And you also have a children’s series. How different is it to write for children?
It is . . . it’s very different. My children’s series was written on a whim. I wanted to try something that was very different from my style because I wanted to take a break. I wanted to try something new. It came in between Mistborn 2 and 3. After I’d written the first two books straight through, I realized I needed a break to cleanse my palate, otherwise I’d be burned out on Mistborn 3 when I started it. And didn’t want to be burned out, I wanted to be excited and energetic about it. And so, I took a break and wrote a short, several hundred page book about a kid who discovers that librarians rule the world. And it was for fun, I wasn’t doing it for market reasons. People say, why did you decide to publish in children’s? I decided to publish in children’s because I wrote a book that I loved and said, hey I could actually publish this. I’m an author now, I do this for a living. So I sent it to my agent, and he said he really just loved it. And so, he took it to book auction, and it sold actually for a ridiculous amount of money. But it was done just for the fun of it.
And so, when I’m writing for children, I do not write down. I don’t think that’s appropriate. But I do change my style. I keep things more snappy. And you know, children are more forgiving. Epic fantasy has to be very internally consistent and very logical, and I love that about the genre. But children don’t care if you genre bend a little bit more, or if you’re a little bit more tongue-in-cheek. And, I was able to write a book that just didn’t take itself quite so seriously. The Alcatraz books are funny. I think they’re hilarious, they’re meant to be fun. It’s my take on one of my very rule-based magic systems done in a light-hearted way. It’s about people who have really ridiculous magical powers, like Alcatraz’s grandfather. His magical superpower is the ability to arrive late to appointments. And his cousin’s magically good at tripping. And it’s about them taking these magic abilities and twisting them, and using them in cool ways. Like his grandpa will arrive late to bullets, and his cousin will trip to make really great distractions, and these sorts of things. It’s very fun. But the difference is, more light-heated, more fast-paced.
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