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Many names, many years put into Vernon writer’s first novel

Samantha Knight’s The Girl With Many Names began when she was a UBCO student
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Vernon author Samantha Knight has published her first novel, The Girl With Many Names, a book she started pre 2014 as a student at UBC Okanagan. (Contributed)

There was the book that was fake published. Then there was the full-length novel she wrote in university that she hopes to publish one day.

Her latest effort started as a short story and turned into a novel.

That’s the one that’s been published for reals for Vernon author Samantha Knight.

A graduate of Harwood Elementary, W.L. Seaton Secondary and UBC Okanagan, Knight – now living in Edmonton with her plumber husband Sterling and daughter Eva, three – penned The Girl With Many Names, published in October by Vanguard Press.

“The idea for the book came from university,” said Knight. “I was taking a lot of English literature courses, studying fairy tales, essays and learning the history around the times that the literature was published.”

One course, she said, devoted half the term to mythology, legends and fairy tales and examine those stories through different lenses. So what began as a series of literary observations developed into a full-length novel that will challenge everything readers thought they knew about the tales that comprise classic folklore.

“I found it interesting that stories from the same periods we don’t know the origins of which countries they came from, if they were based on a true story, and I started making all these connections,” said Knight.

The Girl with Many Names is a “tapestry woven from the fabric of several timeless tales,” says Vanguard Press. “But unlike many renditions of a similar nature, this dark retelling deviates from the conventional perspective of an archetypal hero/heroine to explore the unanswered and bridge the gaps…

“With a more realistic approach, this work of fiction uncovers the grueling circumstances that may have governed the choices made by the enigmatic characters of old, and the impact of nature versus nurture.”

Knight has always been a writer, starting from early childhood. Her mother has a box full of stories of all kinds, and the pair spent time over the summer going through the box and laughing.

One author came to Harwood when Knight was in Grade 3 and she happened to be one of the students picked to help write “a book.”

“I was the youngest one chosen and they put all the pages together, had it fake published, fake copyright and had it bound,” laughed Knight. “It was called ‘The Brave Knight.’ I still have it.”

Lunch hours at school were spent not outside but in the library writing. At Seaton, she wrote stages plays and scripts. Upon arrival at UBCO, she continued through creative writing and the English lit classes. She did complete a novel in an advanced creative writing course in Kelowna which she hopes to publish one day.

“Up until this book, it was just short stories that have been published,” said Knight, who writes full-time but also works for a building company.

Knight’s The Girl with Many Names is now available to purchase from Amazon (paperback & Kindle edition), Barnes & Noble, Target, Book Depository, Waterstones, Foyles, and other leading retailers. Additional information can be found at https://sknightwriting.wixsite.com/home or visit https://pegasuspublishers.com/books/coming-soon/the-girl-with-many-names.

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roger@vernonmorningstar.com

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Roger Knox

About the Author: Roger Knox

I am a journalist with more than 30 years of experience in the industry. I started my career in radio and have spent the last 21 years working with Black Press Media.
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