Katherine Roberts
About Author
Author Katherine Roberts was born in the south west of England and spent her childhood roaming the beaches of Devon and Cornwall. She studies at the University of Bath, where she obtained a first class degree in Mathematics.
The book that inspired her to start writing fantasy fiction was "Lord of the Rings" by JRR Tolkien, which she has read 11 times.
She worked with racehorses for ten years and she enjoys skiing.
Her books include the Echorium Sequence, Spellfall, Seven Fabulous Wonders and I Am the Great Horse.
Author link
Interview
CROWN OF DREAMS: THE PENDRAGON LEGACY
TEMPLAR PUBLISHING
MARCH 2013
King Arthur's daughter Rhianna along with Prince Elphin and the young knight Cai, must find the Crown of Dreams before their mortal enemy Mordred lays his hands on it.
The person who has the crown can control dragons, the weather, even the dead - and will understand the mysteries of the grail.
Author Katherine Roberts answered the following questions for ReadingZone.
Q: Why did you decide to write a series of stories (Crown of Dreams is the third) based on the legends of King Arthur?
A: I have always been a great fan of Arthurian legends and read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, and there was a time when every book you read seemed to be about King Arthur.
I have always been interested in the women in Arthurian legends. There's a lot about knights and jousting in the stories but I'm always interested in what the heroines are doing and I thought it would be good to have a feisty young heroine in this story - I wanted the women to have fun!
Rhianna Pendragon, King Arthur's daughter, is the main character but there are also two key boy characters, Prince Elphin and Cai. Prince Elphin is a young Merlin-type character who has a magical harp and he's not human as he's from Avalon. The other boy, Cai, wants to be a knight. Rhianna teachers him to ride and he gets a lot braver as we go through the series.
I wanted Rhianna to be quite a strong character - not a beautiful Medieval princesses - and I had to build a back story for her of being smuggled away as a baby to Avalon. I had just finished writing a story for adults about Queen Boudicca's daughters so I had in mind a woman who was a fighter and who had red hair.
Q: When and where are the stories based?
A: I have dated my story to the sixth century, after the Romans had left, but that's about the only historical fact in the story and I built the mythical settings of Camelot Castle and Avalon around that.
I have lived in the West Country most of my life and I have visited most of the places associated with mythology. I visited Tintagel Castle before it became very touristy and saw the magical Merlin's Cave, and I have been to Glastonbury. I have placed Avalon at Glastonbury and I made Cadbury Castle in Somerset my Camelot because I wanted it to be within riding distance of Avalon - there is a map of the sites inside the books.
Q: Why did you decide to set a quest for Rhianna?
A: I like quests and I suppose that there are a lot of quests in fantasy stories but it also came out of the Arthurian legends. The books start the day after Arthur has been killed and his body taken to Avalon, so the over-arching quest is to find the four lights so they can bring King Arthur back from the dead.
I used Celtic myths for the four 'lights' that they have to find, so the sword, lance, jewel and grail are based around Celtic mythology. The rest is the Arthurian legends.
In the next book, book four, Rhianna has to find the Grail but many of Arthur's knights have already sought it and failed, and no one knows what they are actually looking for. She has to start on her quest not really knowing what she needs to find or if she will ever find it.
Q: Who is your favourite villain?
A: My favourite bad guy has to be Mordred, King Arthur's nephew. I like him because he relies so much on his mum and isn't a totally bland villain like you sometimes get.
Mordred has his history, he is bad but he's also slightly vulnerable - although he gets worse as the series progresses.
Q: Do you plan your series in detail before you start to write them?
A: When I wrote the first book, I knew it would be about King Arthur dying and Rhianna getting the sword, Excalibur, out of the lake, but I didn't plan the stories around the Crown of Dreams or the Lance of Truth too much because I knew that the characters would shape the story. The Lance of Truth has the stories of Lancelot and Guinevere behind it and the Crown of Dreams is more about Morgan le Fay and Mordred.
Q: Is it hard to write a story with magic as your characters can always use it to escape?
A: There is magic in the stories but it's never a 'get out clause' for the characters because it has its own rules. I have also made the magicians a bit more vulnerable, like Merlin, so he can't do everything by magic.
Elphin has his harp but using magic in the world of men is hard and he has to practice what he can do and there are limitations. In the fourth book, which I have just finished writing, he gets captured and Rhianna has to do without him for a bit. Rhianna is also still learning to use the magic of Excalibur.
Q: Why do you write fantasy stories?
A: You write what you enjoy reading and because I read a lot of fantasy, that's what I ended up writing. I have written stories with no magic in them but it always feels to me that there's an element missing.
I am not talking about magicians and spells but the spiritual side of things, real world stories that have a spirit beyond them. People believe that miracles sometimes happen and that is like magic, something beyond the real world.
Q: How does your writing day go?
A: When I sold the series, I had already finished book one and written the draft of book two, but I had to write the other two quite quickly as Templar published two of the books each year.
I write at home and find I am more creative in the afternoon but I don't have a strict writing routine. A lot of male authors talk about writing however many thousands of words before lunchtime but for me it depends what phase of the book I am in as to how much I will write each day.
Q: Do you have any advice for young writers?
A: My advice to young writers would be to say, enjoy it, write what excites you. I wasn't that good at writing at school, maybe because I was pushed into sciences so I did Physics and Maths.
I found English quite hard work, having to write stories about things I wasn't interested in, but at home I used to write stories for fun and I'd write all through my holidays and at night-time and would write all sorts of stuff - sci-fi and fantasy mainly, so it's important to have a passion for what you're writing.
