Sadly, I have no control over such things. And I suspect that you don't either. They are determined by sales (i.e. money). Publishers who are raking in pots of money on a particular book, and who are made aware of an audience for large print editions, don't hesitate to respond. In all other cases, they look for ways to reduce rather than increase their expenses. So unless someone can convince DEL REY/Ballantine that large print editions of "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" are a sure bet.... <sigh> (08/02/2007)

I had heard this story. Like you, I found it amusing. But it's also rather pointless, don't you think? Jane Austen was writing in a very different time for very different readers. I'm not at all surprised that modern publishers weren't excited by what they read. Although it is rather depressing that they didn't RECOGNIZE it.... <sigh> (08/02/2007)

For readers who want an advance look. *Eventually* Putnams will send me cover proofs, and then I can ask my webmaster to post the cover on this site. (08/02/2007)

Well, duh! How could I miss it? But *wait*! I haven't actually read the SECOND Harry Potter book yet. Or the third. Or the--well, how many ever there are. So why I am I still standing here in line? (08/02/2007)

First (although you didn't ask this), yes, I've been away from the GI for a while, proofreading frantically. But now I'm back. I think? Now. The issue of the US cover for "Fatal Revenant" has been coming up more and more. It's true that I have "no real input on cover art." Publishers ask my opinion (mostly out of courtesy), but they trust their own judgment. That said: Putnams wanted a packaging change for FR because, frankly, ROTE hasn't sold very well. In addition, some people (like my editor and agent) feel that the ROTE cover isn't distinctive enough. As a result, everyone involved in the project has been looking for new approaches. On its own terms, this is a Good Thing. It means that Putnams believes in the books; believes that they deserve to sell better; and is trying hard to make that happen. I personally think that "consistency in cover art" is a plus. Now that Putnams has decided to make a change for FR, I hope that Ace will commission a new (consistent) cover for the mass market paperback of ROTE. But when I ask questions about things like that, I don't get answers. <sigh> If I knew more than that about what's going on, I would tell you. (08/13/2007)

From my perspective, this is a real lose/lose question. There is no answer that I could possibly give you that wouldn't be a spoiler of some kind. I'm afraid that you'll just have to RAFO. (08/13/2007)

Sorry. No can do. "Should Pass Utterly" is a good title--if you've read the previous "Covenant" books often enough, or recently enough, to get the reference. Otherwise it conveys very little. Or so I'm told by virtually everyone who doesn't, well, get the reference. (Is it a question? An assertion? To what does it refer? And where should the emphasis fall? On "should"? "Pass"? "Utterly"?) As a gratuitous exercise in mental gymnastics, you might try analyzing the difference between, say, "Against All Things Ending" and "All Things Ending". In any case, editors always have the last word on titles. That's just one of the facts of a writer's life. (08/13/2007)

I can't think of anything useful to say about what you've called the "reality quotient" of various genres. As far as I'm concerned, there's an extremely flexible continuum between fiction which attempts to mirror consensus reality exactly ("slice of life realism") and fiction which attempts to reinvent virtually every aspect of consensus reality (sometimes including language itself). At one extreme, I think of writers like Zola and Dreiser. At the other--well, the only name that occurs to me (as being sufficiently extreme) is Butor, who once (or so I'm told) wrote a "novel" where the reader was expected to shuffle the pages before reading them. (Perhaps I should content myself with a surrealist like Beckett.) Everything else--including fantasy, s/f, horror, mystery, romance, "magic realism," western, historical, even most mainstream--falls somewhere in between. Exactly *where* in between depends on what a particular writer is trying to accomplish in a particular story. In other words, I'm afraid that this is a situation in which you'll have to find your own path. After all, all of the best writers are "sui generis": each of them occupies a niche entirely his/her own. As to your second question: since the ending of a story is my reason for telling it, and all of my energies are focused on reaching that ending as honestly and effectively as possible, my stories never go off on directions of their own, and I never lose interest in writing them. The only exception (and it doesn't really fit your questions) is "The Real Story," which I originally wrote as a standalone novella several years before I began work on the GAP books. I put it away after I'd written it (and revised it a few times) because I knew that it didn't "work," but I couldn't figure out why. As soon as I did figure out what the problem was, I went back to it. BUT (and I've already said this many times) what I do and how I work are irrelevant to what you do and how you work. Only bad things can happen to you if you strive to emulate some other writer's methodologies. (OK, I admit that imitating another writer--AS AN EXERCISE--can be very educational. That's not a bad thing. But the results can never be anything more than an exercise.) Here, as in virtually every aspect of writing, each individual has to find his/her own path. (08/13/2007)

I swear to you that the US and UK texts are as identical as human diligence can make them. The difference in physical size is the result of differing fonts, page sizes, lines per page; things like that. (08/13/2007)

