My writing has to support more than my research habit, but I love to curl up with a book about some dusty corner of history.

I do have a small collection of traditional SF ideas which I've never been able to sell. I'm known as a fantasy writer and neither my agent nor my editors want to risk my brand by jumping genre.

Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.

I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans.

I'm dense when it comes to discouragement.

The money can be decent, but I really don't recommend the work-for-hire route as an entry into publishing. Too many things can go wrong.

Once you've invested hundreds of hours in creating a coherent universe, your story's grown to around a half-million words and can't be written as anything less than a trilogy.