Angela Knight has been writing since the age of nine and was first published in 1996 when her first erotic novella appeared in Secrets. Over the years, she has published over sixty novels, ebooks, and novellas and has hit several best-seller lists, including USA Today, Publisher’s Weekly and the New York Times. She’s also won countless awards.
A writing lunatic — her words not mine — she’s a very busy lady who says she fell in love with romance after reading The Wolf and the Dove by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, something we have in common. And we are so pleased that she’s spending some of her time with us today.
Let’s move on with the interview by asking a few personal questions. Where’s your favorite vacation destination?
New Orleans. Such a beautiful city, and so much fun to explore on foot. We went there in August to celebrate our 40th anniversary, having celebrated our 30th there as well. The food, as always, was to die for!
Do you have any pets?
I had a cat, Calliope. (Who was named after a cat in one of my books.) She was so beautiful – a long-haired tortoiseshell. She was a stray I adopted seven years ago. Based on a defunct chip implanted in 2006, she was 18 or so. She crossed the rainbow bridge earlier this month.
Who is your hero?
My husband, Michael Woodcock, who has been a cop for 30 years. I base all my heroes on Mike. We’re more in love now than when we married in 1984. And we are SO silly! Every time we’re together, we’re making jokes and laughing like loons. And whenever I’ve struggled with depression or cancer or job loss, Mike is the reason I’ve come out of those things with my sanity and health intact.
What are your pet peeves?
People who write “your” when they mean you’re, or “it’s” when they mean its. I’m an editor, and those kinds of mistakes don’t speak well for the American educational system.
Anthony is my birth son. In 2010 or so, he went off to Maine. He had a slew of roommates there, but James became his best friend. When it became clear that none of them could pay the rent, Anthony came back to Spartanburg. James, a New York state native, came with him. James and Anthony lived with us for almost 15 years. James’s mother died of cancer when he was 15, and his adult older brother was abusive. So we started treating him like our son, and he treats us like his parents. He and Anthony worked in retail for years. He got a job at a savings and loan as a loan officer last year and is steadily climbing the ladder there. Anthony, meanwhile, is getting his secondary education degree – he wants to teach high school history.
Next, we have some questions about you as an author. How do you handle negative reviews?
I don’t read them, because they give me writer’s block. My Berkley Sensation editor told me to quit reading my Amazon reviews, and I eventually did.
What does writing do for you? Is it fun, cathartic, do you get emotional?
I like creating my own fictional worlds – one where King Arthur and his knights are still alive and fighting to save humanity from itself. Or one where the US Military creates magical tigers, lions and bears, who channel their power through soldiers who can form magical bonds with them. Or my current series set on contemporary Earth, where genetically engineered human warriors are sent on missions by an alien spaceship. I like starting with a premise nobody else has used, then building an entire world around it with its own laws and social problems. I love showing my protagonists struggling with love and survival in worlds like that. It’s so damn fun!
Do you like doing research?
Love it. In the early days, I’d come home with a huge stack of library books. Now I spend a week or so on websites and YouTube, where videos demonstrate everything from tattooing to how to fight off a dozen attackers.
You say that you’re a writing lunatic, what does that look like?
I go into withdrawal if I don’t have a book going. I’m jonesing right now, in fact. I need to start book 2 of Mothership’s Rangers.
What’s one thing you don’t enjoy about writing?
Writer’s block. I get it with every single one of my books, always at the climax. Climaxes are hell to plot and pull off, because you have to create a situation that resolves both the character’s internal conflict AND the external battle with the Big Bad.
What subgenres in romance do you write?
Paranormal and futuristic, with one contemporary. I love worldbuilding, and writing contemporaries doesn’t do it for me. All of my books also have the steamiest love scenes I can manage. I sometimes write BDSM, where my submissives treat their Dominants’ demands as a test of courage. My subs are NEVER dishrags. You can’t have a good romantic conflict with a dishrag.
Time for some fun! What’s your least favorite
- Hero type – Abusive assholes rapists in Eighties bodice rippers. I read those before I became a writer. I remember one asshole who threw his heroine down the stairs and broke her ribs. Since then, my personal rule of thumb is that heroes don’t commit rape.
- Body part – My hips are too broad.
- Overused word in a title – This isn’t an overused word, but it’s funny. There was a romance in the early eighties called Lovely Lying Lips. Bwahahahahahaha!!!
- Genre – horror. My imagination is waaaay too good to read horror.
- Dirty word – Smegma.
Last but not least, let’s talk about your books! What’s your latest release?
Wildcard, the first book in the Mothership’s Rangers series.
Tell readers a little bit about it.
Back in 1910, an alien ship – run by an enormous AI called Mothership – came to the solar system to prevent the human race from committing mass suicide through war or environmental catastrophe. This is something that happens a LOT to intelligent species. (And yes, this is a recurring theme in my books.)
Mothership began studying humanity, learning how to cure ALL our diseases. She then started creating genetically engineered warriors with computer implants. Humanity doesn’t know she’s here: she looks like an asteroid in orbit between Earth and Mars.
A few years ago, another alien ship called Codex showed up, but these aliens are nasty bastards who possess rich, influential humans – think Elon Musk. Mothership and these aliens are fighting an invisible war over humanity. Mothership wants to protect us from Codex, the alien ship, which wants to rule us through its puppets.
The heroine, Indra, is one such genetically engineered person, but she and another warrior, Diana, were raised with no knowledge of Mothership. She and Diana think they’re aliens. Then their parents were killed by Codex’s agents, and later Diana was kidnapped. She’s been missing for six months, and Indra is frantic to find her. Indra goes undercover at a strip club owned by the gang of kidnappers. Then my hero, Rowan, shows up and they end up fighting the kidnappers in the first chapters. They spend the rest of the book trying to rescue Diana from Codex.
Where did you come up with the idea?
I wanted to do a futuristic set on contemporary Earth, complete with superhuman warriors with computer implants. They also have lots and lots of hot sex.
Were there any challenges?
Yeah, I had writer’s block twice. Figuring out the climax was hard.
I see that you’ve written some series and anthologies.
Six novel series: Mothership’s Rangers, the Mageverse (9 books), Merlin’s Legacy, (6 books) The Time Hunters, (three books) and Arcane Talents (6 books); Forever Kisses (two volumes which include a novel and novellas). I’ve also got stand-alone novellas and ebooks you’ll find at Changeling Press, plus a bunch of novellas I wrote for Berkley Sensation. I counted all of published romances, and they came to 60.
Any new ones planned for the future?
Yes, my next Rangers book deals with Diana and her hero, both of whom are deeply screwed up.
What are you working on now?
Brainstorming the next book.
When can readers expect it to come out?
Probably in four to six months. I am NOT a fast writer, and a novel takes me a while to write.
*Fact #7 Angela lives in South Carolina.
*Fact #8 She has written for several publishers, including Berkley, Red Sage, Ellora’s Cave, Renaissance E-books, Loose Id and Changeling Press.
Do you have any final words for readers or advice for future authors?
Yes. FINISH THE DAMN BOOK. I could have been published a decade before I was if I’d only finished one of the dozens of books I started from my twenties on. My first novel was published when I was 43. One more piece of advice: NEVER GIVE UP. I didn’t, and it eventually paid off with 14 years at Berkley, a Penguin imprint. A good novel has a LOT of moving parts that aren’t visible to readers. It takes time to learn to write one well, and your first book is likely to be dreck. Mine certainly was.
Savvy Authors list of classes offered: (I teach four a year, plus short workshops on writing elevator pitches and free webinars.)
Thanks to Coffee Time for interviewing me, and to you, dear reader, for reading it!
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