Interview w/ Edward Willett
Thanks again to Mr. Willett for doing this interview with me. Enjoy! Thanks for doing this interview with me. To start off, tell us a little about yourself. Who are you? Why are you here? (Okay, you don’t have to answer the last one, because that’s a broad and mostly random question) Basically, a little bio if you will. As my mother used to say, “I’m here because I’m not all there.”A brief bio: I was born in Silver City, New Mexico, in July of 1959 (an event in which aforementioned mother played a very important role). We moved from New Mexico to the panhandle of Texas when I was two, and when I was eight, we moved from Texas to Weyburn, Saskatchewan. My father was a preacher in the Church of Christ and also a schoolteacher, and was offered the opportunity to move to Weyburn to teach at Western Christian College, a high school and junior college affiliated with the churches of Christ. From my point of view, this meant I started school in Texas (where I skipped the first grade—which, combined with my summer birthday, always made me by far the youngest kid in my grade) and then continued it in Saskatchewan. This gave me first-hand experience at being a stranger in a strange land and may well have contributed to my interest in science fiction, although the more immediate reason for my interest was that my two older brothers both read the stuff and thus it was always around the house.I attended Western Christian College in Weyburn through high school and first-year university, then went to Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas (also affiliated with churches of Christ), to study journalism. (It was the school my parents attended and where they met.) I graduated in December, 1979, and in January, at the ripe old age of 20, started work at the Weyburn Review weekly newspaper as a reporter/photographer, eventually adding weekly columnist and editorial cartoonist to my duties. After four years I became news editor. In 1988 I moved to Regina, Saskatchewan, as communications officer for the fledgling Saskatchewan Science Centre, among other things researching and writing copy for all of the exhibits being built. In 1993 I left that job and have been a fulltime freelance writer ever since. My first books were all computer books with exciting titles like Using Microsoft Publisher for Windows 95. From there I branched into children’s non-fiction and have written a plethora of children’s science books (Ebola Virus, Careers in Outer Space, etc.), biographies (Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Ayatollah Khomeini, etc.), histories (The Iran-Iraq War, The Mutiny on the Bounty) ever since.My first novels were published by miniscule or, in one case, now entirely non-existent, companies. They were all YA science fiction or fantasy: Soulworm was first, then The Dark Unicorn; then came Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star and Spirit Singer. My first adult novel was Lost in Translation, first published by Five Star, then picked up in paperback by DAW. My most recent is, of course, Marseguro, also published by DAW.I’m a professional actor and singer as well as a writer, though that’s more of a sideline: the last thing I did in that regard was play several roles in a professional production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast in Saskatoon over Christmas.I’m married (to an engineer—good career move on my part!) and have one daughter, who just turned seven. What are you currently reading, what do you plan to read, and what have you just finished reading? I’m currently reading, with my wife, Terry Pratchett’s Making Money. On my own, I’m halfway through the Septimus Heap children’s fantasy trilogy by Angie Sage. Before that, I read Scott Westerfeld’s YA SF Uglies trilogy. Young adult fantasy and science fiction was my first love and I hope to write more of it, so I read quite a bit of it. The last non-fiction book I read was Empire of Blue Water by Stephan Talty (pirates! Aarrrr!). Up next? Probably Naomi Novik’s latest Temeraire book, Victory of Eagles. Joe Haldeman’s The Accidental Time Machine and Jack McDevitt’s Cauldron are also near the top of my pile. Who are some of your writing influences? Favorite authors, past and present? Growing up, on the SF side, Robert Heinlein was undoubtedly my main SF influence, as he was to so many others. Along with Isaac Asimov and, to a lesser degree, Arthur C. Clarke. Andre Norton was also a major influence: I think I read Moon of Three Rings half a dozen times as a kid. Robert Silverberg’s Revolt on Alpha C is one of the first SF books I can remember reading, and had a big influence. (Later on, his book The World Inside contributed mightily to my sex education.) Another SF book that made a big impression early on was Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Colours of Space. Other influences: Clifford Simak. John Christopher. More recently, C. J. Cherryh comes to mind as an influence. On the fantasy side, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, of course, and Andre Norton, again.Favorite authors aren’t quite the same list as influential authors. Heinlein is still on there, and Cherryh, and Tolkien, and Norton. Diane Duane. I read everything Pratchett writes, and I’m a fan of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. Patrick Rothfuss (a fellow DAW author!) is a favorite based on The Name of the Wind. Scott Lynch’s Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies were great fun and I’m looking forward to more. I mentioned Novik earlier. Robert J. Sawyer is another favorite, and Dave Duncan, too. John Varley. Joe Haldeman. Allan Steele. Lots and lots of favorites, in other words! Why did you decide to become a writer, out of all things you could possible do in this world? Likewise, what drove you to science fiction as opposed to, say, stories about teddy bears?I’ve always been a huge reader, and one day when I was 11 years old, a friend and I
Interview w/ John Varley
Not too long ago I reviewed Mr. Varley’s novel Rolling Thunder. Now, I have an interview with the author himself. Enjoy! Firstly, thanks for doing this interview with me. Could you tell us a little about yourself (sort of a short biography if you will)? Born and raised in Texas, got out as soon as I could, right after high school. National Merit Scholarship to Michigan State, dropped out, went on the road, became a hippie, did a lot of drugs, stopped doing a lot of drugs. Went to Woodstock accidentally. Lived in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, started writing. Been doing the same ever since. What projects are you currently working on, if any? Could you tell us about them? I’m working on a novel suggested by my editor that involves a post-apocalyptic world. I can’t reveal too many details about it, as the cause of the apocalypse is rather unusual. Did your editor suggest the idea for your post-apocalyptic novel or just the idea of a post-apocalyptic world in general? Is this something different for you in relation to your other work (without revealing details, obviously, I just happen to be a fan of this subgenre)? She just wanted a book about how things can go bad, and how we’d survive during and afterward. I cooked up the disaster myself. Why do you write? (more or less, I’m curious why you decided to write SF and fiction in general) I write to make a living, and to amuse myself. I write SF because it’s all I know how to do. I read mainly thrillers and mysteries, and I’d write those if I knew how, but I don’t. Your biography on your website says you used to run behind DDT-trucks. Is that exactly as it sounds (a young John Varley running happily behind a truck spraying DDT everywhere)? If you’d grown up on the Texas Gulf Coast you’d know exactly what I mean. The mosquitoes there were suspected of carrying off small cats and dogs to devour at their leisure. Nobody knew then that DDT was bad for you (actually, it isn’t, is it? It’s bad for birds and fish), so every night trucks would cover every street in town, spraying a soothing cloud of DDT mist that–back then, anyway, they probably eat DDT for lunch, now–killed the skeeters. Big enough to carry off small cats and dogs? Was this like a strange conspiracy, like the Area 51 UFO mythos (true or not)? Government experiments to create super mosquitoes to decrease the animal population might work better than Bob Barker, I suppose. That’s just how we grow ’em in that part of Texas. They sometimes pick up armadillos and drop them from a height to stun their prey. But the stories that they are responsible for cattle mutilations and 9/11 are not true. What about your past has influenced your writing? Reading. Even in SF you use your real-world experience, of course, if you intend to have believable characters and events, but the core of SF is concepts that you get by reading in science, and other SF stories. What are some resources you use for finding scientific ideas, concepts, news, etc.? The news. The Internet. My own speculations. I have to say that the KYAGs (or these sort of stasis bubbles, for those that don’t know what I’m talking about) is a really brilliant idea. Out of curiosity, were they inspired by anything you read about or did it just come out of the blue? Out of the blue, like all my ideas. How much research into the science side of things did you do? You have quite a lot of ideas that I have to admit have not shown up in a lot of SF I have read (such as the fact that your human characters from Mars are actually noticeably taller than folks from Earth, which is realistic because of the difference in gravity). Only as much research as I have to do. These days it’s made a lot easier by the Internet. I was able to find the names and orbits of all of Jupiter’s moons in one place, Wikipedia, and I wonder if that information is even available on paper except at a major university or observatory. The tall Martians, alas, are not an original idea. I can’t recall where I first saw it, but someone else had that idea first. Who knows if it would really work that way? We’re many years away from finding out. One of the interesting things about your writing style is how you portray Podkayne throughout the novel. We’re given a direct look into her mind, almost like stream of consciousness, but without the lack of punctuation. Did you find it at all difficult to write in this manner, or did the character’s voice just jump onto the page in this way? How did the character of Podkayne come about? Was it easy to get into her head? Characterization is the easiest thing about writing, for me. I slip effortlessly into someone else’s head, and that person grows as I go along. Plot is what I find difficult. Podkayne just started out with a name and a location, and I followed her wherever she went. I didn’t know she was a singer until she started to sing. With it being so easy to get into a character’s head, is it ever difficult to separate yourself from those characters when switching gears to a new story? Do you find yourself still writing in the voice of another character even though you’ve finished that story? No, when that story is done the character shuts up. Of course, in the THUNDER AND LIGHTNING series some of the same characters show up again, but considerably older, and in the background. You talk a lot about music within this novel and I’m curious if you already knew a lot of the things you wrote about, or if you researched them for your character. What
