Author Q&A with Isabelle Knight
Hosting an author for a Q&A is one of the things I wish I did more on The Story Sanctuary. I love getting to know how an author comes up with ideas and brings their vision to the page. Today, I’ve got prolific young author Isabelle Knight here to talk about not one book but FOUR that make up her “Enchantria” series.
I’ve known Isabelle a bit through a weekly meme called Marvelous Middle Grade Mondays, where bloggers share bookish news and reviews of middle grade books on Always in the Middle. Her reviews are so enthusiastic, and I enjoy the way she relates her reader experience. I’m super excited to hear about her experience as a writer.
Author Q&A with Isabelle Knight
I find that a story was often inspired by a question. Was there a question that inspired you to write the Enchantria series? Or one of the novels in particular?
This is a good question, and my answer to that is sort of, but also not quite in the way you might think. I think that the Enchantria series in all does have a question at its heart (perhaps even multiple questions!), however, I never really know what question a story will have at its heart until I start writing it. Sometimes, I might not even realize what question the story has until I’m done writing it!
This was especially true for the final book in the series, The Last Hope. However, while I was writing The Last Hope, I did already have the first three books written, so I think I had the faintest idea of a question while writing book four, and that was: How do you find hope when it seems all hope is lost? However, this was a very faint question I was asking myself while writing the story, and the story evolved, and while it does ask that question, there are a lot more questions in it – questions that I never expected until I started writing it!
Are there things about your favorite character that couldn’t be included in the series?
I feel like most authors would say that there are things that couldn’t be included in the series (and while there are soooooo many worldbuilding bits that I couldn’t include because, well, then the book would balloon up to over 150K and even for me, that’s a tad extreme – especially for middle-grade). But I think that there actually weren’t that many things about my characters that couldn’t be included.
I am what is called a “pantser” meaning I write by the seat of my pants without an outline or a plan, and so I figure out the characters as I write the story, and what I figure out is just really naturally woven into the story! However, this is only true for Enchantria… It is completely the opposite for my current work-in-progress, which I can’t tell you too much about, but I will say… there are a lot of things about my main character and side characters that I just can’t include without the novel ballooning up to 150K…
You’ve created a wide-ranging story world with several different kingdoms populated with magical creatures. What did you have the most fun discovering about the setting of the series?
This is such an impossible question! I loved all of it! While there were bits that made me wish to tear out my hair in frustration (such as trying to invent/figure out twelve different kinds of creatures/beings to inhabit the twelve kingdoms. By kingdom #8, I was just desperately pulling whatever came from my mind), I had a lot of fun with everything, really! I definitely loved discovering Enchantria’s magic system, though, so if I had to narrow it down to one, this miiiight be my favorite part. Just finally discovering how everything in the magic system worked and having it all pull together smoothly was amazing (and I especially loved all the crystals in Enchantria! They’re a pretty big part of the world, as you’ll see once you’ve read the book!)
Is there a scene or moment in the Enchantria series that really sticks with you? Can you tell us a little bit about it?
There are two that come to mind right away. The first is in book one, and it is probably my favorite scene in book one, and it is when Elenora and her new friends are on the quest to find the Tribe, and they have to cross this river of literal magic that sort of runs along the northern border of Enchantria. There used to be a bridge there, but when Elenora and her friends show up, they find it in crumbling ruins because Ravena (the villain) has destroyed it. I won’t spoil anything or say exactly how they get across, but I just loved writing the scene! The descriptions of the river were just such fun to write!
The second scene that comes to mind is from The Last Hope, and it is the very last scene in the book (not counting the coronation and the prologue!), and it is, of course, when Elenora and her friends finally defeat the villain! Again, no spoilers, but this scene came out so differently than what I’d been expecting, but it was so much truer to the story and its themes of hope than my original idea of them just destroying Ravena…
What do you most hope that readers take away from the series?
This is a hard question to answer. I think every reader will take something very different away from this series, and I think that is what I really love about reading. I don’t really want to write to “teach a lesson or moral” or anything, but instead, I just really want to write to face hard questions that I myself have asked countless times before.
I think book four really does ask these two questions: “What makes a hero?” and “Where is home, truly?” I really do hope that readers will pick up on these questions and think about them, however different their answers to these questions may be from my own. The way these questions are sort of ‘answered’ in book four is really just my take/answer (though, really, I can’t promise I have one definitive answer for any of those questions) on them, and I want readers to find their own. But most of all, I just hope they will see themselves in Elenora and just have a great time reading the series!
What is one question about your books you are often asked by readers?
I get so many questions, so… (digs through mailbox and interviews to find the number one most asked question I get)
Alright, I think I found it… And it is the most common question I think every author on planet Earth gets: Where did you get the idea for the Enchantria series?
The answer is a lot, a lot, a looot of different places. Books, movies, TV shows, even a video game I once played! But I think the main original idea (which has since evolved greatly and has changed throughout the years, because I got the idea for this series when I was pretty young) came from a movie I watched as a kid. It had two kingdoms with this very clear border between the two kingdoms.
I believe one kingdom was good and the other was a dark, creepy forest… The movie’s called Strange Magic (thank you to Pinterest for helping me remember the name, because I’d forgotten the movie till I was scrolling to find inspiration for my WIP, and the movie poster for it popped up!), and Strange Magic and Enchantria are absolutely NOTHING alike… But it gave me the idea for Enchantria and Nyxria. Other ideas just came to me as I started writing the book, and I pulled inspiration from a lot of my favorite books!
About the Enchantria Series
Elena Ramirez’s mother disappeared eleven year ago. On her sixteenth birthday, Elena finds her way to the magical land of Enchantria, only to find that she is the subject of a centuries old prophecy that is now being fulfilled. With the old prophecy being fulfilled, Ravena, the dark lady of the ravens, awakes and is now determined to destroy Enchantria at any cost. Elena and her new friends must fight against Ravena and undertake a series of dangerous quests to save Enchantria. If they fail, Enchantria is doomed. And Ravena is getting stronger by the minute. Will they manage to defeat Ravena and restore order to the land or will Ravena destroy Enchantria, once and for all?
About Isabelle Knight
Isabelle Knight is the middle-grade fantasy author of the Enchantria series, which she began writing at age ten and published sometime later in her life. A lifelong book and cat lover, she now resides in a book-filled apartment surrounded by countless stuffed pandas and enough books to start her own bookstore. When she’s not writing about creepy shadows, daring heroines, and magical adventures, she’s talking about books, writing, and doing writerly ramblings on her blog and YouTube channel.