I think the best part of being an author is that I get to learn about anything I want and explain it away as research.

I loved college. I wish I was still taking classes instead of teaching them.

There can be many opinions on a thing, but there is only one truth." Vashet smiled lazily. "And if the pursuit of the truth was my goal, that would concern me." She gave a long yawn, stretching like a happy cat. "Instead I will focus on the joy in my heart, [...}

It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.

I'm kind of balanced between excited about the potential of the project, and the knowledge that I shouldn't get my hopes up. I like to be practical, and the truth is, these deals fall apart all the time.

The thing that helps me do a good job is that I don't feel the need to explain everything about the world to my reader. I'm not writing a history text on the Four Corners. I'm telling a story that's set there. The setting belongs in the background for the most part, and it's easy for fantasy authors to forget that. That's one of the unfortunate parts of Tolkien's legacy, in my opinion. Read the first hundred pages of the Fellowship of the Ring and you start to get pissed, "Shut up about the Shire's museums! Isn't the world supposed to be in peril or something?"

Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed.