• One Terrific Lie

    36,408

    When I work on a book, I’ll also work on something else simultaneously. It won’t be another new book – it’s hard enough keeping track of all the characters, threads, and ideas for one prospective novel, let alone two. I’m always surprised when people say they’re working on two (or more) novels simultaneously. (I don’t count swapping back and forth between projects but never finishing anything.) The closest I’ll get to working on more than one novel is if I also revise another, but only as long as it’s more so a copyedit revision, rather than a structural edit revision that might require some rewriting. As far as the copyedit…

  • One Terrific Lie

    1972

    Fantasy – namely The Lord of the Rings – inspired my love of storytelling. I read LotR over one Christmas break, way back in about 1982. Then I devoured other fantasy novels. Swords, magic, heroic quests – everything that would appeal to an imaginative kid. In 1985, I wrote my first book – part one of an intended five-book fantasy epic – when I was 15, hand-writing it in two A5 exercise books over the space of eighteen months. I gave no thought to planning it. I just wrote, my mythology changing as I went. Often, I would sit up late at night (and sometimes through until morning) working on…