This book is a love story. We both vividly remember the night we created Lady’s Knight. In the middle of the pandemic lockdowns, we were on opposite sides of the planet — Amie in Australia, Meg in the U.S. — trying to find ways to feel like we were together, facing down a stretch of seemingly infinite time until we’d see each other in person again.
We looked at each other through our laptop screens and said, “Let’s watch something joyous.”
We picked the 2000’s-era classic, A Knight’s Tale. We’d always loved the cheeky anachronisms, and who can forget that crowd stomping and singing Queen’s “We Will Rock You” at the jousting match? But as much as we’d love to say that movie cured us… well, let’s just say it left us wanting. Justice for Kate the blacksmith (Yes, she had a name)!
We spent all night talking about all the things we’d change if we’d written that story, until (after an embarrassingly long time) we realised we COULD write that story. The first thing we decided on was joy. Everything in this book would be something we loved.
“Perhaps, when we write for joy, what’s meaningful shines through even more brightly.”
Every trope, every joke, every little anachronistic touch, every line of dialogue, every look and gesture and detail. We’d write for our inner children, for that little glimmer of joy that the pandemic was trying to squish. We’d set aside our combined decades of writing experience telling us what we should do, and write what we wanted to.
The result is Lady’s Knight. There are cheerleaders at the jousting tournament. There are crocodiles in the castle moat. And we’re not saying magic is real, but that one guy who pissed off that hedge witch gets more parking tickets pinned to his horse’s bridle than anyone we’ve ever met, you know?
This story is also fiercely feminist, deliciously queer, full of humour and heart, and bursting with our love for each other and for stories. It turns out that even when we decide to write for pure joy, we can’t stop writing about what’s meaningful to us. Perhaps, when we write for joy, what’s meaningful shines through even more brightly.
This book is a love story. Yes, it’s about the slow, sweet burn and the tentative yet courageous way in which our characters, Gwen and Isobelle, fall in love. But it’s also a love story between two best friends, stranded worlds apart, writing their way back to joy together. We hope you fall in love, too.
— Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner
About the book
03 Jun 2025
Gwen has spent the past several years manning the blacksmith’s in place of her father, an open secret in the village in which she lives. A much more covert secret, however, is that she knows not only how to craft but also how to wield a sword, and an incognito stunt at the local jousting tournament manages to catch the eye of the wily Lady Isobelle.
Isobelle has secret dreams too, but she’s been promised in marriage to the winner of the whole stupid tournament, which means an end to any freedom or choices for her. Desperate to avoid this fate, when she connects the newcomer knight to the female smithy she saw earlier that day, she begins to hatch a scheme…
Petty knights. Backstabbing noblemen. A prison breakout. Cheesecake-on-a-stick. One particularly large and angry dragon.
Will our ladies survive the night? And can our knight save the day?
