That did it. I'd gone through a lot in the past few days. Everyone I met seemed to want a piece of me: djinn, magicians, humans...it made no difference.I'd been summoned, manhandled, shot at, captured, constricted, bossed about and generally taken for granted. And now, to cap it all, this bloke is joining in too, when all I'd been doing was quietly trying to kill him.

In recent weeks it has come to my attention that many caravans have met with disaster; they have not gotten through." I grunted wisely. "Probably ran out of water. That's the thing about deserts. Dry." "Indeed. A fascinating analysis. But survivors reaching Hebron report differently: monsters fell upon them in the wastes." "What, fell upon them in a squashed-them kind of way?" "More the leaped-out-and-slew-them kind. (...)

He was transfixed at the sight of the lords and ladies of his realm running about like demented chickens.

Getting that first draft out is a horribly hard grind, but that (perversely) is where the joy of it lies.

Check out that one at the end. He's taken the form of a footstool. Weird...but somehow I like his style." "That is a footstool.

Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths.

What is a gathering without unseemly drunkenness?