I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a writer is to follow your initial [writing] plan too stringently. A story needs room to grow and evolve.

Anger can keep you warm at night, and wounded pride can spur a man to wondrous things.

I don't really have a lot of expensive tastes. What else am I really going to do with my money? Buy a little red sports car? Wear a lot of jewelry? Build a castle? Well... I might do the last one. Maybe. Eventually. But that doesn't mean I can't run Worldbuilders too.

I don't feel beholden to follow the real world at all. The important thing is to know WHY things turned out the way they did. You need to understand the reasons for events, or at least be able to make reasonable guesses about them.

If you're going to have a book full of clever people and nobody ever jokes, it's just not going to ring true to the reader. That said, humor writing is the hardest kind of writing there is.

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 was nervous about writing Slow Regard.