Having followed a very logical progression to superiority, was her destiny predetermined? Or did Hava as a character dictate her trajectory while you were drafting? Hava comes into her own more during Queen of Storms with a greater proportion of chapters/page time being dedicated her journey. Seriously, we will learn a lot more about the characters and the world in which they live. Except for the people who die bloody deaths, of course.
So, new major players are revealed, some things are not as they seemed to be, and a good time is had by all. We find layers below the layers were previously peeling off. Lots of bad things happen to good people, lives are profoundly changed, and as I like to do a lot, we peel the onion. As noted above, in the three act play model, this is the very end of act one and goes deeply into act two, the rock throwing. For those who have read King of Ashes and are moving on to July’s release Queen of Storms, can you tell us what we should expect in the forthcoming instalment? My characters do have an annoying habit of taking off on their own sometimes with prior consultation with me, so who knows? Something else might happen, and it could be four.
Most of my work has been “three act plays,” though I’ve had four books in one series and two in another, but for the most part my background in theater and film makes me think in the old, “chase your character up a tree, then throw rocks at him, then let him come down gracefully and win,” trope of drama. Initial estimates were that it would be a trilogy. As I was waking up one morning, in that lucid moment coming out of sleep but not quite awake, I thought I heard a voice ask, “Who is the King of Ashes?” Once I got over my concerns of auditory hallucinations or a transient ischemic attack, I thought, that’s a great title for a book! So I had to figure out who the King of Ashes was, and why was he important, etc. The notion for King of Ashes was actually pretty odd. Anyway, I wanted to take a short break, which I did, and that unfortunately went on longer than planned due to some personal, family issues. Writers don’t retire we drop dead or get put in a home. Where did the inspiration come from for this new series? You then burst back into the spotlight with 2018’s King of Ashes, first in the Firemane Saga. Following the conclusion of Riftwar in 2013 with Magician’s End, you headed into retirement and the world expected your legacy to live on through your work. As I said, my dad had been in the entertainment industry, and his literary agent, the brilliant Harold Matson, and he saw something in Magician, so he represented me and eventually editor Adrian Zackheim at Doubleday bought it, and from there one thing led to another and I still haven’t found that other job in marketing. We had a tax revolt in California in 1978 and funding was cut, and I was instantly a full-time writer.
I had majored in Mass Market & Public Opinion and had done a fair bit of political stuff, but now I was working for non-profits. After I graduated I decided to turn my hand to fiction, looking for a second income possibility. It’s a long story, and the short version is I learned I was a pretty good writer in college, because I could hack out papers and get A’s. In the UK, for example, it was always one novel. Can you tell me a little about how this came about?Īctually, it was It was split into two volumes for paperback release in the US. Your career in publishing started out in 1982 with the release of Magician: Apprentice, the first novel in what would turn into the Riftwar Cycle, a series with 31 novels. I think my work mostly is character driven, for another thing the old man said was, “Give them someone to root for.” That’s about as self-analytical as I can get. First was, ‘if you’re not writing action, you’re writing talking heads, and if it’s talking heads, they better be saying something important.” Second was, “Don’t fart around, tell the damn story!” So, efficiently? I hope so.
My father was a writer/director/producer, and he had two hints for me (he didn’t imagine I’d become an author). In 40 years no one has asked me that before! Congratulations. To start off, for those who haven’t read your work before, how would you describe your writing style?