What was the beginning spark that gave you the idea for Elantris ?
The beginning spark was reading actually about people in the olden days who would be quarantined together because of their disease.
Like the plague, stuff like that?
Yeah. Locked in a building because of the plague, or even leper colonies. Locked, forced to live only among other people with their same disease, and that would probably be the seed that made me want to write a book. Now I put it in a fantasy world because I wanted to tell a story about a magical disease. It started more as an undeath sort of thing and then evolved into a magical hybrid between leprosy and undeath that people could catch, and the story of what it’s like to have to live with this disease. Almost a little big of wanting to tell a story that was a put-together the mystery—the pieces—of what made the disease in the first place. Maybe a magical version of Andromeda Strain or something like that.
Yeah, that’s what I like about it, because straight into the beginning you’re in the guy’s head, as he’s trying to figure out what is going on and not taking the answer of we’ve got it and we’re doomed sort of thing.
Ummhmm.
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