I always work from outline and almost always write out of sequence. It just works for me.

Shared world has done some world building and brings (in the case of FR and SW) a big audience. With your own work, you're more creatively free. In a way, the shared world stuff has a high floor but a ceiling.

Cale is my signature character in the Forgotten Realms. The most popular character I've written. He's a thief, an assassin, and eventually, a priest who stabs his own god in the chest. Always trying to slip his past, but never succeeding. Dark dude. Brooding dude. Born killer. But honorable, still.

[Writing] is harder than you think. You'll be rejected often. If you do it for money, you'll quit. Love it or don't do it.

I enjoyed The Mirage by M. Ruff. I'm reading Edgar Rice Burrough's Princess Of Mars right and loving it.

Fantasy allows for less rigorous worldbuilding and more vigorous exploration of moral questions. Sci-fi is opp.

I like to keep the world, to some degree, an implied setting.