The Magician's Land is a triumphant climax to the best fantasy trilogy of the decade.

While writing a novel I almost completely stop reading books in the same sub-genre for the duration.

I began my first novel when I was 15. It went through three drafts, of around 40,000 words each. If I find it, I'll burn it.

In general, a little controversy isn't harmful: if anything, it gets people interested.

There's a long-standing (50 year old) flame war within the field over whether it's "sci-fi" or "SF".SF has traditionally been looked down on by the literary establishment because, to be honest, much early SF was execrably badly written - but these days the significance of the pigeon hole is fading; we have serious mainstream authors writing stuff that is I-can't-believe-it's-not-SF, and SF authors breaking into the mainstream. If you view them as tags that point to shelves in bricks-and-mortar bookshops, how long are these genre categories going to survive in the age of the internet?

Writers block: when I get it, it's because my subconscious spotted that I'd make a huge structural mistake in constructing a novel before my conscious mind became aware of it, and threw on the brakes. So I've learned not to sweat it: take two days off, then back up a chapter, read through, and try to work out why I'm suddenly uneasy about continuing.

The problem with ebook filesharing is simply one of scale. But I think the "piracy" problem is massively over-rated.