Quote Originally Posted by Holbrook
May I ask has your illness changed your perception of your previous works? Do they now seem naďve in your eyes in some way? Has the black and white become even greyer?

Has it drawn you to only express the helplessness? Or can you now see the simple things you dismissed as mundane as meaningful, more precious? Have these found there way into your work in greater or lesser amounts.

Writers are often drawn to describe the unusual, yet it is, I believe, the mundane background in a work that gives it texture. Do you spurn this and reach even more for the fantastical?

Sorry don’t mean to intrude, but in the last twelve months I have gone from able bodied to handicapped. I have found the roller coaster ride I have been on has affected every part of my life and lead me to re-think a lot of what I have put down on paper during the past six years.
I'm sorry for your situation. I have a feeling, though, from the tone of your question, that you haven't actually read much of my previous work.

Nothing in my work was ever a question of "black and white." In fact, my first novel, IRON DAWN, was set in 1140 BC for the specific reason that the Manichaean struggle of Good vs. Evil was (basically) invented about six hundred years after that -- in other words, I wanted to write an epic fantasy in which the Grand Conflict of Good and Evil had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

And no, none of my earlier work strikes me as naive, even now; a handicap or an illness is an obstacle -- an additional struggle added to the daily struggle of existence. Since what I try to depict, in my own metaphoric terms, is the struggle of existence, my illness only points up, to my eyes, that I was trying to do the right thing all along.

Fitz --

I've been appproached to write a variety of other media tie-ins, that I've turned down because I don't like the franchises, or the timing was wrong, or the money just wasn't there. I won't get into specifics. Suffice it to say that Star Wars is likely to remain my only tie-in work for some time to come.

maus --

My first published work was IRON DAWN (Penguin/Roc, May 1997), which answers two of your questions. The third is unanswerable, since I started writing as soon as I could read; I can't say what my 'perception of writing' was back then. It was just something I did.

Now it's something I do for money.