Jude Knight’s Unexpected Magic released today, and she was kind enough to answer some questions for us.
You can get your copy of this magical start to a new series HERE!
Did you always know you wanted to be an author? What is the first story you remember writing? How did you get from there to where you are today?
I have wanted to be an author since I knew there was such a thing, and I was making up and telling stories from the time I could talke. Before that, if my mother’s interpretation of my babble is to be believed. Not long ago, I went through a box of my mother’s keepsakes that I’d brought home with me after her funeral. I found a clipping from the newspaper, with the first story I’d ever had published. I was 14, and it was about a fairy I met in the garden.
I wanted to write fiction, and I did, with some small successes. But life happened. Marriage, children, a mortgage, a son with disabilities, a chronic illness. I went into commercial writing to make an income—insurance policies and business letters might not be exciting, but the pay is regular. Over the years, my desire to write fiction never lessened, but one thing after another popped up to keep me from trying. And in the end, I became afraid to try.
Then my mother died, and it was too late to write a novel she would read, but not too late to write a novel. So I did. I published my first story in 2014, and I’ve not stopped since.
What is the most inspiring place you’ve visited and has it shown up in one of your books?
In the Rotorua Museum there used to be a hall devoted to the Maori Battalion—the brave men of Maori descent who volunteered for one after another of Britain’s wars when the New Zealand government cheerfully marched into battle after Mother England. We went several times, reading the diaries of ordinary soldiers, watching video interviews of survivors and their families, hearing about the horrendous death and injury statistics, and what those raw numbers meant to the communities who lost their finest and bravest, a whole generation of leaders, chewed up by a war on the other side of the planet.
Many of my returned soldiers in my novels owe their emotions, their griefs, their responses to those lost heroes whose voices have been preserved in that exhibition.
How much research do you do into the time period and places you write about? Do you have any experience dressing in character or participating in living history situations or are you more a fan of libraries and online resources?
I’ve done very little dress up experimentation, but I’ve seen many living history displays, and I’ve tried many old skills so that I can write about them with authority. However, I’m also a fan of libraries and online resources. I love the British Newspaper Archive, where I can, at any time and from half a world away, read the authentic voices of reporters and editors in 1812, describing a weather event or a race meeting or some other piece of news. If anything, I over-research, and I’m so grateful to be writing in 2026, where I can—at a moment’s notice—stop to see which canal reaches closest to a castle that might provide refuge to my characters in the North Midlands. (As happened in Unexpected Magic.)
What drew you to the era you write in? Is there something about the time period you think most people don’t know about? What do you think would be the most difficult part about living in that period?
I love the Regency era for a number of reasons, but perhaps the most compelling one to me was its resemblance to our present day, in that it was the time that one form of economy and one form of manufacturing gave way to the next.
This was the era of the invention of steam power and its application to everything from transport to cloth weaving to printing and more. The accompanying social change was devastating for ordinary people.
We live in the era of information technology, and very similar patterns are being repeated. I can write a romance set two hundred years ago and directly address ideas and attitudes that I see around me.
I’m from a family that climbed up the social network only in recent generations and only since migrating to New Zealand. If I had been born to one of my ancestors, I would perhaps have grown up to work in a shop or a mill. One striking thing to me as a New Zealander from a middle class family is the lack of opportunity for ordinary people in the Regency era, and particularly for women.
If I was time travelling, however, I’d refuse to go unless I had an ironclad guarantee that I could come back at any time, or unless I could take with me antibiotics, flush toilets, and dental anesthesia.
What are your favorite kind of characters to write? Do you have a specific trope that you’re drawn too?
I love writing clueless males with deep emotional wounds who are surprised to find themselves in love and not particularly good at expressing how they feel. Poor dears. Ditto women who have had wretched relationships that have left them broken. Possibly not in the same story, however.
I have several much loved tropes. Second chance romance edges ahead of the pack, I reckon.
Where is your favorite place to write? Does it change depending on where you are in the process?
I write first drafts on my iPad with a keyboard. I write wherever I happen to be. In a cafe. In a chair in my lounge or someone else’s. In bed. At the kitchen table. I edit on the PC in my study.
Which comes first for you: the plot or the characters?
Sometimes the plot comes first, and I have to search for the characters that fit that plot. Most of the Twist series was like that, since I began with a fairy tale or legend. Sometimes I begin with one of the characters, and the plot and the other characters coalesce around that. There’s no one way that I start, but once I have the kernel of a plot or the first inkling of a character, I can begin to build the story, and the rest of the plot and the characters grow with the story.
Do you know where the story is going before you begin, or does it come to you as you write? Do scenes come to you fully formed or are you as surprised as the reader?
I cannot write a story if I know all about it. I get bored and my mind wanders off to something more mysterious and therefore interesting. I have a general idea of the direction I’m heading when I start, but the final destination is as much of a surprise to me as it is, I hope, to the reader.
As for scenes, I often think I have the whole scene in my mind before I write, but I usually manage to go off somewhere else while I’m writing it. Another thought occurs, the train derails, and the station at which I arrive is one I’ve never ever heard of.
Does your writing process include any kind of ritual? Story specific playlists, tea, or candles, for example?
No consistent rituals. Sometimes I’ll write to the tune of a story specific earworm, and that can be very annoying. For example, when writing my first novel, I had a village choir who were entertaining at the fair, so I went looking for sheep shearing ballads. I found one with a remarkably suggestive chorus, and for the rest of the novel, that tune and its words kept repeating in my head. It still does today, if I happen to think of it. And now that I’ve written about it, here it is again! Bother!
Do you write better in the morning or evening? How do you handle the distractions of working from home, especially if you’re sharing the space with others?
I write in short stints of an hour or so at intervals throughout the day. No time is better than another. I raised six children while working full time as a commercial writer, so distractions have always been a given, but I apply the disciplines I learned then to my fiction writing. Sit down and start. If you are interrupted, unless it is an emergency write the next half sentence so you can hit the ground running when you return. If you’re not interrupted, set a target—either a word or page count before which you will not stop, or a time. Write every day.
When it’s difficult to physically travel, how do you find ways to escape?
Books have always been my favorite way to escape. Youtube clips about other people’s travels have become a go to in the past few years.
From all your books, who is your favorite hero and why?
My favourite hero is always the latest one. In this case, it would be Jasper, who displayed enormous promise as a child and has failed to live up to it ever since. I come from a family of neurodivergents, and this is our story. We learned young that we didn’t fit. Most of us have taken a lifetime to find that it was the world that was the wrong shape for us, not us for the world. Thankfully, my children have words for the experiences that their children are having, and can help them to lead more positive lives than were available to the generations before them.
What do you like to read when you’re not reading in your genre? Did you have a favorite book or series when you were growing up?
I read everything. SF has always been a favourite, particularly SF written by women. Fantasy, when it makes sense and when the magic has logical rules. History, both real life and fictional. Detective, particularly what they call “cosy”. As a girl, I loved L.M. Montgomery’s Anne books. I also had a passion for fairy tales, and the local library had a huge range of the Lang Fairy books.
