I want to talk to you about that, because I have kind of read some of the things you have written about the role of fiction, and the role of fantasy, and how it is so essential to understanding humanity. I’m really intrigued by that. Obviously when we talk about the books that you have written we have Elantris , Mistborn the Trilogy, Alcatraz and the Evil Librarian , we will talk a little bit about those. I’m curious, fantasy captured your imagination; what is it that inspires you to begin writing your own…
Well you know there’s that huge imaginative exercise. Fantasy—well all fiction really—is about taking you to a different place and letting you see through different people’s eyes. I think fantasy can do things with fiction that nothing else can do. It can take you to a place no one has ever been, really. The book I read when I was in junior high was called Dragonsbane . And it’s still a delightful book, I love it. What it was about was a middle-aged woman. And I wouldn’t think that me as a fourteen year old boy would really read that book and get into it, but it was so well written.
And identify with its character. Sure.
Yes. And It was so imaginative, and it had just this wonderful world of dragons and all these things; and also a story about a middle-aged woman who is struggling kind of, to choose between how much time to spend with her family and how much time to spend on her magic. And it was fascinating to me even as a junior high kid that when I finished this book I felt like I kind of understood my mother better, and yet I had this wonderful romp in a fantasy world at the same time. I look back at that and say the emotions that these books can cause are something special, because it can give us this wonderful adventure, but also can make us really understand people we would never be able to understand otherwise.
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