Interview w/ Susan Beth Pfeffer
Thank again to Susan for doing a second interview. You can find out more about her on her blog and be sure to check out her books on Amazon (Life As We Knew It and the dead & the gone, the latter of which is released on June 1st, for example). Without further ado! Thanks for doing another interview with me, Susan. I think we can skip the simple introductions since I’ve done an interview with you before. So let’s get right to it. Your new book is called The Dead & the Gone, a companion novel to Life As We Knew It. What was the inspiration for writing this second book? I had a wonderful time writing Life As We Knew It and I was eager to write a sequel. However Harcourt, my publisher, wasn’t eager to have one. So one day I thought, well I’ll write a book about a whole different set of characters living through the exact same catastrophe. It won’t be a sequel, but it will be fun. And Harcourt liked the idea also, so I wrote the dead & the gone. What are some challenges in writing a companion novel such as this that ‘retells’ the same even through the eyes of someone else? Were you at all concerned about the book working as well as LAWKI? The biggest challenge was keeping the timelines the same. LAWKI takes place in eastern Pennsylvania, and d&g in New York City, so they’d both have essentially the same weather patterns.There’s a blizzard in LAWKI and a major snow/icestorm in d&g that happen at the same time. I kept my copy of LAWKI by my side so I’d keep the dates straight.I didn’t really worry about whether d&g would work as well as LAWKI, but I had other concerns. My main character is a teenage boy, and I find it much easier to write from a girl’s viewpoint. Alex, in d&g, is a Puerto Rican New Yorker, whose parents are Spanish speaking. So I knew there’d be things Alex would say and think in Spanish, a language which I have no familiarity with. I guess I just like to make things tough on myself!While I was writing LAWKI, I knew it was a very special book, although I’ve been surprised and delighted by how many people love it. the dead & the gone was harder to write, so I think of it as a greater accomplishment. I’m curious to see how people who read d&g without having read LAWKI will respond to it. The books are completely independent of each other. You can read one or the other without missing anything (although I certainly hope if you like one, you’ll read the other). The characters in the books are all Catholic and religion is a very strong theme in the book. Why did you decide to go with a more religiously themed take in comparison to the mostly non-religious feel of the first book? When I did my pre-writing for LAWKI, I decided I wanted the family to be non-religious, so they were. But when I was working on d&g, I wanted the characters to be as different as possible from Miranda and her family. So instead of a rural upper middle class girl from a non-religious family, I created an urban lower middle class boy from a deeply religious family.There were a couple of reasons why I made Alex and his family Catholic, but the biggest one was the strength and power of the Catholic Church in New York City. I could see the Catholic Church knowing what was going on, being in regular communication with whatever remained of the city government. And because of the Church’s strong organization, it could provide a structure for those people who need it. Additionally, one of the key points in the novel is the idea of having faith tested. What about the testing of faith do you think makes it a good personal struggle? (This might seem like a somewhat obvious question, but people think differently about things, so I’m curious). The testing of faith only works as a good personal struggle if the characters have strong religious beliefs to begin with. But if you do, and if your world is disintegrating in front of your very eyes, you have to find a way to reconcile your beliefs with the reality you’re facing. People go through that all the time, with illnesses and personal problems. Different people respond different ways, but it’s an interesting conflict. What made you decide to set this particular book in New York City? Was it easier to write a story in an urban sprawl? I actually considered other cities for d&g. I think I considered Buffalo. But I lived in NYC (a long time ago) and I go there regularly. It’s the city I know best. And it worked out really well, because NYC in some ways becomes a character in the story. Alex and his sisters aren’t alone fighting for survival. So is New York City.There were some aspects of writing about a city that really exists that were tougher than creating a small town in Pennsylvania. My editor lives in NYC, and she actually thought I should be accurate in my descriptions. Humph. If I wanted to be accurate about things, I wouldn’t be ending the world with such gleeful abandon. Rumor has it that you’re working on a third book in the same world. Would you mind talking a little about it for those that don’t read your blog? Are you trying to take a very different direction, stick with a similar theme, etc.? I’ve been working on a possible third (and no doubt final) book, something that takes the LAWKI/d&g world and describes what’s going on five years later. It has a completely different set of characters, but one character from LAWKI and one from d&g show up, so the readers of both books can find out what happened to
