First: I'm back. (Well, duh, Steve. We can see that.) After my UK book tour, I took some R&R. But now I can resume this rather ideosyncratic correspondence. Second, in my absence a large number of messages were posted to congratulate me on both the content and the success of "Fatal Revenant". I'm not going to respond to each of those messages individually--if I do, I'll be a month late(r) getting back to "Against All Things Ending"--but I want to thank you one and all. I'm very lucky to have such readers. You help sustain me both personally and professionally. Now: your question. I've been over this before, but it probably bears repeating. My final 1000+ page manuscript was NOT cut for publication. All manuscripts shrink in size (but not in word-count) when they become books: books simply have more words per line, and more lines per page. And font size makes a big difference. 590 pages from Putnams becomes 730+ pages from Gollancz because Gollancz has chosen a larger font. The actual words--including typos and internal inconsistencies <sigh>--are identical to my final manuscript. (11/08/2007)

Sure, Wagner influenced me. But not Parsifal. I was never able to get into that opera, though I tried mightily. We seem to have entered the world of Entirely Personal Opinions here. I certainly don't know any more on the subject than you do. But in my EPO, purity and innocence are undesirable as well as unattainable. The whole notion of "purity" seems rather, well, anti-human to me, since--in my view--qualities like discrepancy, internal conflict, and multiplicity of motivation lie at the core of being human. (Just look at what happens to the Haruchai.) For myself, I decline to believe that striving to undo the essence of who I am is A Good Thing. As for innocence (if it can be distinguished from purity).... Here's how I look at it. Desiring innocence is like desiring perfection: the only possible outcomes of that quest are either despair or complete paralysis. If I had held off publishing "Fatal Revenant"--or any story--until I believed it was perfect, it would never have seen print. As a writer, I believe that my only sane path is to strive, not for perfection, but for excellence. And I reason similarly about innocence. Despair leads to suicide, and paralysis might as well be impotence. Still, I'm reminded of a comment that my 9th grade English teacher wrote in the margin of my rather dyspeptic paper on James Fennimore Cooper: "Better minds than yours have thought differently." <rueful smile> (11/08/2007)

These are matters of speculation. I'm just guessing--and I haven't gone back to check the text. But I think it's likely that Mhoram and the Lords who followed him may have re-discovered one or more of the lost Wards before the Council was corrupted to become the Clave. The gap between the first trilogy and the second allows plenty of leeway for such developments. And certainly the Rede of the Clave can be interpreted as hinting at lore which the Lords of Mhoram's time were not known to possess. (11/08/2007)

It's difficult to think about Reality As We Know It without duality: things like light/dark and up/down are so profoundly embedded in human experience that I (if no one else) can't escape them. According to the Judeo-Christian model (as I understand it), before there was duality, there was God, who then created--oh, just to pick a random example--EVIL (a poor choice, in my view; but of course I wasn't consulted). That kind of cosmology just doesn't make sense to me. If God is "Good," then his decision to create Evil opens a Pandora's Box of theological inconsistencies and confusions. So in my own creative efforts, I prefer to stick with what I know: duality. Creator/Despiser. This implies several things, one of which is that each sort of defines the other ("up" is nonsense without "down"), so there's no hierarchy between them; and another of which is that neither can be accurately called omniscient. This, I freely admit, is a rather anthropomorphic way to look at concepts which are *supposed* to surpass human comprehension. But I'm just writing stories here, not creating tangible universes. I pretty much have to work with ideas that I'm able to handle. Will there ever come a time when I can stop answering "Creator" questions? (11/09/2007)

Well, it's certainly ironic that someone who reads--AND writes--as slowly as I do feels compelled to produce such vast stories. But I cannot wish it were otherwise. As a reader: when I've made the effort to adjust to a fascinating new reality (and characters), I prefer to stay there for a while. And as a writer: I'm stuck with the talents I have, and I simply couldn't do what I do if I didn't do it slowly. (Which, sadly, seems to be true of my *entire* life, not just my writing/reading life. Which in turn is even more ironic than it sounds, since on a cerebral level I'm actually pretty quick.) (11/09/2007)

SPOILER WARNING!

This question has been hidden since it is listed in the following categories:

Spoilers - Fatal Revenant

To view this post, click here.

You can choose to bypass this warning in the future, and always have spoilers visible, by changing your preferences in the Options screen.

I think I've discussed "unusual words" earlier in this interview. The short answer is that I read other people's books, make notes of words I like, look them up, and create a "personal" dictionary which I re-read from time to time to refresh my memory. *Very* rarely, a word demands a scene. Much more often, the nature of a scene sends me scrambling to my personal dictionary. (11/10/2007)

SPOILER WARNING!

