Your first novel Elantris formed the foundation for your later success. Why do you think the novel was this successful? Did the way your career as a writer took off after that take you by surprise? Did someone predict your success early on?
It’s so hard to determine why one thing becomes really popular when something that’s equally good does not. And I know many authors whose books I’ve read who are writing fantastic things that don’t end up enjoying the same level of success as I have. So it’s really hard for me to determine the whys. In publishing, we would all be a lot happier if we could figure out the whys.
But why do people like my works? I would like to think that a lot of readers when Elantris came out were like myself, waiting for epic fantasy to pull in some new directions. When I was reading in the late ’90s and early 2000s I was disappointed that a lot of the books that were coming out seemed to be more of the same old story. When I got into writing, I didn’t intend to revolutionize the genre or anything like that, but I did have goals to try some new things. I hoped to create some fantasy that still felt like great fantasy, that had the same wonderful feel to it of the books that I had enjoyed reading when I was younger, but which also would try some new things. And I think Elantris does that. In the end, I think writing comes down to great characters and an engaging story, and hopefully these are things that I’ve somewhat figured out how to achieve. I don’t know if anyone guessed that I would do as well as I have. I certainly owe a great deal of my success to the attention that working on the Wheel of Time brought to me. But other than that I can’t really say who could have predicted it or how we could have known that it would go as well as it has.
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