discusses how the story evolved as he wrote his debut novel, The Prospects, his hopes for readers, and more!

Name: KT Hoffman
Literary agent: Allison Hunter, Trellis Literary Management Dial Press
Book title: The Prospects
Publisher: Dial Press
Release date: April 9, 2024
Genre/category: Romance
Elevator pitch: Minor league baseball player Gene Ionescu—optimist, underdog, and the first trans player in professional baseball—has nearly everything he’s ever let himself dream of, until Luis Estrada, Gene’s former teammate and current rival, gets traded to his team. Soon, Gene has to reconcile the quiet, minor-league-sized life he used to find fulfilling with the major-league dreams Luis makes feel possible.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

I’d actually never been a baseball fan, but I had been writing a completely different project, for which I had to do some very light baseball research. I started following the Seattle Mariners casually at first, just in the hopes of getting familiar with the basics. I ended up falling completely in love with the sport and that team. I was watching games and then reading recaps of those same games as soon as the ninth inning ended, like I needed to confirm the magic (or misery) of what I’d just watched myself. It gave me such love and respect for the ways people write about baseball. There’s a poetry to it—and to a baseball game—that is incredibly unique. I don’t think, after that summer, I could have written about anything other than baseball.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The first idea—a book about a second baseman who was trans—popped up in the summer of 2018, and it took me until spring of 2022 to sell the book; there were breaks in there, but four years sounds about right. The setting and timeline of the novel changed quite a bit—from a college campus, to a three-year span in the 1990s, to a single season in the contemporary minor leagues—and it went through many drafts. But it was always Gene and Luis’s story, and Gene and Luis themselves have changed very little. Finding the right world and tone to tell that story was the challenge.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Honestly, getting this book published at all was and remains a surprise to me. Every time someone tells me they read The Prospects—or even that they are aware that it exists—it’s a surprise. I had written many books before this one but never shared any of them with more than a tiny handful of people. When I was first working on this project, there were not many books about trans characters on the shelves in any genre; now, in 2024, there are far more, but still very few in the adult space. So, I didn’t really consider publication as the end goal.

But then I applied to and was selected for a mentorship program—by two authors I look up to very much, Ruby Barrett and Rosie Danan—and their belief in and care for this book allowed me to take seriously the idea of letting myself try. I have been extremely lucky with this book at more or less every step of publication, but I do think the biggest surprise to me was learning that I was allowed to want and try at all—which, to be fair, is quite similar to the plot of The Prospects.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Absolutely—it was not originally a romance novel! For a long time, this was a baseball book with a strong romantic subplot, so revising it to center Gene and Luis’s love story, really allowing that to be the A-plot, was a huge surprise to me. And also, just immensely fun. There are few joys greater to me, in writing, than getting to sit alongside two characters who I already love, as they fall in love with each other. I would sit alongside Gene and Luis as long as they’d let me, if it was allowed.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

This is going to sound like a cop-out, but I do love that everyone brings something different to a book, and therefore will get something different out of it.

That being said, it would be lovely for people to walk away from this book feeling that it’s worth it to try, worth it to hope, and worth it to risk disappointment. I hope readers—especially those of us who are marginalized and have therefore maybe been told otherwise—will walk away feeling worthy of wanting big things for themselves, and, most of all, worthy of the support systems that make that wanting possible.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

This isn’t exactly groundbreaking advice, I know, but: Pay attention to the things you care about—the things that you could think about for years without getting bored. Especially the things that really capture your attention when you aren’t trying to write a book. Maybe it doesn’t always make for the sexiest elevator pitch, but I genuinely believe that unhinged passion is the secret sauce that makes a book work.

With a growing catalog of instructional writing videos available instantly, we have writing instruction on everything from improving your craft to getting published and finding an audience. New videos are added every month!