When we work with history, to a very great degree we are all guessing. But by using motifs of time and history in a fantasy setting, we are acknowledging that this educated guesswork, invention, fantasy underlie our treatment of the past and its peoples - and we are not claiming a right to do with them as we will.

I've spent my whole literary career blurring boundaries between genres and categories.

As many have noted, the peril for authors is that our work space is too easily our play space.

I don't plan ahead; each book finds me. History itself, the resonance of the past with the present, is the common denominator in all of them.