Interview with E.E. Knight
I was born in La
Crosse, Wisconsin and grew up in Stillwater, Minnesota. Currently, I reside
with my bellydancing librarian wife and toddler in Oak Park, Illinois - it's a
suburb of Chicago mostly known for Frank Lloyd Wright and Ernest Hemingway. I've
wanted to work with words and stories for almost as long as I can remember.
What are you reading right now?
Variously, a pulpish book about
lawmen in the old west, the Folio edition of Tannahill's FOOD IN HISTORY,
Margaret Thatcher's THE PATH TO POWER, the Ospery military guidebook on squad
and platoon level tactics in WW2, and the 6th edition Warhammer 40k rulebook. These
days I read more nonfiction than fiction. It used to be about 50/50 but now the ratio is more like 80/20.
What first sparked your interest in writing?
I wanted to tell stories similar
to the ones I saw in movies or on TV. The first story I ever wrote as a
tweenager was based on The Creature From the Black Lagoon. I think my mom has
it in a drawer somewhere.
What do you love the most about writing? The least?
I've always been the sort of
temperament that likes to sit in a corner, alone, working on a project. When I
write, I can create dialogue for a natty little drawing-room scene without
dealing with actors or an epic battle without having to go through an armada of
special effects and CGI people. So I guess you could say the craft suits my
personality. I suppose least is the sense that every project I do is something
of a failure, it never lives up to the expectations I had of it when I wrote
the first few paragraphs.
Tell us a little about your writing process.
I write on a laptop. I like to be
on my own, but enjoy a little bit of business humming in the background. I
don't know if minor distractions keep me from distracting myself or what, but I
do like to have a little noise and motion, even if it's just street sounds coming
through an open window. I generally try to do an entire scene in one sitting
(or a couple if one of the scenes is just a few paragraphs). While I think of a
novel in beginning-middle-end terms, when it comes time to sew the thing
together I work patch by patch, with each scene a different patch. If I can do
two thousand words of new material, I'm satisfied that I've put in a good day's
work.
During down time I tend to think
about the next couple of scenes. If I can get interested in some element of
what I'm going to do during the next session, it makes getting that
all-important first sentence down a lot easier.
What are your passions?
Playing with my kids, gaming, music,
movies, cooking and food. I'd say "travel" but with small children in
the family, long international flights are out for a while.
What inspires you?
The monthly mortgage statement. But
seriously -- there's Visa as well.
Why fantasy?
If you don't mind me saying so,
that's a little like asking "Why Renoir?" I can give the literary
criticism answer about starting with a blank slate, the reader's experience in
exploring my world and all that, but the warp and woof of it is that if you
want to write about dragons (or vampires), you're doing fantasy. Even if your
dragons (or vampires) wear fedoras, pack .45s, have a broken water cooler and
want to find out why the millionaire sugar cane tycoon's daughter disappeared,
it's still fantasy.
How was the AGE OF FIRE series born?
When a mommy idea and a daddy
idea love each other very much. . .
I like animal adventure stories
going back to, oh, CHARLOTTE’S WEB and THE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIONS I
suppose. I wanted to do something with dragons, from their point of view. I
became sick of seeing them as wish fulfillment vehicles playing second banana
to their riders. I sat down and wrote to put dragons in a natural but
fantasy-based word where a lot of their legendary behaviors, hoarding gold for
instance, have a real world purpose (in my series it has to do with the health
of their scales, heavy metals help them build strong scales just like adequate
calcium helps your bones).
Your dragons feel so vivid. Did you research animal
behavior for this series?
I started off with lizards, but
they were a bit cold, so to speak. I ended up with large predatory birds, the
raptors. For example, my dragon mating procedure is a romanticized version of
eagle mating. I had no idea they did so much courting activity while airborne,
locking talons and plunging toward earth. If they don't let go of each other so
each can soar again, they crash and die. There's a lesson there, I think.
Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
The first sale is the hardest. I've
found that you either have to love writing a great deal or need writing a great
deal to make a career out of it. I'm a little of both. It's work, grinding work
sometimes, but when you can touch a reader across time and space, well, the
only word for it is magic.
Is there anything else you would like to tell us
about yourself?
I'm dreadfully shy. I get compliments
when speaking to groups. Very few believe that it half kills me just to step
out in front of an audience and start speaking. My ideal audience size is
probably the number you can get around a little corner pub table. But public
speaking is part of the life, so I pull up the big boy socks and make the best
of it.