So, way back in 1990, I wandered into my local bookstore. It’s called Cosmic Comics. It’s a little tiny shop. I actually usually rode my bike there even though I was approaching 16. I couldn’t legally drive . . . but I’ll just say I rode my bike there. And every week I would go in, and I would see what new books were on the shelf.
To the right of me, right as I’d walk in, they had this little shelf—they sold science fiction and fantasy books, and comic books—I wasn’t as interested in the comics books. I was there for the fantasy novels, and they had this thing where you’d buy ten and you get one free, which had me sold, right. Free book, right? So I would always plan and I would buy ten cheap ones and then find the really expensive thick one, which was like a dollar more, and get that one free. I thought—I’m the son of an accountant, so I thought I was getting away with something. And there on the shelf was a big book. A big book.
Now I always say, length of the book doesn’t actually indicate its quality, but I had learned very early on as a fantasy reader that you wanted the big books because if you liked the book, you had that much more to love. If you got a short book and you fell in love with it, it was over before you knew it. And if you got a big book, you would say, well, by the time you fell in love with it you had this big book to read. And there was a big book.
I’m not your typical writer. I guess there are no typical writers. But a lot of writers I know—you’d ask them when they first started writing, they’re like, ‘oh yeah, I was six months old, started my first story. It was a war epic’. And you talk to writers and you know . . . all this stuff. I was what we call a reluctant reader. That’s a literacy person term. I didn’t it know back then—all I know is I didn’t like books. All through the latter part of my grade school days and my first two years of middle school—seventh and eighth grade—I did not like books. In fact, I was convinced that books were boring. And people kept trying to get me to read books, and they would give me these books. And every one of these books would have like this boy who goes off and lives in the forest, and he has like this pet dog and his dog dies, and everyone’s sad. And I read like three of these, and I’m like books are dumb, why is there . . . I don’t like dogs. I’m a cat person. So I’m actually happy when the dogs die. I’m just joking–dogs are wonderful. My wife’s a dog person, so . . . But no, I just thought books were not for me.
Last part of my eighth grade year, I had a teacher—her name was Ms. Reeder, by coincidence. She was my English teacher, and she insisted that I read a book on her shelf. This is because I’d gotten really good at faking my way through book reports, and I was a clever little boy that realized you could find out what was in a book without reading it, and then write a very convincing book report.
And my teacher made me pick a book that she had read recently. There’s a little stack of them—you know, like in these schools they have these racks of ratty paperbacks that like a hundred students have read, and there’s like—yesterday’s spaghetti is stained on one. But you know, every teacher has these things, and I had to pick one of these books. And so—she wouldn’t let me get away with it this time, so dragging my feet went to the back of the classroom and browsed through these ratty books and came across this book with a dragon on the cover. Now, I had not tried a fantasy book since Lord of the Rings, which, if you give Lord of the Rings to a boy who’s not really that good at reading, despite it being a brilliant novel, all it does is convince you that Lord of the Rings is a lot like Isaiah, right? You’re like oh, I’m sure this is wonderful, but I’ll let someone else tell me why.
And I had not finished Lord of the Rings. But I saw this and there was this dragon, and it also had a very attractive young woman on the cover, which I will admit helped quite a bit also. It was a Michael Whelan painting—he’s a fantastic illustrator—it was Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, if any of you have read this. I highly recommend, it’s a wonderful book. I picked this up even though it was a bit thicker than I perhaps had wanted. You know, I did the normal middle schooler thing looking for the shortest ones first. And I took this book home and read it, and it changed my life. This sounds stupid when I say it, I realize. It’s a dopey little fantasy novel, right?
But it changed my life. There was something in there. The imagination, the realism of the characters mixed with this wonderful scenario. Dragonsbane is about a middle-aged woman who tries to convince her husband not to go slay a dragon. He did it when he was young and now there’s another dragon, but now they’re middle aged and you know they’re probably like in their early 40s, but to me they were like ancient when I was reading this. And like, why should a 14-year-old boy connect, right, with this book about a middle-aged woman having a midlife crisis, which is what the book’s about, but I loved it. It was amazing.
And I ran back to my teacher and I said, people write books about dragons? This is wonderful. She’s like, yeah there’s lots of them. There’s this thing called the card catalog—you should go investigate this. And so I did. Now these . . . For the younger people in the audience, card catalogs were these things . . .
[laughter]
They were chiseled out of stone, actually, and you had to lug them open. And inside in caveman script, it would write the authors alphabetically and the titles alphabetically. We had two of them in my school. So I went to the title card catalog and said well, Dragonsbane was good. What’s the next card after it? It was a book called Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. And I’m like well, this one has a dragon on the cover, and that looks like an attractive young woman also, so I will read that book. Lo and behold, Dragonflight is one of the best fantasy books ever written—Hugo award winning novel by one of the greatest names in the genre, also with this wonderful Michael Whelan cover. And so I read through everything they had of that. And the next one in line actually was Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn. Also with an attractive young woman on the cover—by coincidence, I’m sure.
And I became a fantasy addict. I read every fantasy book I could get my hands on. And it’s kind of a funny story. That summer someone gave me a David Eddings novel, which some of you may have read. I actually was skeptical because I’m like, I don’t know if a guy can write fantasy. Because I was reading Barbara Hambly and Anne McCaffrey at that point. But I gave David Eddings a chance, and David Eddings further got fantasy’s hooks in me. And so by that fall, I was super fantasy addict man. I was reading everything I could get my hands on, and was absolutely loving it.
And it I think it was—actually I’ve been telling this story wrong, because I think it was actually the following spring that Wheel of Time came out, because I think I would have been 14 there, turned 15. But whenever it was, I got Eye of the World . I remember when it came out in paperback, and I picked this book up, and it was a big book. And I had been searching for something. My friends had given me David Eddings. One of my friends was a huge Ray Feist fan. And everyone had their series that they followed that they were in love with. And everything I’d read—Thomas Covenant and Dragonriders and all these things—were series that were already established that people suggested to me, and I had not yet found my series to suggest to people.
And I was kind of searching for it, right? You know how that is. Fantasy had become my thing. I’m like, I want to be a fantasy hipster but I’m not, because everybody’s giving me the books. Hipsters didn’t exist back then, but that was the mindset. And I found this book and I’m like, all right, I’m going to give this one a try. And it was amazing. I loved this book, Eye of the World , and I remember distinctly getting done with it and thinking aha, I’ve found it. I’m going to be on the ground floor for this one. And then when this trilogy is done . . . [laughter] I’m going to be the one giving it to people and talking about how you should read this. But I remember when The Great Hunt came out—and my little bookstore did not get the hardcovers or trade paperbacks very often—but The Great Hunt came out in trade paperback. And I said aha, other people are figuring it out. Now the book is being released in trade paperback, it must be getting popular. And then The Dragon Reborn came out in hardcover. And I thought, I knew it—this is the series, it’s taking off, and I was there first.
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