It's Joe Flanigan's birthday today (see icon) and also the day that marks my realization that after a lifetime of admiring actors who were older than me (Harrison Ford, etc) I'm now admiring one who is younger than me. That's, uh, yeah.


Locus listed the reprint of The Element of Fire under their classic reprints section, which I find really flattering, especially considering the other books listed there. The Amazon link they posted doesn't work, though, and I can't figure out why. I suspect it's something on Amazon's end. (And Lulu (with media mail postage) and Barnes and Noble (with a membership) are cheaper.) It can also be ordered through an independent bookstore with Booksense.


themis asked: One of the things that I really loved about the Ile-Rien books was that they're set in a different time period than most fantasy. Usually, writers fall back upon the middle ages, the pre-Roman Celtic era etc. Was the decision to start Ile-Rien at a later date, so to speak, a conscious one (did you think "I'm really tired of stupid Celtic fantasies, let's try something with corsets and steam engines") or did it just...happen?

Because, as I said, that was one of the things I really loved about your books. Especially Death of the Necromancer, I really felt that the time period figured in prominently. I know "Victorian" fantasy has become a bit more popular (partly, I suppose, to steampunk expansion) but it's still a minority. Personally, I find it a more interesting time period for reading about and creating characters in, if only because the vices are so much more interesting. You can't put cigarettes in a story about Renaissance Italy, after all.

It was very much a conscious decision. When I started The Element of Fire back around 1991 or so, I wasn't finding very much fantasy set in time periods that weren't the middle ages, and I was cherishing every one I did find. (And also books using settings and mythologies from other parts of the world, like the Barry Hughart books set in China, Charles Saunders' book Imaro and his other stories set in Africa, etc, and that's more where City of Bones and Wheel of the Infinite came from.) At the time, I was researching the 17th century in France, reading The Three Musketeers, watching Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers, and so that was my first choice for a time period. I wrote a short story first which was set in Vienne, with Thomas as the main character, decided I really did like this setting, and started the novel.

The Death of the Necromancer was written for much the same reasons. I wanted to read Victorian/La Belle Epoque fantasy, and couldn't find any.


And birdhousefrog had a quick question Seems to me you wrote a tie-in novel recently, but I've lost track of that posting. Was it Stargate or something else?

I have one out now, Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary, and another that should be coming out in the next few months, also SGA, called Entanglement. You can always check the Bibliography page on my web site, which lists everything I have out and what's coming out in the future, including short stories, non-fiction, etc. (And if you hit the main page to this journal, there are links to all my books and other stuff in the sidebar.)


I've got at least one more question to answer, which I'll hit later, and I'm still taking them in this post here. And it doesn't have to be about my books, it can be about writing or publishing in general, though my level of coherency may drop at random.