Interesting question. Maybe someday we'll all find out. Or maybe we won't. As I've said in other contexts, unexplained incidental details are a common tactic for world-building. A way to imply that the world is larger than the books that contain it. (12/03/2007)

I use terms like "a stone's throw" precisely because they are not exact. (A lesson I learned re-reading the earliest "Covenant" books.) For me, they convey far more *imaginative" information than any literal description (e.g. 37 feet). Plus they avoid obvious and unnecessary questions like, What, you can only throw a stone 37 feet? What're you, some kinda 98 lb weakling? So how far can *you* throw a stone? That's how far I had in mind. To estimate a stone's throw for a Giant, multiply your throw by about 8. (Twice as tall, twice as broad, twice as thick equals roughly 8 times the muscle mass.) (12/03/2007)

As I see it, Earthpower is everywhere. It's not simply like life: it *is* life. But geographically this form of energy--I can't think of a better way to put this--flows closer to the surface in the Land than anywhere else. Which is why both the dangers and the beauties of the whole world tend to concentrate there. But still: Earthpower (which enables health-sense) is everywhere. There is Earthpower in the very nature of the Haruchai, as there is in the essence of the Giants. (And in the Sandgorgons, who wouldn't care about health-sense if they had it, and in the Elohim, whose perceptions have gone way beyond ordinary health-sense, and....) Just because the Land--in a manner of speaking--lies closer to the water-table than other parts of the Earth doesn't mean that water, and the benefits of water, are unavailable elsewhere. Does that help? (12/05/2007)

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Thanks for your message! I'm grateful for your good opinion. Unfortunately, I seem to have misled some people when I talk about planning my stories backward. That has to do with structure in the broadest terms. When I write, I write forward, and I do everything in my power to experience the story as my characters--and my readers--do. Put another way, planning is about knowing where I'm going: writing is about understanding what trying to reach that destination means. As for yanking you around, that is never my intention. My goal is to create a story that seems unpredictable as you read it (for the obvious reason that predictable stories are boring), but that seems inevitable after you've read it. If possible, I want you to be able to look back and say, "Of course: that makes perfect sense." Well, I may or may not achieve my aim; but my aim is at the opposite end of the storytelling spectrum from yanking you around. That said: of course I do "deliberately build up...turmoil." After all, turmoil is what my characters are experiencing, and I want you to be able to share their experience as fully as possible. But I work on such things while I'm writing forward, not while I'm planning backward. (12/05/2007)

This is a difficult question to answer because your perspective (as the reader) is so different than mine (as the writer). The real key to understanding my decisions is to recognize that I intend my story to be read as a whole, not as a widely-separated series of chunks. The fact that the story is *published* as a widely-separated series of chunks is unavoidable (I need to eat--which means I need to get paid--which means my publishers have to have something to publish), but TEMPORARY. (That's the crucial point.) Already the ending of "The Runes of the Earth" has a very different effect than it did three years ago, for the obvious reason that *now* my readers can go straight on to "Fatal Revenant". Well, eventually my readers will be able to go straight from the beginning of TROTE to the end of "The Last Dark," and *then* the places where I've chosen to separate the volumes a) will make sense, and b) won't seem so frustrating. Once you grasp the unavoidable-but-temporary nature of the issue: what's *wrong* with the places where I wanted to divide the volumes when I planned "The Second Chronicles" as a tetralogy? Sure, stopping the first book after the soothtell in Revelstone would have been more of a cliff-hanger than the present ending of "The Wounded Land". But why is that a bad thing? In a pure world, none of these books would be published until the whole story was ready to be released (which is what happened with the first trilogy). Of course, this *isn't* a pure world--but I don't see why I should allow that fact to control the pacing, the design, the aesthetic integrity of what I'm trying to accomplish. Meanwhile, I defy anyone who knows the story (obviously I'm on pretty safe ground here, at least for two more books <grin>) to find *better* places to divide the books than the ones I've chosen. Secondary considerations. 1) Publishers care strongly about length. They want enough, but not too much. (This was a significant factor in Lester del Rey's demand for a trilogy.) From their perspective, ending TROTE earlier would have made the book too short--and would have left the reader feeling that the story had no purpose. Ending the book later by any significant amount would have made the book too long. My publishers were very happy with TROTE just the way it is. 2) I'm not in control of my preference for four-part structures. It seems bred in the bone. If you doubt me, look at the rhymed songs/poems in all of the "Chronicles" and notice the extent to which they are increasingly dominated by iambic tetrameter. He*l, I don't WANT to write everything in four-beats-to-the-line: that's just what comes to me. (12/05/2007)

