Quizzing Glass is pleased to interview Jude Knight today.
Jude was a late starter, who finally overcame her fear of failure and followed her dreams. After more than fifteen novels, a score of novellas and short story collections, three awards, and over three and half thousand positive reviews, she thinks she might be an author. She writes from a cozy house in New Zealand where she lives with her Personal Romantic Hero and a few cats. When not at the keyboard she can usually be found in her garden or having fun with her grandchildren.
QG: When did you first get hooked (and what hooked you) on the Regency era?
I read Georgette Heyer when I was young, and collected all of the books a few at a time, mostly at secondhand bookstores, so I could read them again. I loved her humor, and thoroughly enjoyed her secondary characters. However, I didn’t become hooked on the Regency era as a writer until many years later. My daughter gave me Slightly Wicked, by Mary Balogh. I read it and searched out the rest of the series. Then I read everything Mary Balogh had published up to that time, and followed up with Stephanie Laurens, Jo Beverley, Sarah MacLean, Loretta Chase, and Lisa Kleypass—I devour books at an enormous rate, and at that time I was doing a lot of traveling. My little Kindle reader became stuffed with Regency and Georgian romance, plots started spinning through my mind, and I was off.
QG: What did you want to be when you were ten or twelve?
A novelist and a mother. I was a writer and a mother by the time I was twenty-three if you count occasional publication of short stories and heaps of commercial writing. Novels had to wait. I published my first in my sixties, and now have seventeen novels published or on preorder, two more currently in the pipeline, and a publishing contract for a further seven.
QG: What advice would you give to writers just starting out?
Three things. 1. Write if it makes you happy. The chances it will make you rich are slender in the extreme, but creating stories is a joy that is always accessible. 2. Write every day. The water won’t flow if you don’t prime the pump. 3. Keep writing even if it feels like rubbish. We authors aren’t the best judges of our own work, and besides, you are writing, not editing. Good books aren’t written. They are rewritten.
QG: Tell us about your current project or latest release.
My project in 2022 was to set myself up to have a book published every month in 2023. I’m writing at the end of April and have had five books published so far this year, with five new releases booked and on prerelease between now and the end of August. I’m still writing September’s release, but am two-thirds through. October’s and November’s are done, and December’s is started.
I think I’ll make it.
My big project last year was the stories in my new series with Dragonblade Publishing, A Twist Upon a Regency Tale. It’s a reinterpretation of traditional fairy and folk tales set in the Regency, with no magic and with the roles reversed. February’s release was the first novel. April’s was a Lyon’s Den Connected World story set in the same world as the Twist novels. So far, the readers are loving them both. Three more to come this year, and I’ve signed up for a further four for 2024.
It has been such fun to figure out how to include the fairy tale elements. For example, my Snow White character is poisoned by hemlock in an apple pie, and kept alive until the paralysis wears off by expired air breathing, which used to be called the kiss of life.
QG: Is there a special quote or saying that motivates you as a writer?
Shannon Hale says “When writing a first draft, I have to remind myself constantly that I’m only shoveling sand into a box so later I can build castles.”
QG: Do you have a daily writing schedule and goals? What are they?
I have a daily goal, which I may or may not reach. On some days, 50 words is a victory. I also have a monthly goal, and that I do focus on, for if I miss my monthly goal, I topple the whole pack of cards. But, meh. Life happens. It’s better to stretch for the high goal and just miss than to bend to the low goal and succeed.
A schedule? Not so much. I write in patches throughout the day, whenever I’m not doing something else. I can usually do 500 words before they begin to run dry and I go and garden or cook or take a walk. I might do four or five sessions a day, however.
QG: What comes first, plot or characters?
It varies, but if the plot occurs to me first, it goes nowhere till I have the characters. For me, the plot is about the development of the principal characters. The hero and the heroine, in my books. The adventure and the relationship have to help them learn something about themselves, and the romance can’t be complete until that has happened. So the characters drive the plot, sometimes in quite unexpected directions.
Don’t blame me. It’s all down to the plot elves. I just watch what the characters are doing and write it down.
QG: Pantser or Plotter or hybrid?
After that, you’ll figure that I’m a pantser. I was very much a plotter as a commercial writer, and even gave talks about the time spent on the outline. But with my first novel, it all fell apart when I got to the end of the prologue. In the prologue, the heroine confronted the villain and must have been very convincing. He killed himself between the prologue and the first chapter, and my outline had to go in the bin. Since then, I haven’t bothered with more than a broad thumbnail sketch, subject to change without notice.
QG: Would you like to travel back in time? Where would you go? What one thing would you take with you?
I travel back in time with every historical book I read, and every historical story I write. It’s the safest way. In a real time machine? I’m not going unless I can take antibiotics, dental anesthesia, and indoor plumbing. That’s three things, so I guess that leaves me out. Forced to choose, I think I’d love to go back and meet Shakespeare and the one thing I’d take with me would be the escape button. Those folks back then were tough, man!
Thank you QQ and Jude for sharing your delightful conversation! I love author interviews. I always glean a tiny gem from the answers. Jude, you are a delight. 12 books 12 months! Amazing.