Reading Up a Spring Storm in Oregon

On Saturday, I went with my supportive mother to the Saint Helens Spring into Art phenomenon at the community center. There were culinary arts, rug weaving, paintings and sculptures on display, a dog adoption area, and ukulele band performances, to name just a few.

The community center building houses the town library, and I found my baby, Seven Noble Knights, in really good company on the new shelf.

I wore my shirt with the awesome medieval sleeves in order to read the first chapter of Seven Noble Knights for a diverse and enthusiastic audience in the auditorium.

Audience members told me I brought the story and the time period to life with my reading, so I felt pretty good. This was great community-centered practice for my reading at the Harvard Book Store later this week!

Afterward, I set up Seven Noble Knights (with a printout of its Historical Novel Society review), Tree/House, Unpredictable Worlds, and Awash in Talent in the children's area of the library with several other local authors. Even though we were tucked in the back of the community center where people had to come looking for us, I sold and signed several copies of Awash in Talent and one of Unpredictable Worlds, and chatting with readers and the librarians was a lot of fun.

One male reader asked me what Tree/House was about, and I amazed myself saying, "It uses Jungian archetypal imagery to retell the Bluebeard legend." Tree/House is kind of a hard sell to a male reader, anyway, but I'm not sure what made me venture into the alienating scholarly definition of a book many people have enjoyed without knowing about Carl Jung or the Bluebeard story. Note to self: Tree/House is the story of a woman's empowerment through sleeping in trees.

Another note to self: If I had mentioned the book signing at the reading, I might have attracted more historical fiction readers to the second event. It's not easy to remember to be your own publicist when you're having fun.

Thanks to everyone who listened to the first chapter of Seven Noble Knights and who stopped by my booth! And to my mom, who was my biggest fan on Saturday!

If you just weren't in Oregon on Saturday, I did a special YouTube reading of the first chapter, which you can watch any time here.

Enjoy! And I'll see you at Harvard!

Radio Stars: Seven Noble Knights and Me

Portland's All Classical station is at the intersection of the river and the light rail. 

Picture it: You're an artist, and someone you're not related to and have never met and you know appreciates the type of art you do in general has seen your art and liked it enough to talk with you about it for thirty minutes at his radio station.

A selfie in the very moments when my authorial fame hits its zenith. 

Exciting? You bet. I know because it happened to me!

Ed Goldberg at Portland's All Classical is an avid reader, and I had the inestimable pleasure of chatting with him (at New York speed) about Seven Noble Knights.

Check it out and download it free at the station's site. It is also on iTunes (the J. K. Knauss March 1 track) also free. If you don't find it there, have a listen at the top of my Seven Noble Knights page! 

The view from the studio wouldn't be complete without rain clouds. 

As you'll see when you have a listen, we crammed a lot of information into thirty minutes! I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed making the recording. Doña Sancha, Don Gonzalo, their seven sons, Mudarra, and Doña Lambra await you!

Book Club Magic with Divas, Sangría, and Medieval Spain

Reading makes you blossom 

The Literary Divas February meeting, which featured discussion of everyone's favorite epic of medieval Spain, Seven Noble Knights, had near perfect attendance and a special appearance by yours truly, the elusive author J. K. Knauss.

Seven Noble Knights, hurrah! 

The group has varied tastes and don't often agree on books, but luckily, everyone found something to like in Seven Noble Knights. I let the readers control the discussion, which ranged delightfully all over. I was tickled to hear comparisons to Game of Thrones, and the consensus was that reading Seven Noble Knights is like being inside a movie. We discussed the pleasant challenges of a book with more than thirty characters and how long it takes to write an epic novel. We delved into the psychology of Doña Lambra, Zaida, Don Gonzalo, and Gonzalico, and agreed that Blanca Flor is more mysterious than I intended. Almanzor was a favorite character, and I got to explain that his reputation in history is terrifying, so it was thrilling to portray him in a positive light. My inspiration and years of research paid off when many readers picked up on subtle details.

I'm always surprised when readers want little ol' me to sign their books, but there was a whole lot of signing going on, too.

"The book club needed a book like this," one enthusiastic reader said. "It's well written and we all learned a lot!"

The group enjoyed an elegant selection of Spanish tapas: Mediterranean salad, paella, tortilla de patatas, bread, Manchego cheese, chorizo, Spanish olives, almonds, and sangría, with olive oil in almost everything and a delicious, colorful fruit tart for dessert.

The evening concluded with an impromptu reading of my prize-winning flash fiction, "Stairs to the Beach." The dark humor was highly appreciated.

You, too, can experience Seven Noble Knights with your book club! Check out suggestions here and contact the author if you'd like to schedule an author appearance or Skype or Zoom session.

New Flash Fiction Publication

When I was living in Atlanta, I took a break from my epic novel, Seven Noble Knights, to compose a very compressed, short-short piece of writing, which I call "Found on the Coast Near Astoria, Oregon." I've revised it over the last year, and now, to my delight, it's published and ready to read in the inimitable Quail Bell Magazine.

This is a deeply personal fictional interpretation of a collage of images found in everyday life, presented in a way I think is mysterious and intriguing and not based on any kind of reality. Please read it and enjoy, imagining your own stories to surround and explain what's on the page.

I'm particularly thrilled with the photo the editors included. Thanks to everyone at Quail Bell and thanks to my readers!

The Place in My Heart

I'm going to be moving to Oregon soon, and my mother tells me that if my husband and I can finally find some stability there, I won't feel the pull back to Boston, Massachusetts. The depth of the grief and rage I felt at the bombing of the Marathon on Monday indicates to me that Boston is still the Hub of my personal American universe.

I hope the people of my favorite place in this entire country will recover as best they can very soon. And everyone else will stay calm and seek solutions other than lockdowns and revenge. (There I go with that irrepressible optimism again!)

Tree/House Book Club

The Secret Society of Literary Divas of St. Helens, OR loves Tree/House!

Clockwise from left, the Literary Divas who were able to attend the momentous March meeting were Linda, Beth, Patty, Debi, Kay, Kailyn, Nora, Gail, and Mickey.  Oops, I hope I didn't wreck the secret! Many of the ladies read the book on their e-reader devices, and in this picture, we can see sly, brilliant Patty holding up a library edition. Anyone can and should request Tree/House for their local library. It's a great way to support literature at no cost to yourself.



Linda was nice enough to send me this picture and some of the topics the ladies discussed. I use them as a jumping-off point for a discussion on the interpretation of Tree/House, which you can find by clicking here. It will always be available to read as a page in the left-hand column, and I would like to take this opportunity to invite comments from readers to be listed and responded to on that page. Thanks for reading!