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

I try to pester Christian Dunn from time to time. As soon as my schedule allows, I plan to make a real pest of myself and get some hot, slippery Chaos action.

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

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.

With young kids (I have four including the newborn) times passes weirdly for me.

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.

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