Daniel Abraham

"For the moment, its called the Dagger and the Coin, but with any luck, thatll swap out for a better name. There are some things in the proposal that need to get smoothed out so that everyones on board, but I think itll happen. Its a very different from the Long Price books. It looks and feels more like traditional epic fantasy -- quasi-Europe, ferinstance, and some dragons in the background, no 15-year gaps between books -- but the plot structure is packed with everything I think is cool. There are echoes Im intentionally building in of from things as familiar as Firefly and The Count of Monte Cristo and as obscure as Tevis Queens Gambit and Reck-Malleczewens Diary of a Man in Despair. And the magic system is all about faith and deception, which will be tricky and fun both. What I want to do is write something that I could read now (39 years old, married, raising a kid, 10 year IT career behind me, post 9-11, post-Bush, etc.) with the same joy I read the Belgariad when I was 16."

"I was listening to Tim Powers talking and he said he didnt want his villains just defeated, he wanted them humiliated and destroyed. And I thought: I dont. I want my villains to be understood and forgiven."

"Writers are a basically insecure bunch. We are convinced that everything we do sucks, all the time. Its something you have to fight. The best way to make sure that your writing will never be particularly good is to use it for something besides telling the story. And I think theres a real tension between sophistication and accessibility."

"I think that the successful genres of a particular period are reflections of the needs and thoughts and social struggles of that time. When you see a bunch of similar projects meeting with success, you’ve found a place in the social landscape where a particular story (or moral or scenario) speaks to readers. You’ve found a place where the things that stories offer are most needed. And since the thing that stories most often offer is comfort, you’ve found someplace rich with anxiety and uncertainty. (That’s what I meant when I said to Melinda Snodgrass that genre is where fears pool.)"

"I dont find fantasy to be more or less suited to philosophical questions than any other genre, really. I think that the soul of fantasy—or second-world fantasy at least—is our problematic relationship with nostalgia. The impulse to return to a golden age seems to be pretty close to the bone, at least in western cultures, and I wouldnt be at all surprised if its a human universal. For me, its tied up with the experience of aging and the impulse to recapture youth. Epic fantasy, I think, takes its power from that. We create golden eras and either celebrate them or—more often—mourn their loss."

"It’s always been like this. Every generation finds its own way to show that it isn’t like the one before. Too much risk, too much sex, terrible music, not enough respect for the old ways. This is no different."