We appreciate everything they've done. Gary Frost has been great. Fortunately, most of our manuscript material was spared by the storm. The overall number requiring some type of repair is pretty small.

Sometimes I think about the sly, flickering line that separates being spared from being rejected. Sometimes I think of the ancient gods who demanded that their sacrifices be fearless and without blemish, and I wonder whether, whoever or whatever took Peter and Jamie away, it decided I wasn't good enough.

After I'd been in college for a couple years I'd read Shakespeare and Frost and Chaucer and the poets of the Harlem Renaissance. I'd come to appreciate how gorgeous the English language could be. But most fantasy novels didn't seem to make the effort.

In 1987 or '88, Etienne and Nadine came with a manuscript, ... It was all handwritten, with illustrations by Nadine. They asked if I would set it to music.

A novelist can never be his own reader, except when he is ridding his manuscript of syntax errors, repetitions, or the occasional superfluous paragraph.

I seem to suffer from a very serious condition called obliviousness by proximity. It causes screaming and the occasional uncontrollable need to stomp stupid wizards for being stupid.