This question has been hidden since it is listed in the following categories:

Spoilers - The Runes of the Earth
Spoilers - Fatal Revenant

To view this post, click here.

You can choose to bypass this warning in the future, and always have spoilers visible, by changing your preferences in the Options screen.

Please don't take this the wrong way; but from my perspective, your carefully-reasoned analysis doesn't actually lead to a question. Put another way, my view of the story doesn't leave room for doubt that "these exigencies...are...caused...by the nature of the Land itself". As I've tried to explain on a number of occasions, I see fantasy in general, and my work in particular, as a "journey inward" for the character(s)--which is why I keep insisting that the "reality" of the Land can't be separated from Covenant's and Linden's perception of it. But even readers who reject my view of the story surely recognize that Lord Foul is only *one* of the forces at work in the Land, and that therefore Despite is an expression (albeit only one expression) of the complex nature of the Land, rather than the other way around. Meanwhile I take it as given that journeys inward always involve the breaking down of boundaries. On a much more pragmatic level: when I first began my work on "The Chronicles," I envisioned the Land explicitly as the opposite of Covenant's initial emotional/psychological/spiritual condition. Seen that way, the Land is as much an arena for LF's "psychodrama" as it is for Covenant's--which in turn confirms your perception that the extreme dilemmas faced by the characters are as much inherent to the Land as they are caused by LF. Does any of that make sense? I can't tell: I'm still fuddled by jetlag. (11/12/2007)

Textual errors. The situation is worse than you think. Each of my editors went over the book three times. Two copyeditors went over the book twice each. Two proofreaders went over the book twice each. *I* went over the book at least 8 times. And we ALL missed the mistake on p. 588 (Putnams) every time. All I can say is that despite our best efforts to read mechanically, we must have gotten caught up the story and just seen what we expected to see. If my publishers have accurately reproduced my intentions, bold print is used in the second half of "Fatal Revenant" only for situations of extreme emphasis. I haven't yet gone over the actual text, so I don't know what you mean by "some minor detail". The remaining installments of "The Last Chronicles" will be called "Against All Things Ending" and "The Last Dark". (11/12/2007)

SPOILER WARNING!

This question has been hidden since it is listed in the following categories:

Spoilers - Fatal Revenant

To view this post, click here.

You can choose to bypass this warning in the future, and always have spoilers visible, by changing your preferences in the Options screen.

Wait a minute! You're serious? "Fantasy Bedtime Hour's interpretation...isn't entirely flawless or reliable"? Holy c*ap, Batman! I'm in trouble now. I've already written Lord Mormon, Atrium, and Bloodguard Bob into AATE. (11/12/2007)

<sigh> In my case, so many things militate against what one might consider the "normal" pleasures (not to mention the pauses) of writing a book like "Fatal Revenant" and having it published. (Of course, I *do* take vacations. Don't let me give you the impression that my nose is eternally to the grindstone. But my vacations are virtually never timed to the rhythms or sequences of my work.) 1) I was raised from the cradle by people who considered it a sin to find satisfaction in one's own work. That nonsense is bred in my bones. 2) I still have two books to write, each of which will be more difficult than anything I've ever done before. 3) The publication process always contains significant pauses (e.g. between final submission and D&A; or between D&A and copyediting); but during thoses pauses, the clock is ticking on my deadline for the next book. 4) And I know from painful experience that at least six months between D&A and publication will be consumed by publication chores--while the clock continues to tick on the next deadline--after which will come book tours. 5) Meanwhile I'm engaged in a grinding struggle both with and against copyeditors and proofreaders to try to make the book as "right" as humanly possible. 6) And with publication looms feedback from readers who will be quick to point out all of my screw-ups. (Dont misunderstand me. I'm grateful for the information. All I'm saying is that its imminence doesn't conduce to relaxation or satisfaction.) 7) In addition, my US publisher has chosen a font that's too small for me to read with anything like comfort. It's a hard thing to look at your own book and realize that if it had been written by someone else you wouldn't buy it because the print is too small. 8) And then there's...oh, never mind. You get the idea. In my case, things like satisfaction usually come years after the completion of a big project. But leaving all of that aside. In general, I've found that pauses don't benefit my work (except in the sense that they help keep me alive <rueful smile>). Interruptions of any kind increase the likelihood that I'll drop one or more of the balls I'm trying to juggle. (11/14/2007)

