Anyway, several rewrites later, Del Rey Books did publish my first novel, and it did become the first work of fiction on the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list.

A world in which elves exist and magic works offers greater opportunities to digress and explore.

Well, I think that as a country, we've drifted away from appreciating the importance of imagination.

Writing fantasy lets me imagine a great deal more than, say, writing about alligators, and lets me write about places more distant than Florida, but I can tell you things about Florida and alligators, let you make the connection all on your own.

Fiction writing is a twenty-four-hou r-a-day occupation. You never leave your work behind. It is always with you, and to some extent, you are always thinking about it. You don't take your work home; your work never leaves home. It lives inside you. It resides and grows and comes alive in your mind.

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

For a writer, its very attractive to stay in one world for a time.