“My books were always full of ink blots, always stained and covered wit...” — Pierre Loti Quote

My books were always full of ink blots, always stained and covered with smeared sketches and pictures, which one draws idly when his attention wanders from his task.

I still have in my memory, almost agonizing impressions of a serious illness which I had when I was about eight years old. Those about me called it scarlet fever, and its very name seemed to have a diabolical quality.

My emotions lose their force when I endeavor to interpret them, and my words seem very inept.

Egypt, the Egypt of antiquity, at a later time, exercised a mysterious fascination over me. I recognized a picture of it immediately, without hesitation and astonishment, in an illustrated magazine.

We don't have milk cows. People have so many stereotypes of people from where I come from - Oklahoma. We don't ride around in covered wagons, either.

I was a 20-something woman living in London and didn't want to write about a 20-something woman living in London! It's an area well covered already, and people would probably have thought it was about me. I decided that if I wrote about an 82-year-old dementia sufferer, then no one could mistake it as a memoir.

I went out every single night so I was never alone with my stepfather. At 12, I stopped going on holiday with them. The times I was alone with him I always made sure I was all covered up.

All the Midkemia stories are part of a 'history of an imaginary place,' so I've always known the cycle covered five rift wars. I just got to the end after 30 books. So there was no particular inspiration, save it was time to finish the whole shebang.