Hmm. I'm of two minds about this. (Or perhaps three, considering that many of the characters do not, in fact, "understand things as well as they think they do." <grin>) On one side, I'm in favor of anything that involves a more empathetic understanding of my characters. (Despite my best efforts, they need more empathy than I know how to give them.) On the other, I oppose anything that involves absolving, say, the Elohim of responsibility for their own actions. Or inactions. ("Sure, I let him drown. I'm self-absorbed: that's my nature. I was made this way. What happened to him isn't my fault.") As far as I'm concerned, every being capable of thought is responsible for the meaning of his/her/its own life. From that perspective, self-absorption isn't just a personality quirk: it's a choice. (I say that knowing that *I'm* pretty damn self-absorbed. Which is probably why I think some empathy is appropriate. <rueful smile>) (12/14/2007)

My publishers are supposed to send me multiple copies of every book in every new edition (or repackaging) in every language. My US and UK publishers are faithful about this (perhaps because I deal with them directly): foreign language publishers are sporadic at best. So I have a random assortment of my books in languages other than English. (12/18/2007)

As far as I can tell, my publishers don't know *how* to advertise my books--or anyone else's, for the most part. I can think of two explanations. 1) The reading of fiction is demonstrably dying out. As a result, an ad in a "literary" outlet (e.g. NY Times Book Review) reaches only elitists: an ad in a "popular" outlet (e.g. People magazine) reaches only people who never read books. And since TV and radio people virtually never read at all, neither do their audiences. 2) The pressures placed on the people who work in publishing (editors, publicists, marketing execs, etc.) by their mega-corp owners leave those people very little time to actually think about what they're doing. They're effectively prevented from "thinking outside the box" (as a rule, they have neither the time nor the energy to be imaginative), so they usually publish by rote. Fantasy novels are *only* packaged as fantasy, and are *only* advertised in fantasy outlets (Locus, F&SF, Asimov's): an inherently self-defeating approach which is imposed from above. The kind of elan that Judy-Lynn del Rey brought to the promotion of fantasy and sf back in the late 70s and early 80s is usually stamped out early and hard by the mega-corps today. (12/18/2007)

I've discussed these matters elsewhere in this interview. Briefly: in the short term, bestseller lists are a measure of the *speed* rather than the *quantity* of sales. In just one week, it's perfectly possible for FR to appear on more bestsellers lists than TROTE, and yet to sell fewer copies overall. Therefore it would take a lot more than one week on the NY Times list to make my publishers change their strategies. And in the long term--well, there's no brief way to explain this, so I'll simply state that publishers can't begin to estimate exactly how many copies they've sold until 12-18 months after publication. So any benefits that may result from the (hypothetical) success of FR won't actually kick in until we get to AATE. (12/18/2007)

Personally I don't subscribe to Locus (although I've been on the cover at least a couple of times, and I'm well acquainted with the publisher). It's an "insider's" magazine intended for writers, artists, editors, and other people involved in sf/f publishing (possibly including booksellers). I have very little interest in who's doing what to whom on any given day, and I doubt that an "outside" would gain much by reading it--although the reviews are often informative. (12/18/2007)

<sigh> Well, what would *you* do if you had to sign your name 7500+ times in just a few days, and you hated such mechanical chores? Of course I used a variety of pens. And of course I experimented with signing my name in different ways. In any case, it's highly unlikely that some "rogue" in the industry is signing my name for me. (12/18/2007)

Yes, I used to ski--until I separated my shoulder in a bad fall. And I often took my kids to Deer Valley for our annual ski trip. But regarding the names you mention: that's a cool coincidence, but I wouldn't be in a hurry to draw conclusions. Life is certainly unpredictable enough for such things to be coincidences. (12/18/2007)

Yes, I can honestly say that I've never considered a book of poems. I'm a storyteller, not a poet. And every poem (or verse) of which I have any record is already posted on this site. If you leave out the "Covenant" stuff, most of which would convey little when taken out of context, there is hardly enough left to make a pamphlet. (12/18/2007)

Clearly, I don't see this as a "lapse" in the same way that you do. And if there *is* a lapse involved, it probably has more to do with my phrasing in the GI than in the point I was trying to make about the Creator's nature. I grant that using words like "choose" and "chose" to describe the actions of both the Creator and the Despiser encourages--or at least permits--confusion. But leaving the specific word aside, I don't see how you can claim that there is any meaningful similarity between the Despiser's (or the Elohim's) actions and the Creator's. They are profoundly different on a moral level. Nor do I see how you can discount the differences between the Despiser's and the Creator's subsequent actions (or inactions). The Creator chooses Covenant in the sense that any affirmation represents a voluntary leap of faith. How is that not a humane act? (12/19/2007)

