Peter, I’m curious how many books you wrote before you actually got around to doing this one.
This was the second novel I ever wrote; I wrote a horror novel, because, as I am not ashamed to say, I am a huge Stephen King fan. I think that folks who bash King don’t understand the level of craft that Stephen King has.
I wrote this book, and I had an agent who said “Let’s put this on the shelf; fantasy’s not selling,” and asked me to write some thriller novels because he was trying to build some diversity in his client list. So, I wrote two other novels after the fantasy. I realized that was not the right agent and got a new agent who turned me down on the two thrillers (the two splatter books I wrote were thrillers) and then he saw the fantasy, and within a couple of days he had given it directly to Tom Doherty who gave me an immediate offer.
Who’s your editor at Tor?
Jim Frenkel.
(laughs) Of course, I knew that.
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