I recognize that on paper, you can't really tell that I'm a fan or a nerd.

I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.

Book tours are excellent things, and one is lucky to get to go on one, but they have a way of leeching away one's will to live.

I got my heart's desire, and there my troubles began.

A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength.

Maybe there's a sense that technology isn't necessarily the answer to a lot of our problems. Fantasy offers readers a less radically alienated world - a world where desires and feelings that normally are trapped inside your mind are made real in the form of magic.

We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world.