When I am writing best, I really am lost in my world. I lose track of the outside world. I have a difficult time balancing between my real world and the artificial world.
When the writing is going really well, whole days and weeks go by, and I suddenly realise I have all these unpaid bills and, my God, I haven't unpacked, and the suitcase has been sitting there for three weeks.
I wanted to write a big novel, something epic in scale.
It's really irritating when you open a book, and 10 pages into it you know that the hero you met on page one or two is gonna come through unscathed, because he's the hero. This is completely unreal, and I don't like it.
If I was a soldier going to war, I'd be pretty scared the night before a battle. It's a scary thing. And I want my readers to feel that fear as they turn the page.
Unfortunately in television, for whatever reason, fantasy became thought of as a kids' genre.
I've been many kinds of writers in my career: novelist; tele-playwright; short story writer. As a high-school student, I wrote amateur pieces for fanzines, and I've written for Hollywood.
'Dreamsongs' allows me to show the scope of my writing - with personal commentary that puts the works in context and includes some autobiographical details intended to reveal how each piece came to be, what it represents, and how it has formed, or been informed by, my philosophy of writing.
All fiction has to have a certain amount of truth in it to be powerful.
I watch NFL football on Sundays. I enjoy gaming with friends, meaning role-playing games; I still enjoy going to conventions and traveling.
I grew up with four T.V. channels. If you missed a show, you missed it. You gotta wait a week for the next one. I'd mail-order books: take a quarter, get an envelope, send off for it and wait until it arrived. I grew up waiting for things.
The distinction between literary and genre fiction is stupid and pernicious. It dates back to a feud between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James. James won, and it split literature into two streams. But it's a totally false dichotomy.
Over the years, more than one reviewer has described my fantasy series, 'A Song of Ice and Fire', as historical fiction about history that never happened, flavoured with a dash of sorcery and spiced with dragons. I take that as a compliment.
I have always regarded historical fiction and fantasy as sisters under the skin, two genres separated at birth.
Whether you're a history buff or a fantasy fan, Druon's epic will keep you turning pages. This was the original game of thrones. If you like 'A Song of Ice and Fire', you will love 'The Accursed Kings'.
