AMIE KAUFMAN and MEAGAN SPOONER’s latest novel, Lady’s Knight, is a medieval romp and a sapphic love story, set in a world of dragons, witches and excellent snacks.
Read on for a Q&A with the authors.
What inspired Lady’s Knight?
This book came about after a joint watch of the movie A Knight’s Tale, where we were watching the movie together online during the pandemic from opposite sides of the globe. Somewhat appalled by the lack of good female characters in the movie, we started talking about how it would’ve looked if we’d written that story … and then we realised we could write that story!
Because we were in the middle of a pandemic, we decided to make it just the most joyous book ever, full of humour and fun, with every trope we loved: lady knights, dragons, witches, castles, jousting tournaments, and, of course, very excellent snacks.
What did your collaboration process look like while writing this novel?
Typically, we each take a character as our ‘own’ and develop them in parallel with each other. Once we know how the characters get on and what they want, the plot tends to fall into place pretty easily because we only have to ask, ‘What do our characters want, and what will they do to get it?’ So when we write, we hand the manuscript back and forth, writing the perspectives of our own characters, and weave a story together in real time.
What was your favourite part of crafting Gwen and Isobelle’s dynamic?
One of the great things about all our character pairings in our books is that they’re always reflections of us, in a way – our real life friendship works because our differences make us stronger together. And with Gwen and Isobelle, they are very different people; Isobelle is outgoing and charming and good at getting her own way, while Gwen is quieter, more sarcastic, and can be a bit more fatalistic. But the qualities they share (determination, a shared sense of what is right, a desire to help) unite them, and make them a force to be reckoned with.
What drew you to writing a fresh take on the classic ‘secret knight’ trope?
When we were watching A Knight’s Tale together, we knew we wanted to dive into that story. But like we said, the main characters and driving forces behind the movie were all men, and the women were mostly background objects rather than people. We knew we wanted to change that, and as we talked about the idea, we realised what we wanted was to see how that whole story – the knight, the damsel in distress – actually changed with the characters were women instead. It isn’t just a matter of changing gender; the whole situation changes.
The book strikes a balance between adventure, romance and comedy. How did you both settle on that tone?
We knew we wanted to make this book a funny one right from the start. For it to be a serious and historically accurate rendition, we’d have to make the queer nature of their relationship a huge deal, both for them, and for the people in their lives. We didn’t want to spend the whole story in that serious and often quite sad place, so we knew that if we were going to write a queer story set in medieval England, we were going to make it OUR medieval England, and it’d be quite a funny story instead.
What was the most challenging part of creating this world?
Honestly, the amount of research that went into it would surprise most readers. Because it’s anachronistic and funny, it looks like maybe we didn’t research the time period at all, but it turns out that you really do have to know your stuff – you have to know the real history – in order to decide what you’re going to toss out, and what you’re going to keep in.
Were there any fantasy inspirations you drew on while creating this world?
Not so much with the world-building, though we definitely drew on our joint (and extensive) background of fantasy reading to recognise the tropes we wanted to subvert. But when it comes to voice, for example the narrator’s voice, we drew a lot of inspiration from other comedic fantasy things, like The Princess Bride.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Amie Kaufman is a NYT and internationally bestselling author, whose multi-award winning work is published in nearly thirty languages. Her latest books are The Isles of the Gods and Lady’s Knight.
Meagan Spooner is the author of numerous internationally bestselling novels published by Lerner Books, Disney Hyperion, and HarperCollins. Her latest book are is Lady’s Knight.
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