If you ask me now, I think every single writer whose work I've read has had some influence upon me, and I continue to be influenced, subtly, by everything I read, like a sponge. But then, what writers aren't? Being a literary sponge is one of the prerequisites for this insanity.

One of the things that I've noticed over the years is that I seem to be fascinated as a writer with the notion that we already have all that we need.

No waving of enchanted wands but heightened perception. No magic objects, but a transformed and enhanced reality. No spells or chants, but the raw power of the human will to enact supernatural change upon the universal fabric. This is the kind of "magic" that fills Lords of Rainbow - elemental, organic, humanistic - an extension of reality.

The great miraculous bell of translucent ice is suspended in mid-air. It rings to announce endings and beginnings. And it rings because there is fresh promise and wonder in the skies.

In the kingdom of glass everything is transparent, and there is no place to hide a dark heart.

In Lords of Rainbow I start out by taking away color from the world, and in the process show color's vital place in our lives. At least I hope that by the end of the book it's a portion of what the reader comes away with - a sense of how much color perception enriches our lives and how its lack can make our sensory experience incomplete.

A related recurring theme is the exploration of how we take for granted the things in our immediate environment that are common and ordinary. Existential blindness, of sorts.