You can "load" questions like this as much as you want because I can't answer them. Perhaps because I'm not a visual person, I have absolutely no opinion as to "which scenes best represent each book". In general, I don't like cover art "scenes" at all. On anyone's books. I certainly prefer the US FR cover to the US TROTE cover. But the "Covenant" covers that I like best are the orginal Fontana/Goodfellow paintings. I thought they were appropriately evocative instead of reductively literal. (12/19/2007)

It's true that Despite is a multi-national equal opportunity employer. Nonetheless I think this site is hysterical. I *so* want to start giving people things like this for xmas. <broad grin> (12/19/2007)

I understand your frustration. Sometimes I share it. But it probably doesn't do us any good to invest too much emotional energy in such things. Language is, and has always been, in a constant state of modulation. If you doubt me, read some Shakespeare. And I suspect that every generation ever has found cause to complain about the corruption of "correct" usage. (12/20/2007)

Please. I had to start the story SOMEwhere. And since I'm not a story-bible, plan-the-whole-world-and-its-entire-history-before-I-start guy, I had to make some assumptions in order to begin. So just accept the idea that the Lords of Covenant's time had no access to the lore of their predecessors except by means of the Wards ("the facts as given"), and work backward from there. You'll probably have to assume that everyone who shared Kevin's knowledge died either in the pre-Ritual war or during the Ritual itself. Or else you'll have to assume that the survivors gradually lost their knowledge. A thousand years is a long time. Our own history is full of examples of knowledge that gets lost in much shorter spans of time. Reversion to a kind of barbarism seems likely under such primitive and arduous conditions. In addition, you might assume that the Old Lords never established a system to disseminate and promote knowledge comparable to the Loresraat. Why would they? From Berek, they inherited a comparatively full body of knowledge that they didn't have to earn. There was a direct lineage from one High Lord to the next. That Council only lasted for four "generations". And in general societies have never been very good at planning for their own transcience. Such assumptions certainly seem plausible to me. (12/20/2007)

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Actually, I think that *any* use of power is a moral dilemma--as is any refusal to use power. It is certainly true in "The Chronicles" that wild magic is not the *only* power which poses moral difficulties. The Power of Command is fraught with potential ruin. And as Elena demonstrates in "The Power that Preserves," even the Staff of Law can be used for evil. Still, it seems only reasonable that some powers are inherently more forceful and less easily governed than others. Deciding to use your hands to strangle someone involves a moral dilemma: so does deciding to use your hands to type in the codes that launch a nuclear strike. But within that general framework, there's a dramatic difference between the two dilemmas. "Differences in degree become differences in kind." (Karl Marx) Meanwhile, I'm uncomfortable with your assertion that "even the selfish use of Earthpower is easy". I don't think that the text of "The Chronicles" supports your position. From my perspective, there's nothing easy about it. No expenditure of energy is easy, even when that energy is the natural vitality of our own bodies. (12/20/2007)

If you've been following my "news," you now know that there will be an audiobook of "Fatal Revenant". Look for it in places like audible.com in January. E-books earn royalties in the same way, and at the same percentage, that physical books do. But since books for Kindle are cheaper than most physical books, the author naturally earns fewer pennies from each sale. (12/20/2007)

For the Gradual Interview readership at large. I hope FreeRice proves to be worth the effort. It's certainly a worthy concept. (12/20/2007)

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I have no intention of trying to "explain" magic. I'm trying to write about something that transcends rationality, and the more I try to define it, the less likely I am to accomplish my aim. But within that framework, it seems fitting (and perhaps even inevitable) to me that the Dead--being pure spirit unconstrained by flesh or death, and therefore perhaps unconstrained by time as well--might have all kinds of ways of "knowing" things which are denied (by nature and Law) to the living. Isn't that part of most human mythologies about the dead? Meanwhile, the only *tangible* gift supplied by the Dead (Vain) must surely have been provided by the ur-viles. None of this "smacks of Creator involvement" to me. As for why the ur-viles made Vain in the first place, I think that the explanations given in "The Second Chronicles" suffice. However, more may well be revealed in "The Last Chronicles". (12/22/2007)

