In bad weather, I spent hours drawing action figures on paper, coloring them, backing them on cardboard, then cutting them out and creating whole stories around their lives.

After all, you put a lot into creating a universe and everything that goes with it, and it seems a shame to use it only once.

The reader wants to see something happen between pages one and four hundred, and nothing happens if the characters don't change.

What I want to write about has changed somewhat, and the scope of the storytelling has changed accordingly.

Faith, Princess," the Prism Cat repeated. "It is a highly underrated weapon against the dark things in this world.

Growing up, I didn't have a lot of toys, and personal entertainment depended on individual ingenuity and imagination - think up a story and go live it for an afternoon.

Even after Sword was published, I was still only thinking about the next book, Elfstones.