Welcome to the latest installment of my newsletters, where I share special news about my books and my writing. They come out on the first week of each month.
At home in a fantasy world
Why is most of my work heroic fantasy? Why set a tale of adventure in a fantasy world instead of in the contemporary everyday world, or in the exotic past?
All fiction is some form of make-believe, even when it claims to tell a true story. We get into the heads of our characters and see what drives them, why they make the choices they do, and how they perform under stress. We can't help but put ourselves in their places, to try on their situation.
I find that easier to do when I'm less weighed down by the wholly mundane parts of my own life — when I'm in a world that operates by more exotic rules, and every choice is heightened by its unfamiliarity. While a character must, of course, be grounded in some form of earning a living and its associated duties, better that it be something that's interesting to us mortals trapped in our daily routines, looking over his shoulder in worlds not quite like our own.
