Now, let’s talk a little about when you first started writing this series. Did you have any indication that it would be as popular and take off the way it has?
Of course not. Look, I hoped that the series would be successful. Nobody writes a book and hopes it’s going to be a flop. But as far as this—no, I had no notion, no notion at all.
And I’m sure that you’re aware of it. For example, on the internet there’s a very large group devoted to your work. Very in-depth discussion. Does this flatter you, that people are so willing to discuss in very, very fine detail?
It’s a wonderful ego stroking. And it’s also astonishing. I’ve known it about it for some time, and I’m not certain I’m over it yet, really. It does sort of make me want to drop my jaw. I find it astonishing. And, as I say, it’s very very flattering, very flattering.
Do you find that people’s interpretations of the book, do they match up with what you intend? Or do people sometimes bring to you an interpretation that you hadn’t thought of yourself?
Well, more often they’re trying to work out details of what I’m intending to do, and what I have meant by things that I’ve already written. I’ve been sent in some cases sheets of Frequently Asked Questions and the answers that have been deduced. The only thing is, they’re right between 20 percent, and oh, 33 percent of the time. They’re almost right maybe another 20 percent of the time, 25 percent. And the rest of the time, they’ve gotten off into an incredibly wild tangent that makes me wonder if I ought to re-read the books to figure out how they came up with this.
I do look at what they have said. And by that, I mean I look at it when somebody sends me a print-out. I’m not on the ‘nets, normally. But sometimes people will send me a print-out of a couple of days of discussion, or a Frequently Asked Questions list, as I said. And I’ll look at that, and it does give me some feedback.
There are things in the books that I have tried to bury very deeply. And if, from the discussion or from the questions, I can see that they’re beginning to get close to something I want to keep buried, I know that I have to be more subtle from now on, that I haven’t been subtle enough. Or, on the other hand, there are some times when I realize that they’re spending a lot of time discussing something that I was certainly not trying to make obscure that I thought was perfectly obvious. Then it becomes plain to me that I’ve gone the opposite way. I didn’t say enough about it for them to understand. So then I have to maybe reiterate a little bit.
But I certainly—I don’t change the plots or anything like that. I’m certainly not going to alter the fates of major characters or anything of that sort, whether someone has figured out what that’s going to be or not. I must say, they’ve not figured out very much of that accurately, but it’s fun to see.
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