It's an obscure word that literally means, "pertaining to analysis; determining the basic components". But to make matters worse, I've used the word in an obscure sense, as a reference to things to heal (by restoring the integrity of basic components). In retrospect, that may be a little too much obscurity, even for me. <grin> (11/14/2007)

I'm sorry: I simply can't imagine how I would feel if I were a completely different person than I am now. My work is an essential part of my identity. I don't "hate" any of it: I love it. And in a very real sense, Thomas Covenant's stories are the foundation on which I've built everything else that I've ever done. If everything "Covenant" were forgotten, I wouldn't be ashamed to stand on my other work: far from it. But asking me if I would "be satisfied as a writer" is like asking me if I would be satisfied to be someone else. I don't think--or feel--in that way. (11/14/2007)

<sigh> I've been over and over this. My contract allows me three years per book; and I anticipate needing every minute of that time. I know that the wait is cruel (although cruelty is decidedly not my intent). But I can state with complete conviction that you wouldn't like what you got if I worked faster than I do. (11/14/2007)

The nice thing about virtually every signing I do is that the locations don't provide any kind of clear yet covert "line of sight" for a sniper. In practice, anyone who wants to clean up my vocabulary with a high-powered rifle will have to carry his/her weapon past several dozen witnesses--and perhaps even look me in the eye. Of course, a truly homicidal reader would find a way to surmount such difficulties. But still: the biggest disadvantage, from a critic's point of view, of just shooting me is that I won't know why the lights went out. Surely a person who wants to teach me a lesson would try to ensure that I know what the lesson actually is. (11/15/2007)

There are some general guidelines about point of view. (Exceptions exist, of course, but they're rare.) 1) Stories should be told from the POV of the person who has the most at stake. 2) Stories should be told from the POV of the person who serves as the best surrogate for the reader, either because the character needs to know the same things the reader needs to know, or because the character can tell the reader the things the reader needs to know. 3) Stories should be told from the POV of someone who *survives* the story. By all three standards, Linden's role as a POV character is, has been, and will continue to be essential. If that doesn't work for you, you probably wish I were writing a different story. But that isn't one of my choices--and *this* story can only be told the way I'm telling it. Nevertheless I promise you--as I've been promising everyone since I started on "The Runes of the Earth"--that this story isn't called "The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" gratuitously. The title isn't a trick, or a marketing ploy: it has substance. Give me time, and I'll prove it to you. (11/15/2007)

It's gratifying to the ol' ego, of course. But it would have done me more professional good if the book had stayed on the list longer. As I've explained elsewhere, any single bestseller list measures speed of sales, not ultimate quantity. For quantity, you have to *stay* on the list(s) for a while. As a result, my editor is pleased, but my standing with my publisher hasn't improved much. (Don't get me wrong: I'm pleased too. I'm just trying to be realistic here.) (11/15/2007)

SPOILER WARNING!

This question has been hidden since it is listed in the following categories:

Spoilers - Fatal Revenant

To view this post, click here.

You can choose to bypass this warning in the future, and always have spoilers visible, by changing your preferences in the Options screen.

I'm not qualified to comment on your insights, except to say that they're interesting and thoughtful--and, perhaps, to express doubt that education in the US is actually "positive, with a certain amount of respect and etiquette buoyed by a constructive, supportive 'you can do anything' approach." But I'm posting your message as a matter of general interest. And I should add--for whatever it's worth--that I've always been drawn more to British than to American literature. As for "generalising wildly," I couldn't get through the day without it. <grin> (11/19/2007)

Naturally I agree with you. (11/19/2007)

Scott Brick (the man who did the audio version of "The Runes of the Earth") has a contract with Putnams to produce an unabridged audio version of "Fatal Revenant". But it won't be on CD--or in any physical form. Instead it should be available for download sometime soon from places like www.ereader.com. As soon as I hear something definite, I'll post "news". Brick is also trying to negotiate with Ballantine for the audio rights to the first six "Covenant" books. But Ballantine--as is their wont--is making the process as difficult as possible. Negotiations may yet collapse. Again, I'll post "news" when I have something to report. (11/19/2007)

