I love magic and playing with magic systems. But to me, good fantasy like all fiction comes down to good character and plotting.

In teaching writing, I'm learning new things about writing.

Guy Gavriel Kays Tigana is, in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best fantasy novel ever written. Its beautifully written, the characters are unforgettable, the worldbuilding is exquisite.

Guy Kay is probably my favorite and the writer I most want to emulate.

Writing about craft has forced me to think more about my own writing technique, and to break down my process in ways that have been enormously helpful to me.

I write every day for most of the work day, and I try to write 2,500 words per day... If I don't make it a routine and treat it like a job, I'd never get anything done.

I listen to instrumental jazz and bluegrass, but aside from my AM workout, I have no rituals.

The closer you can get to your setting and to primary sources, the more authentic your history is going to be.

As I write, invariably I encounter more questions and answer those as I go.

Wrote my first "novel" when I was six. Studied a bit in college, but then pursued history... But when I started writing professionally, it was mostly learn as you go.

The best writing advice I ever got was "Keep moving forward, don't retreat into rewrites." The worst came from a book that said "Writing fiction is like telling lies," which just seems stupid to me.

I'm scared of the geese. When I was five, my mom took me down there to feed those horrible beasts and one of them nearly took my hand off.

A constant factor in human history is the need to protect oneself. Another factor is the urge to attack someone else.

Everything you experience is a blessing and pushes you toward realizing your true self.

Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

For if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest.

Meditation is listening to the divine within

Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.

The theater audience is the ultimate teacher, instructing the actor on the degree to which he has executed both the author's and the director's intent.

As I said, this was my sarcastic summer. It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak.

Vengeance is a lazy form of grief.