I'm certainly proud of the GAP books--perhaps inordinately so as a form of over-compensation. <grin> But I knew going in that the story would be a difficult "sell" from a commercial point of view. I decided to peel off the layers (in "The Real Story") until the full brutality of the characters and context was revealed (which doesn't actually happen until "A Dark and Hungry God Arises") because, well, if you don't know just how bad things have been for people like Morn and Angus and Nick, you can't really measure Morn's courage, or Angus' transformation, or Nick's tragedy. In particular, if I want to write convincingly about people who rise above themselves under extreme circumstances, I have to tell the truth about those circumstances (both past and present). "Hinting" won't cut it: describing something that happened "off stage" won't cut it. Only the truth carries any moral weight. Sure, I wish more people trusted me enough to stick with me through the first half of my story. I believe that the people who *do* stick with me won't regret it. (You're a good example.) But I wouldn't back down from the position I took in the GAP books. (Not even in retrospect. <grin>) The integrity of the stories I'm trying to tell is worth a lot more to me than commercial success is. (08/18/2007)

Maybe I'm a uniquely uncritical audience. (Ha!) Or maybe I'm so focused on how stories are put together than I don't notice material which may have been borrowed or even stolen from, say, me. Whatever the explanation, I virtually never *see* "items...that were strongly inspired by (or shamelessly copied from) [my] work." Those "items" may well exist; but if they do, *I* sure missed 'em. (It's rather embarrassing to admit that I never noticed the similarity between Erikson's "L'Oric" and my "Loric" until a reader pointed it out to me. <rueful sigh> However, I choose to regard this as an indication of Erikson's excellence rather than a sign of my inattention. He's simply so good that he renders such connections or comparisons meaningless.) (08/18/2007)

I may be the worst possible judge of my own writing. (Or not. Only time will tell.) But here's how I choose to look at it. "The Runes of the Earth" is the launch platorm. In "Fatal Revenant," the ICBM really takes off. Now the only question is whether or not I can keep up with what I've launched. <rueful smile> Later I'll worry about whether or not my missile is going to hit its target. (08/19/2007)

I'm tempted by a variety of responses. I want to refer you to what I now call "the Douglas Adams Fallacy" (thanks to a reader of the GI, I was able to quote Adams extensively a few weeks ago: the "fallacy" is one that he describes, not one that he commits). Or I could fall back on the irreducible fact that I'm not a linguist. I have neither the skills nor the knowledge to address the issue you raise. But here's my real answer: since everything about the Land has *some* kind of organic relationship with Covenant's mind, and with Linden's--and since neither Covenant nor Linden has spent thousands of years progressing in his/her use of language--of COURSE the people of the Land still talk the way they did millennia ago. Whether or not you accept the proposition that the Land is an extension of Covenant's and Linden's minds is beside the point. No one can deny that Covenant and Linden have *some* kind of fundamental and essential relevance to the "reality" of the Land. Parts of the story can be told from "Land-based" perspectives--e.g. from Mhoram's--only because the relationship between those perspectives and Covenant's/Linden's has already been established. (08/22/2007)

As far as I know, Moorcock's assertion isn't original--but it is certainly apt. Empirically if not scientifically, we're surrounded by evidence that he's right. I'm not going to get drawn into a discussion of particular writers. And I'm not wise enough to define true excellence ("art"): only the test of time winnows "the best" from "the merely good". But back in the days when I taught writing (lo! these many years ago), I liked to say that "Bad is objective: good is subjective." Put another way: it is easy to demonstrate that writer X's work is bad--and there's no escaping the fact that it *is* bad, regardless of whether or not writer X sells a lot of books. It is much more difficult to demonstrate that writer Y's work is good (again regardless of whether or not writer Y sells a lot of books). And it is virtually impossible to demonstrate that writer Z's work is excellent. The farther away we get from the realm of the objectively bad, the more we enter the domain of "I like this, but I don't like that." Some people consider my books to be the rancid by-products of a diseased mind. Well, fine: everyone is entitled to his/her likes and dislikes. But can these unspecified people *demonstrate* that my books are objectively bad? Personally, I doubt it. In my (admittedly limited) experience, the people who consider my books to be the rancid etc. use vehement adjectives, rhetorical "straw men," and unsupported generalizations to defend their views because they can't actually find the objective evidence they want in the text. Please understand that I'm not claiming for myself the stature of "excellence" (or even the stature of "merely good"): I'm simply observing that people who dislike my work intensely appear to do so for reasons which are subjective rather than objective. (08/22/2007)

All I can say is: I pity the fool who gets sucked in by that kind of nonsense. (Just my opinion, folks.) (08/22/2007)

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I think I understand why these issues are confusing. Here's an analogy that may be useful. Consider the whole Law as a skeleton supporting the flesh of life (all life, including the fact that existence is even possible). The skeleton is composed of many different bones (manifestations of Law), each of which serves a separate function, none of which is fully functional without all the others. Like broken bones, broken Laws can be healed--and like healed bones, they're never the same afterward. For one thing, the "joins" are harder; therefore more brittle. And as anyone who has suffered a bone bruise knows, once a bone has been damaged, it is much more easily re-damaged. Obviously I don't want to carry this analogy too far (Law of Time=skull, Laws of Life and Death=spine, etc. <grin>). I don't mean it literally. I just mean it as a way to think about what happens in "The Chronicles". (08/28/2007)