On the surface, there's really no reason to respond to this message. The person who posted it isn't likely to come looking for an answer. And emotions this intense usually aren't, well, open to discussion. Nevertheless I think it's worth saying a few things, even if they never reach "D. Bauer". To begin: this view of Covenant's crime is--obviously, I think--based on an incomplete reading of the text. "The novel" suggests that the reader did not go past "Lord Foul's Bane." But the consequences of what Covenant has done, and the effect of those consequences on him, don't become prominent until the second and third books. So I'm torn between my feeling that any reader has the right to throw the book in the trash for any reason, and my feeling that this reader hasn't been fair to me. That said, I can't deny that this reader has raised a couple of valid points. 1) I hope we all know by now that rape is a crime of rage, not a crime of lust. It is the act of a predator, not the reaction of a man who has been "enticed" (however we choose to define enticement). And I knew this back when I was writing LFB. In that sense, I was indeed dishonest in my portrayal of the rape of Lena. All I can say in my own defense is that my attention was focused pretty much exclusively on Covenant's Unbelief; on his crime, not as an act of rage, but rather as a denial of Lena's fundamental reality. In an (admittedly abstract) way, I was thinking of Covenant's crime as *worse*, more profound, than a physical violation. 2) There is also another form of authorial dishonesty involved (although a less judgmental reader might consider it a failure of insight rather than a failure of honesty). With all the thought I put into Covenant's plight at the beginning of LFB, I never considered one of the most *obvious* emotional reactions that he might naturally experience: intense anger at Joan for abandoning him. I was concentrating so hard on the ways in which he had been victimized that I neglected an important part of his humanity: the visceral and driving rage that virtually anyone would feel in his situation. Well, that rage is present in the story anyway. It expresses itself in Covenant's rejection of the Land; in the *manner* of that rejection; and in his rape of Lena. But it might have been more honest (or insightful) if I had acknowledged his rage more directly while I was writing. (And here I do mean *I*, not Covenant. *His* emotions have been driven underground. He isn't aware of them: hence their power to control him. But I as his creator could have perceived--and described--him more honestly/insightfully/accurately than I actually did.) <sigh> I wish I were perfect. But I wasn't. I'm not. And I won't be. That an imperfect man therefore produces imperfect work should come as no surprise to anyone. (11/20/2007)

SPOILER WARNING!

This question has been hidden since it is listed in the following categories:

Spoilers - Fatal Revenant

To view this post, click here.

You can choose to bypass this warning in the future, and always have spoilers visible, by changing your preferences in the Options screen.

I had/have many reasons for taking a person from "our" world into my fantasy world. One was to provide a "way in": for myself; for readers who weren't familiar/comfortable with fantasy; for readers who weren't inclined to take fantasy seriously. (As I've said elsewhere, the intellectual world of college and graduate school that formed the foundation for my personal sense of what literature *is* sneered at fantasy.) But I wasn't thinking specifically of sf readers. In fact, at that time I only knew one (other than myself). So I had no preconceptions about what sf readers might or might not need in order to enjoy fantasy. Has my methodology helped other readers? I have no idea. As a rule, the people who write to me don't say anything about it. (11/28/2007)

SPOILER WARNING!

This question has been hidden since it is listed in the following categories:

Spoilers - Fatal Revenant

To view this post, click here.

You can choose to bypass this warning in the future, and always have spoilers visible, by changing your preferences in the Options screen.

Hmm. If I remember LFB accurately, Foamfollower's discussion with Covenant (in Manhome) didn't have anything to do with "purity". At least not directly. It was about *hope*. Foamfollower's position, as I recall, was that hope derives from the worth/importance/mystery/selflessness of the thing served, not from the adequacy (or lack thereof) of the one who serves. I'll stand by that. ("Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."--G. K. Chesterton) People like the Haruchai may at times equate adequacy with purity: like the Ramen, the Giants do not. As I've said elsewhere, I doubt that such a thing as purity exists (although it can certainly be imagined, which may explain why people feel the desire to write--or read--fantasy stories). And even if it does exist, I'm not convinced that it's worth striving for. "I...wonder why this issue seems so prevalent throughout this majestic epic of yours, and why it seems to be so prevalent in daily life with normal mortals…" Haven't you answered your own question here? What else am I writing about, if not "normal mortals" and "daily life"? Fantasy is just my way of approaching my subject matter (at least in the "Chronicles"). And btw: *TWO minutes*? You underestimate yourself. <grin> I couldn't *read* your message in two minutes, never mind try to answer it. (11/28/2007)

No, it doesn't bother me that Angus needed help (although in his case I think the significant help came from Morn: all Warden/Hashi did was turn off a control mechanism which he could not have overcome by force of will. They restored his *ability* to choose, they didn't determine *what* he chose). Who in the story *didn't* need help? Morn certainly did. Davies did. Vector, Mikka, Warden himself: even Min and Hashi to some extent. What is a story, after all, if it isn't about the effects people have on each other? And can't those effects be described as *help*, at least some of the time? (11/28/2007)