Interview w/ Dave A. Law
Thanks very much to Mr. Law for doing this interview with me. You can find check out my review of The Complete Guide to Writing Science Fiction here. First, tell us a little about yourself and your relation to the speculative fiction field–a little history if you will. From my earliest memory I always wanted to be a scientist and from that grew a love of science fiction. In my teens I got interested in writing and at eighteen I was working as an editor/writer/letterer for a comic book company formed with some friends that I helped run but got nowhere. I went on to write and edit (as well as help run) a variety of comic book companies over the years. I started my own SF zine but couldn’t get it off the ground in the traditional format, so this eventually revised the format to an eZine that I ran for a few years. I got married, finally received my science degree and have been working as a software developer ever since. In more recent past I have been co-running an ePublisher, Virtual Tales, which though publishes various genres, is very heavy in SF/Fantasy. What are you currently reading (fiction or non-fiction)? Who are some of your favorite writers of past and present and why? Actually, I’m listening to a lot of audiobooks now. Between homeschooling my eldest daughter and spending time with my other daughter and wife, I don’t have a lot of time for reading, other than what I do editing, though I am looking forward to when my children are older and I can enjoy more traditional reading again. Audiobooks fit well within my life as I can listen to them on the way to and from work. What’s more, there are hundreds you can get for free off the Internet. Obviously many of these public- domain stories, but you would be surprised at what has become public domain, such as H. Beam Piper’s stories. I have “Little Fuzzy” on CD that I read years ago which I am looking forward to enjoying again soon. But beyond public domain, many authors have embraced the audio format with original fiction. One of the biggest is Scott Sigler, a SF/Horror writer, who claims to have produced the first podcast-only novel, EarthCore, though this novel has gone on into print. This is not a typical genre I read, but Sigler is a master of the audiobook format. Currently, when I do have a chance to read I’ve been slowly working my way through A. J. Cronin’s “Keys to the Kingdom”.As for favorite writers here are some of my current ones:– Spider Robinson– G. K. Chesterton– F. Scott Fitzgerald– Louis de Wohl How did you come to be editor of The Complete Guide to Writing Science Fiction Volume One? Actually, this grew out of the Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy, which was started by Darin Park and originated within an online group of fantasy writers, which I belonged to, as well. I was busy with other projects and not as interested in fantasy at the time, so I never attempted to get involved with this initial project. However, after this there was always talk of doing a similar SF guide, but it never got off the ground. Eventually, my time freed up and I proposed such a publication. Neither of the original editors was available to front the project, so to get it running, I offered to do this myself with Darin agreeing to help out. We queried the original publisher Dragon Moon Press, who expressed an interest, wrote up a proposal, and here we are today. Why do you think the project was difficult to get off the ground? Is it because SF is a difficult genre to do guides for, or that it’s not usually used as a medium for ‘how to’ books? Or is it just a more typical answer of nobody really stepping up until you decided to? (This isn’t meant to offend, but I find that there are so many more guides for fantasy than there are for SF, though there are quite a lot of SF books, so I’m curious if you might have insight into what makes SF guides a little less popular). In general, I don’t think people realize all that it takes to get a collective writing project off the ground. They think it is a “neat idea” but they are writers rather than editors, so they aren’t aware nor interested in the aspects that make it possible to pull off such a project and, as such, a lot more projects are started then actually ever get completed. As for SF guides, in general, I believe many people see fantasy as easier to write because you just make everything up (not true, but it is the assumption). Whereas SF is based upon science, which requires more research and knowledge to carry it off effectively, there is the perception that creating a fantasy writing guide is easier than SF. How exactly did you choose the articles in The Complete Guide? What is the process like for making a collection/guide such as this? As with the previous publication, this grew out of an online writing group, so this is where the first articles came from, as many of the previous contributors to the Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy also write SF and sent us article proposals. We also sent out a general call to various writing groups and organizations for submissions. We had a list of articles/topics that we wanted to get covered, so in additional to the general call, we asked specific authors to contribute articles in their area of expertise. A number of which accepted. What would you say sets this guide apart from the myriad of other books on writing SF that are already out there? What makes it more valuable to new writers or even veteran writers? There are several things that make this different. One is the
