My total year's income from working as hard as I possibly could from writing went from like $30 one year to about $70 the next year. And it made me realize that maybe you couldn't really pay the rent that way.

We wanted to write the first prequels as a story that anyone could pick up.

Well, I know that George Lucas doesn't like it at all. When I was working on The Illustrated Star Wars Universe, he told me that he would be happy if every copy could be tracked down and smashed.

I don't think the author should make the reader do that much work to remember who somebody is.

Over the years, I've trained myself to speak using the same language I would use if I were typing: meaning using full sentences in the way that paragraphs and scenes are arranged.

Telling your story out loud is the way human beings communicate. We don't normally think up words, translate how to spell them and then move our fingers up and down over this randomly arranged set of keys to make the same letters appear on a screen.

If you look at the British royal family and take away the scandals and the goofy stuff that's going on, people love to have this king to look up to - the royals are like celebrities.