Prism Knights is a group of seven short stories about knights who identify as LGBTQA+ in some way and who live strange and poetic lives. Each of their stories are capable of standing on their own as a completed work, but, when read together, intertwine into a much more complex narrative.
Currently the project consists of:
COQUELICOT a story about evil lesbian knights who take on an apprentice of their own; loosely based on Rapunzel. BRONZE a story about a non-binary ace knight who is caught in a time-loop; loosely based on The Princess and the Pea. SAPPHIRE a story about a polyamorous relationship between a knight, a dragon-witch, and a shifter; loosely based on Sleeping Beauty. VELVET a story about a bisexual knight overcoming grief; loosely based on The 12 Princesses.
Intention
The initial intention for this project was just to write something of a guilty pleasure but make it fancy, make it rich with detail. I wanted to write something gritty for queer women, maybe even reclaim ‘villains’ as these are often queer-coded character. I don’t know, I just wanted to have FUN.
Now the stories are a bit more of an experiment on my part to create stories that allow me to test the waters writing stories that include characters of sexualities and genders that don’t exactly match my own. It’s become a bit of a playground for that.
I also, I know this is/has become an empty statement from someone with a very white background but for this particular series I purposefully left out physical descriptors of the characters as a means of encouraging and allowing folks to put themselves into the story/characters. I wanted for folks not to be bogged by certain head-canons and have every version of these characters be validated.
*DISCLAIMER (specifically to white peers reading this): this is NOT something that is appropriate for every or ALL stories. It’s important to do your research and be a part of the movement to make media less white-centric. It is work, but we need to pick up our slack and do what we can.
History & Timeline
Prism Knights is a group of short stories about LGBTQ+ knights. And the source of this story is pretty simple. It started in January 2017 when a group of friends from the bookstore I worked at decided to do monthly writing challenges.
After a few image prompts, a solid month of sprinting through about 5,000 words, a story was born in the shape of my exploration of lesbianism and the connotations of villainous characters.
In other words: I was really very into the idea of Knights as villains, especially knights as villains who were queer and femme and kissed a lot.
That’s right, Prism Knights started, as most of my projects do, a guilty pleasure. And, luckily for me, this guilty pleasure of a story did phenomenal at its first convention run which involved my first appearance at TCAF (this was due in part to the covers illustrated by the artist we partnered with at the time*).
With such a positive and warm reception to Coquelicot, my brain was already focusing on sequels… but not quite sequels. I came to the realization that this project could be a fun experiment for myself to write characters of varying gender identities and sexualities. I could essentially turn this series into my ‘7 shades of gay’.
I set to work writing Velvet for the following year for our spring 2018 convention run. Quickly after I was releasing Sapphire for the fall/winter 2018 gambit and to bleed into the 2019 spring circuit. Bronze was released in November 2019… in time for 2020’s non-existent convention run.
Months after this release, we all know, a global pandemic struck and many big events were cancelled so Bronze did not get to debut at any convention in 2020, nor did the project get its crowdfunding campaign to finish up the series (planned for June 2020). During this, the cover artist also had to be changed out, the books sat in a solid limbo for months before finally falling back on track.
Now Sapphire leading the way with a new cover illustrated by the amazing Corviday and edited by our two contract editors: Aisling & Julie. The book was set to re-release in October 2020.
[Prism Knights is a project that is still currently ongoing. This page will continue to update as the project progresses in real time].
* The artist’s name was redacted from this post due to the fact that the artist has since taken part in certain activities and behaviours I’m not exactly a fan of and cannot promote them for this project any longer.