In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway.

I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things.

And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

But my problem with fantasy, and horror, and related genres, is that sometimes the problems are illogical.

You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.

I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.