1) No, I wasn't thinking of the Close when I described the GCES hall. That just seemed like the natural shape for such a place. And I personally dislike meeting halls where everyone sits *below* the podium: that arrangement gives the person at the podium an artificial "superiority" which I've tried to avoid. 2) The issue of "intellectual property/copyrights" has so many possible ramifications that it can't readily be discussed without reference to specific cases (which are various and virtually innumerable). I'm not going to try to slog through every implication I can think of. So I'll just say a) when author K makes no attempt to *disguise* his/her reference to author L, no real infringement has occurred, b) not having read the Card books you mention, I don't see how anyone could claim that I've infringed on them, and c) anything that exists in "the public domain" (i.e. the copyright has expired) is fair game, legally if not morally. Oh, and to be clear I should mention that infringement is *not* the same thing as plagiarism. Plagiarism can be hard to prove; but the legal and moral issues are much more clear-cut. (12/26/2007)

A number of readers have posted thoughtful responses to "D. Bauer's" original message and my reply: all much appreciated. Simply to save time, I won't comment on every response. I've chosen this one because it was the first to make an important point in "D. Bauer's" defense. You're right. An attentive reading of the original message makes it clear that "D. Bauer" has read (at least) "Lord Foul's Bane" and "What Has Gone Before" from either "The Runes of the Earth" or "Fatal Revenant". And now that I've taken another look at WHGB myself, I do see the justice of "D. Bauer's" accusation. If my publishers cooperate, the incriminating (and misleading) phrase in WHGB will be changed for subsequent editions--at least for FR (I'll see what I can do for TROTE, but I'm not optimistic). (12/28/2007)

This question keeps coming up. If nothing goes wrong (ha!), "Against All Things Ending" is planned for 2010, and "The Last Dark" for 2013. I've explained why I need that much time so often that I can't bear to repeat myself. (12/28/2007)

Nothing like this has ever happened to me. If I did, I would do my level best to ignore the situation. But I doubt that I would succeed. <sigh> The ego can be an unruly beast sometimes. (12/28/2007)

Because then I would have been writing a different story? Because Findail was "bound" (in a manner of speaking) by both his Appointment and Vain's nature? Because he hoped that if he let the situation get bad enough, Linden would feel compelled to claim Covenant's ring? Because for the Elohim *doing* something, anything, is absolutely the last resort? Take your pick. (12/28/2007)

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OK, I haven't gone back to check the text here, so I'm relying on my (fallible) memory. But the way I remember it, we need to distinguish between the ability to commit an act of desecration and the ability to perform THE Ritual of Desecration. Sure, the insight Mhoram gains from Elena's sculpture leads him to understand how restricting passion limits access to power. The key, he learns, is to find the point of balance between DISpassion (the Oath of Peace; the absolutism of the Haruchai) and passion (Covenant). But access to power is only one step along the road of Kevin's Lore; a road which--presumably--leads to an understanding of THE Ritual of Desecration. In the meantime, however, anyone with passion (e.g. Trell) has it within him/her to commit desecrations: acts of destruction aimed at whatever he/she loves. In other words, Trell's kind of desecration can be done by anyone who has passion without balance. THE Ritual of Desecration, on the other hand, does damage of a much higher magnitude. Remember that it required Kevin and Lord Foul working together. As a *concept*, this is something that Mhoram could have understood without having the actual knowledge required by the Ritual. (12/29/2007)

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OK, it's true. Occasionally I do get carried away. I've even been known to over-state my position from time to time. <sigh> Even a flaming humanist like me has to admit that sociopathy exists. Psychopathy exists. Chemical and neurological derangements of all kinds exist. Nevertheless I feel constrained to point out a couple of things. 1) I've looked at the web site you mentioned. It's impossible for the reader of such a "news report" to evaluate the science behind the claim that there can be a biological basis for rape. But suppose I accept that claim: suppose I accept the assertion that some men may be "hardwired" for rape. How does that contradict my statement that rape is a crime of rage? There appears to be an apples/oranges problem here. To state that a given man is "hardwired" for rape does not in any way describe the emotions that accompany the act of rape: the statement merely *excuses* the man's actions by claiming that he had no choice. It's been pretty well documented that for some men arousal and rage are inextricably linked: they cannot become aroused unless they are enraged. But so far I've seen no documentation to indicate that men who rape do *not* feel rage. 2) You've taken my statement pretty far out of context. I wasn't talking about sociopaths, or psychopaths, or men with other profound personality disorders: I was talking about Thomas Covenant. And I was talking about a specific act of rape, not a general inclination to commit rape. (12/31/2007)