Interview Allison Knight

CTR: Let us welcome Allison Knight to our special winter holiday Book Brew event!
First, please give us a bit of information about the book or books you’re sharing today. At least ISBN, Publisher and buy link please!

AK Today, I’ll be sharing a “Battlesong” the sequel to “Heartsong”, both published by Champagne Books. They can be purchased from Champagne books, www.ChampagneBooks.com or www.Amazon.com. Both books are Medieval Romance and I would rate them almost an “R”.

CTR: Where can our reader friends find out more about you and your writing?

AK: People can find me at www.AllisonKnight.com and www.AllisonKnight.blogspot.com as well as Facebook.

CTR: What winter holiday or days does your family or circle of friends celebrate? Did they bring some special customs and traditions from another country, culture or region to your current form of celebration? Does such diversity maybe enhance the joy and meaning of the season for you and for us all?

AK: Our favorite holiday, of course, is Christmas. My husband is from the east coast, and I’m from the mid-west. Our different traditions center around food. My family always had
a large buffet served after mid-night Mass, cold cuts, cheeses, breads, crackers, cookies and candy both before and after the gifts had been opened. My husband’s family had a large get together on Christmas eve and they opened their gifts on Christmas morning. The meal on Christmas day involved very different kinds of food. My family had candied sweet potatoes, turkey with oyster dressing, corn casserole, pies and my aunt’s fruit hash for dessert. My husband’s family had sausage dressing in the bird, they never heard of corn casserole, they candied the carrots, had creamed onions, they mashed the potatoes, and mashed turnips as well. They had fruit pies for dessert. It certainly peaked my interest in foods and what people ate in different regions of the country. My interest in foods and time periods ballooned from my experiences with east, west, mid-west and now, southern food. Christmas dinner in the south has even more unusual foods. Cornbread stuffing, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole and instead of the turnip root, they eat the leaves. (Greens) Foods fascinate me.

CTR: Tell us about what your favorite holiday gift or memory.

AK: I’m in a unique position, because my birthday is on Christmas day. There have been some memorable Christmases. When I was eight, my parents had a birthday party (with the family – after all it was Christmas day) at my Grandmother’s farm. It was a memorable day, because the farmer next to my Grandparents, lost his barn to fire that afternoon. Everyone forgot the cake and ice cream to race to help the farmer down the road. Another fabulous Christmas was the year my husband handed me the check book and said “Redecorate the Living room.” I started with the rug and moved up, all new furniture, pictures, end tables, lamps, the works. Then there was the year we went to Hawaii, the big Island. I walked beside an active volcano that day, and my dinner table held a huge bouquet of orchids as a center piece.

CTR:. Was there a gift you totally lusted after as a kid or teenager and never got? Did you maybe get it for yourself later or come to realize it wasn’t as cool as you had once thought?

AK: Definitely! Ice Skates. Eventually, I got a pair of used skates and discovered I didn’t want to learn to skate. My ankles twisted and ice is very cold when you are planted on it every other step you take.

CTR: Do you go all out with decorating and making a special festive meal or do you prefer a quieter sort of celebration? Have a favorite holiday recipe to share with us?

AK: I used to decorate the entire house, inside and out. I always cooked a big meal, either turkey or ham and all the goodies, although my husband never was fond of corn casserole. Now, we usually do very little decorating and if we don’t have a lot of people for dinner, I fixed a prime rib.

CTR: Do you think we’ve become too commercialized and maybe taken some of the traditional or religious meanings away from our holidays such a Hanukah and Christmas or do you think more secular emphasis is appropriate in these modern times?

AK: I definitely think the meaning of both celebrations have been lost to commercialization. Families no longer have the traditions that held the family unit together, the way we did. Families are separated by hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles, and the nuclear family is now, more often than not, yours, mine and ours.

CTR: Thanks for being part of our special holiday event and please come back whenever you have a book to share that fits the theme or just to visit with us!! Readers and writers are a wonderful community and neither of the groups could survive without the other!