Interview of Amie and Meagan by Haylee Hackenberg
An undeniably fierce, unforgettably funny, unapologetically queer feminist romp through the England of medieval legend. That’s a very high standard to set, and can I just say, this book exceeds any expectations I had. Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner, masters in their own solo careers and seasoned collaborators, have created something wholly original and tremendously wonderful. I’m sure I’m not alone, but growing up, I was fascinated by medieval tales. The knights, the armour, the epic quests, and if you’re really lucky? Dragons. As my book collection grew, so did my standards. That meant saying goodbye to knights in shining armour when the female characters they swooned over were portrayed as vibrantly as an empty barrel. So imagine my delight to find a book with not one, but two formidable female main characters in Lady’s Knight? And friends…there are dragons. I asked Amie and Meagan about writing Lady’s Knight below:
Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired each of you to write this story?
Back in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, we were living in lockdown on opposite sides of the world, wondering when we’d ever get to see each other again. One of the ways we spent time together was virtual movie nights, and one night we chose the Heath Ledger classic, A Knight’s Tale. We enjoyed it immensely, but were left with some complaints, particularly about the lack of fully realized female characters.
After spending WAY too long complaining about this and wondering why there wasn’t a story out there like this but with better-written women, we realized: um, we’re writers… we could make this!
We decided we were going to pour every single thing we loved—every loving joke about fantasy, every archetype, every little catnippy trope that we’d ever loved as readers—into this book, no holds barred. It was our way of healing from the darkness of that time.
I know you are probably facing this question a lot, but after reading Lady’s Knight, I’m desperate to know what the co-writing process looked like for you?
Our process has changed very little from our first collaborative book, These Broken Stars, which came out over a decade ago. We come up with the story and world together, and each take a main character as “ours.” (Amie’s was Isobelle this time, and Meg’s was Gwen’s.) We develop the characters together in real time, often writing snippets of conversation back and forth to make sure we get the best chemistry we can between them.
And then we hand off the book, back and forth, to write alternating points of view. Because Meg lives in the U.S. and Amie lives in Melbourne, we’re able to write around the clock; when we wake up, it’s like elves have worked on the story overnight! With this book, we had a solid outline and a very strong sense of voice, so while we would never say that a book writes itself (it’s always a lot of work!) it was truly one of the most fun books we’ve written together in a long time!
I was excited to read Lady’s Knight as soon as I saw the cover reveal, but nothing could have prepared me for how incredibly FUNNY it is. The dry wit of the narrator’s chapters particularly thrilled me. Did you set out to create a book that was this packed with humour?
We absolutely went into it with this intention, so we’re so glad it made you laugh! With the artistic DNA of authors like Terry Pratchett and Elizabeth Peters, and movies like “The Princess Bride” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” as such key parts of our author makeup, we’ve been wanting to let loose like this, and we knew this book was the book.
We went into this project at the darkest, lowest point in the pandemic, so we decided we were going to just go all out with the humor and not censor ourselves or pull back at all—we figured we’d just tone it all down in edits if we needed to. And as it turned out, we didn’t have to pull a single joke-y punch—our editors in the US, the UK, and in Australia were all here for it. We realized, once we started getting their feedback, that we weren’t the only ones who needed some laughter.
I loved that the characters surprised me throughout the story. I found myself invested in even the most sideline characters. Do each of you have a favourite character?
This answer turned into quite the debate between us! Ultimately, we both chose Olivia as our favorite character. She’s Isobelle’s lady’s maid, but in addition to her skills at sewing and hair dressing, she can also rappel off a balcony and is a quite adept poisoner. The mystery about Olivia is one of the things we’re currently writing more about as we finish up writing Lady’s Knight’s sequel! And we both love her voice.
That said, we’re also partial to both Orson and Sylvie—which some readers might find surprising in light of what takes place later in the book!
Has anything surprised you about the reception of Lady’s Knight?
We wouldn’t say this is surprising so much as gratifying (and somewhat of a relief), but the passion people are expressing about this book has been amazing to see. We just did a podcast where the host nearly started crying as she was talking about how much she loved it. (Which, of course, meant that we both nearly started crying too.)
It’s one of those things where we wrote it for ourselves—because we desperately needed to write something fun and safe and joyful—but it’s coming out into the world during another time of anxiousness and uncertainty, especially for those in the U.S., and it turns out people seem to need joy a lot more than we knew.
As for surprise… we’re surprised how much people are enjoying the narrator! It’s such an example of something we wrote simply because we thought it was funny, and never imagined it landing so successfully with others. But we scarcely see a review go by that doesn’t talk about the narrator! For what it’s worth, we can highly recommend the audio version of the book (which will be coming out in Australia soon!), because the narrator of those sections is actually the performer whose voice we had in mind while writing the sections. She does them brilliantly.
