the writer’s obligatory three cats. She lives in Sussex, UK, and when not writing she likes motorbikes, watching wrestling or rugby, killing pixels in MMOs and is incapable of being serious for more than five minutes in a row.
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interview
What was the inspiration behind Swords and Scoundrels?
Lots of things, as per usual! I was reading a lot about post-Moorish Spain – inspiration for the Castans’ fallen empire – and Renaissance Italy, with all the city states at each other’s throats. Then add in a re-reading of The Three Musketeers, and the new series on the telly, happening across a video for an architect’s design for a clockwork city and…
Which was your favourite character to write?
That is a really hard question! I love them all in different ways. Vocho was a blast to write because he’s just so vain and unintentionally funny but he does have a heart too (when he remembers). I like Kacha because she takes no crap from anyone, especially Vocho. Petri was supposed to be the bad guy… but I found I rather felt for his predicament. Cospel for being so long-suffering. However, the creeper over the series is/was Dom. He really grew on me.
Who really is the better duellist – Kacha or Vocho?!
Depends on who you ask . As Vocho says, she’s better at technique, but he has an advantage in strength and reach. Both are devious as required. I’d say they both have their strengths but that balances out so they are actually fairly evenly matched.
What was the most challenging thing about writing this novel?
I’d say selling the first book in a series before I’d written it! A first for me. I don’t usually outline at all, and the first book is usually where I discover everything about the world, so I had to try to keep myself on the straight and narrow with regard to what I’d said the book was going to be. I did allow myself a few times of straying from the beaten path (I recall saying to my editor, ‘Um, it, um, may have some clockwork in it? And it’s not strictly linear…’)
You may or may not be surprised at what this almost ended up as. I’m saving those ideas for another day!
What we can expect from the next Duellists novel, Legends and Liars?
Dastardly magicians, dashing duellists, warring cities and some very big Venus flytrap-style plants. It gets a bit deeper into the characters, and darker too, though it’s still got plenty of light-hearted moments.
What else do you read and watch in your spare time?
I’ll read anything! I like a lot of historical non-fiction – good inspiration – and of course I read all the fantasy I can get my hands on. I don’t get much time to watch telly (I make exceptions for Agents of Shield and The Musketeers) but we do make time for film night once a week. It’s almost always fantasy or SFF, with a sprinkle of comedy or biographies. I am almost unimaginably excited to see Hicks may be back in the next Aliens film…
introducing
If you enjoyed
SWORDS AND SCOUNDRELS,
look out for
LEGENDS AND LIARS
The Duelists Trilogy: Book 2
by Julia Knight
CHAPTER ONE
Vocho threw the dice and loudly cursed himself for a fool. Treble cat’s eye, of course it was, and now he was down a hundred Ikaran bushels, or about ten bulls in Reyes money.
Kacha stood the other side of the gaming table, clothed, after something of an argument, in an Ikaran dress in the latest fashion. A silky green sheath with a split up to the thigh – Vocho had been surprised to discover his sister actually had legs – and precarious heels that made her wobble and look far more fragile than her solid frame would usually suggest. The puffed sleeves covered the fact she wasn’t a soft noblewoman and that her wrists and forearms were laced with muscles and striped with old scars. Her hair had been carefully coiffed, with much swearing, to hide the scar under her eye. No sword, which had irked her the most. She’d sulked in the shadows behind the avid-eyed men and women who’d just won on betting Vocho would lose, but now Kacha raised an eyebrow and smirked.
The dice were, naturally, rigged. Not that he’d tampered with them, oh no. Conduct unbecoming to a master of the duelling guild and all that, although not being a member of the guild any