It seems that some of your readers don’t think of your novels as fantasy so much as a really fine-grained history of a world that might have existed or might yet exist. Do you perceive your world as real?
I think that I have to. Any writer has to try and think of his world as real, because if he thinks of it as a construct, that’s going to come across to the readers. It’s very much like the question I’m often asked: who is my favorite character. It’s whoever I’m writing at the moment. Even someone like Padan Fain or Semirhage. Most people like themselves, and if I don’t like the character I’m writing, then it’s going to come across to the reader that this character doesn’t like himself or herself. My wife says she can tell when I’ve been writing Padan Fain or somebody like that when I come into the kitchen in the evening. I make myself see this as a real place when I’m working on it. That way it comes through, I hope, that I see more than I write.
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