Were there any specific fantasy books that you read as a child that inspired you to write fantasy?
Yes, excellent question. I was not a reader until I had a teacher, eighth grade teacher–this is true–Ms. Reeder. *laughter* Yes, it’s really true R-E-E-D-E-R, was my teacher in eighth grade and she gave me a fantasy novel for the first time and convinced me to read it. It took a little work on her part because I was not a reader. It was Dragonsbane by Barbara Hamley, a kind of classic standalone epic fantasy– And it’s standalone because the sequels she wrote twenty years later when she was really depressed are /very different/. They’re worth reading but they don’t feel like sequels. Dragonsbane’s a fantastic book. All of Anne McCaffey’s books were next to that in the school library, like in the card catalogue, under the title so I went to them next and they had a huge influence on me. I would say those two were the biggest. And then Melanie Rawn’s books were next to those, so I read all of those. And then the first book series I discovered on my own, when it wasn’t already finished, was the Wheel of Time. Wheel of Time, the first book came out about a year after I got into reading fantasy novels and I found the big one on the shelf and was like “Oooh that’s a big book. *laughter* I’m going to read that big book.” And I had no idea what I was getting myself into. *laughter* Now lot’s of Wheel of Time fans can say that, they didn’t know what they were getting into. I trump them, okay? I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into in picking up that first Wheel of Time book and reading it.
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