Interview w/ Paul Melko
Here you go! An interview with the author of Ten Sigmas, which I reviewed here. After an hour of formatting the text, since it was a little wonky for some unknown reason, it is ready for your viewing pleasure! Thanks again to Mr. Melko for his time and the great answers he gave to my questions! Thanks for doing this interview with me. First, could you tell us a little about yourself (your history as writer, etc.)? My fiction has been appearing in print since 1996. I’ve published dozens of stories and they’ve been translated into Spanish, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, and Romanian. My fiction has appeared in Asimov’s SF, Strange Horizons, Talebones, Realms of Fantasy, and other places. My novella “The Walls of the Universe” was nominated for Nebula, Hugo, and Sturgeon Awards — all in one year! — and it won the Asimov’s Readers Award for Best Novella. My first novel, Singularity’s Ring, appeared in February of this year from Tor Books. My second novel, The Walls of the Universe, will come out next winter.I’m trained as an engineer, with a masters in Nuclear Engineering, and this affects all my work. My characters are logical, thoughtful, and practical (I hope). They’re problem solvers. Recently, I started studying for my MBA. This education has colored my writing as well, and I find myself adding economic details that might otherwise have been ignored in my previous futures.I am an active member of SFWA, sitting on the board as the South-Central Regional Director. I also am chairman of the Grievance Committee.I live in Ohio with my wonderful wife and four fairly wonderful children. The older kids and I are studying Taekwondo. What is it about science fiction that appeals to you? What are some of your favorite authors of today and the past? My biggest influences were Heinlein, Farmer, and Harrison. I never read Clarke, and I never read Asimov except for some classics. My first books were the Heinlein juveniles, specifically Have Spacesuit, Will Travel and The Rolling Stones. Farmer is the most influential on me.Right, now I’m reading quite a bit of YA. My eldest daughter has started reading and I try to keep up with her books. It’s hopeless, as she reads a book a day. I am the proud papa. What are you currently reading, what have you just read, and what do you hope to read? I’ve been reading Gene Wolfe’s Soldier of Sidon, as well as various MBA texts and business cases. Of the recent business texts, the most interesting has been The Mystery of Capitalism by Hernando De Soto. It posulates why capitalism works so well in certain countries but fails miserably in others. His thesis is that the evolved rules of capital in some countries — land ownership and use of collateral to gain loans — allow easy creation of more capital with the capital on hand. Whereas inother countries, there is too much dead capital — land and material with no clear ownership –, and so there is no way to leverage that capital to make more. “Ten Sigmas”, being a book of short stories, explores a variety of different technological avenues (including one about superheroes) from the dangers of fiddling with the past to the dangers of traversing between universes/dimensions. What would you say is a strength of the short form and do you prefer the short form to the novel? How would you describe the works presented in “Ten Sigmas” (the pitch, basically)? “Ten Sigmas” is my collection of science fiction stories, and all of them are tainted by my training and history. I don’t write down endings, and there’s not a story in the collection in which the world is worse off at the end, except for perhaps one. I am an optimist, I am a problem solver, and most of my characters are too.I love the short story. I learned to write with the short story. The short story is the test vehicle for ideas in literature. You can get away with so much in 3000 words that a novel just can’t sustain. You can try new devices. You can take on an affectation and see where it goes. You can play games with the reader. The novel is larger, but not as free. The novel reader isn’t as forgiving of experimentation. On the subject of short stories, do you see the short form disappearing in the near future or do you feel that it will prevail and grow? (This is mostly addressing the concerns over the magazine market that seems to be losing ground, though perhaps it really isn’t in some ways) It is sad that most writers end up moving to novels for monetary reasons. Alas, the number of markets out there is small for short fiction, and declining. I hope the short story doesn’t go the way of the dinosaur; I doubt if it will. There will always be a place for a tightly constructed tale. Most likely e-zines and anthologies will take the place of the magazines as their subscription bases dwindle. The story notes say you wrote “Singletons In Love” for a Lou Anders anthology. What was the inspiration for creating these ‘pods’? What made you think of that as a future possibility where the Internet might not exist? If the human race were to give up computers and hardwired networking, there would still be a need for dense computation. In the world I posit, I assume that computation is taken over by human computers — plurals of humans that use the complexity of their networks to form higher thoughts. I love the idea of the pod: a pod is powerful yet fragile. Pods are hard to form and call fall apart if traumatized. Yet they can make intuitive leaps that normal humans can’t. Many of your stories deal with characters making either bad decisions or ill-informed decisions (“The Teosinthe War” and “Walls of the Universe” for example, one which results in people