I've been procrastinating with your questions because they're so complex and I can't think how to answer them efficiently. But here goes. Simpler issues first. I'm long past the stage where I "absolutely loathe" what I've written. In this regard, there are two important parts to my process. 1) As I've often said, every day when I go in to work I give myself permission to write badly. Indeed, I *expect* what I write to be bad. (My Mommy didn't raise any self-confident children.) So there's no surprise here--and no reason to get down on myself. One great blessing of the writing process is rewriting. I'm deeply comforted by the knowledge that I can rewrite as often and as hard as necessary to produce good results. 2) I separate as completely as possible the creative and critical aspects of my writing process. I write an entire book at a time without (hardly ever) worrying about whether I've written it well. I only fully engage the critical side of my mind when I have the entire short story or book on paper. In other words, I don't spend my time second-guessing myself while I write. Instead I just plow ahead, come good or ill. That's the only way I can create something that feels *alive* to me. (Of course, things do sometimes go badly wrong during the creative stage. Under those circumstances, I have no choice except to engage my critical faculties in order to identify and correct the problem. But I only do that when things go *badly* wrong--i.e. when the story starts to feel utterly dead rather than alive. Otherwise I just keep going--and trust my abilities as a rewriter.) But how to explain my attitudes toward academic literary analysis and (more generally defined) literary merit? I am fundamentally pro-academia in all of its critical and analytical functions. I learned all of my aesthetic standards--the criteria of literary merit to which I aspire--by studying great literature in college and graduate school. My apparent anti-academic bias is reactive. I've simply encountered too much scorn for what I do from academics (even from the specific professors who taught me my own standards). And my many academic friends who do not automatically despise sf/f have to deal with the scorn of their colleagues on a daily basis. Hence my perception that the study of literature in academia has become a very closed-minded activity. Despite Henry James' dictum that every creative person *must* be left free to choose his/her own subject matter, and that the subject matter itself can never be a valid object of literary criticism, many times many academics dismiss what I do for no other reason than because I choose to use metaphors of magic and monsters. (As a result, we never get to the much more interesting question of whether or not literature can be emotionally "hot" rather than "cool" and still achieve high literary merit.) As for literary merit itself, I have the highest conceivable aspirations. I strive for greatness, nothing less. Everything I do is an "appeal to the larger literary discussion." But come on: do you seriously expect me to attribute greatness to myself? Do you seriously expect me to compare myself to, say, Joyce (although Conrad would be more apt)? I'm not that egotistical. More importantly, however, I'm not that ignorant. I know with real clarity that *time* is the only valid measure of greatness--and time won't even *start* to pass judgment on my work for another 50 or 100 years. So what conceivably purpose would it serve if I went around claiming literary merit for myself (as Eric Segal famously--and foolishly--did after publishing "Love Story")? Since I don't know what time is going to decide, if I want to stay sane I'd better stay humble. (08/29/2007)

My essential motivation for writing is the story (and by extension the characters). If I haven't already made this clear, I don't write for the various pleasures of world-building (many though they may be). I get excited when I think of details that will help my story (like burning wood in "The Second Chronicles"): I know that I'm making a poignant change, and I hope that my readers will recognize it as such; but I don't grieve over it--and I certainly don't miss it. Instead I'm glad that I thought of it. Characters, on the other hand.... <sigh> (08/29/2007)

As far as I'm concerned, any genuinely "personal" use that you make of a book you own is your own affair: it's no one else's business. If, on the other hand, you wanted to *sell* your audiobook--or even hand it out indiscriminately on street corners--my publisher(s) and I would have good reason to object. But as long as you aren't going down that road.... I see your point about Hile Troy. And it's true that I "milk" myself constantly for what I need in order to devise and understand my characters. But this is something that I'm only aware of in retrospect. I do not *consciously* use myself or my experiences in my writings, directly or otherwise. So I can't honestly say that any similarity between the ways in which Troy and I rely on language is a coincidence. On the other hand, I *can* honestly say that it "just happened." If that makes any sense. (08/29/2007)

I'm embarrassed to admit that I never noticed the similarity between L'Oric and Loric until you pointed it out. If you want to know whether Erikson intended his (much later) use of the name as "an homage," you'll have to ask him. *I* certainly won't. I do my level best not to care about such things. And no, I've never had to ditch a name I like--well, for any reason whatsoever. Not even "Kevin" or "Elena," which must have been used dozens of times before I got to them. What would be the point? If I can't make the name my own in the way I use it (as Erikson clearly makes L'Oric his own, which is why it didn't call inappropriate attention to itself), I probably don't deserve to be published in the first place. (08/29/2007)

No, I did not write the jacket copy for "Fatal Revenant" myself: my editor(s) did. But yes, it *is* a difficult balancing act--and yes, I did as much as I could to help my editor(s) walk the tightrope. On the one hand, I hate giving away ANYthing about what I've written. And on the other, I always read the jacket copy myself before I start reading a book: I want at least a *few* hints about what I'm getting into. So I try to help my editor(s) compromise between my desires as the author and the desires I would feel if I were the reader. (08/29/2007)

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