Kelly Santana-Banks asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

What was your inspiration for Knife Children?

Lois McMaster Bujold Well, apart from the prior tetralogy, and the picture in my head that wouldn't go away that always started with Barr shaving off his Luthlian beard and going on to find the burned-down farm, there was a certain amount of reverse-inspiration from every YA novel ever about the adolescent girl/young person running away from a home where no one appreciates them, with or without the village slaughtered in their wake, and onward with magical pet to find secret powers, better mentors, improved bio-social status, heroism in the War to Save the World, etc etc.

This novella runs the classic scenario through more realistic filters, and most of all looks to see what happens when one switches the viewpoint and focus to the cast of characters who are more normally portrayed as casually dismissed collateral damage or public utilities. Thus, an exploration of the hazards of parenting, of the people who have to carry the can, rather than of adolescent empowerment.

Lots of other details from my life and experience and acquaintance, at all ages, went in as needed, but that's the structural backbone.

(There are a curiously large number of YA-centered stories out there, both pro and fan, that seem to have absolutely no idea what grownups do all day, nor how the worlds they live in are made and maintained.)

Ta, L.

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