Interview w/ Paul Genesse
Thanks to Paul for the interview. You can find out more about him on his personal website and be sure to check out his novel The Golden Cord, which will be out on April 16th! This is a whopper of an interview, by the way. So hold on to your seats and here goes! Thanks for doing this interview with me. First, could you tell us a little about yourself? When did you first gain an interest in writing fantasy? I think it was the toy castle that sent me over the edge. Soon after that gift I told my parents that I wanted to be a writer. I was four years old. Even then dragons and castles were my thing. I remember being terrified of The Hobbit movie (cartoon) on TV when I was five or six and hiding under the couch cushion when the goblins were chasing the dwarves. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but I pursued my other passion and became a Registered Nurse. I’ve been a nurse since 1996 and work in a cardiac unit in Salt Lake City. I’m never going to quit being a nurse and will always be a writer and a nurse. Luckily, I’ve found two things that I love to do and both of them feed my soul. The Golden Cord is the first novel in a series. Could you tell us a little about this first book and then a bit about the other books you’re working on, are done with, etc.? Do you have other projects in mind for the future? All five books in The Iron Dragon Series are written. The Golden Cord is the first book and the others are just waiting to be edited. I wrote all of the novels before the first one was accepted for publication. I just had to get them all done and wrote the first drafts over a period of about three years. I was so focused on getting the books finished that I slavishly worked on them, sometimes staying up all night. Back then I could easily get 20-35 pages written in one night. My pace has slowed a bit as I agonize over each sentence, but I still love to write. The Golden Cord (tGC) is the opening of an epic adventure fantasy that will take the characters all over the harsh world of Ae’leron (A-luh-ron), which means winged in the ancient language of my world. The one line description of the book is: The dragon king arises, and a hunter must leave behind the woman he loves, give up all hope of survival, and guide his most hated enemies to the lair of the beast that threatens to enslave their world. The other books keep the story going and explore the world and the mystery surrounding the overall plot, which involves the diabolical dragon king and his goal of taking over the world; but behind the scenes, like a puppet master. Draglune is a dragon that doesn’t have to show up and burn the city down, though he does enjoy that. He would rather have his cultish spies and minions take over from the shadows, manipulating the people into doing whatever he wants, putting him in full control, but secretly. The main characters of the novel are very outmatched and are always on the edge of being burned to a crisp and having their ashes scattered into the wind. They struggle with what has gone before and those friends and family who they have lost. Most of the characters in The Golden Cord are literally haunted heroes. About my other projects, I’ve sold nine short stories as of March 2008, and I’m often getting asked to write more for various editors. There’s usually a short story on the back burner. However, my current novel project, aside from The Iron Dragon Series, is Medusa’s Daughter, a love story set in ancient Greece involving the mythological Medusa and the daughter she could have had. Read chapter one on my website. As of this writing, I’ve finished the rough draft of the manuscript. What is it about fantasy that you find most interesting? What are some of your favorite authors from the past and from today? What are you currently reading or plan to read? My favorite authors are: George. R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones in the Song of Ice and Fire Series), J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings), Michael Stackpole (The Dragon Crown War Cycle), Dennis L. McKiernan (Dragondoom), Joshua Palmatier (The Cracked Throne), Dan Simmons (Illium), Terry Brooks (The Elfstones of Shannara), and Bradley P. Beaulieu (Tears of Tendali—not out yet). I’m about to dive into several books right now. I’ve got about 40 on my shelf that need to be read, such as: In The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, Dead To Me by Anton Strout, and Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I love fantasy and science fiction above all other genres. When I read it my imagination soars and I become part of the world and see things through the character’s eyes as if I was there. Experiencing a new world that I had never known before is my favorite thing, though the characters have to be great. It’s all about the characters for me now. I’m a character writer and want to read about well-developed characters. Cardboard cutouts of characters do not interest me anymore. I want to be in their heads and know how they think. If the writer does a good job, I identify with the character and live my life through theirs. I think that’s why reading is so great; you can live many different lives and experience things you could never experience unless you read the book. Movies are great too, but with books you can get inside someone’s mind and know what’s it like to crawl up the slopes of Mount Doom. On the subject of movies, do you find movie adaptations of books to be