*SRD definately plans to be at the World Fantasy Convention in Tempe, Arizona October 28th through the 31st. "My publishers originally had tour dates planned and other things for me to do, but eventually came around to the ideal that it would be in everyone's best interest that I be there."
*SRD will be at the International Conference for the Fantastic Arts in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida March 15th through the 20th. "Of all the events these are the two I really don't like to miss."
He began before 10am and said he had just come from working out and judging a Karate belt test, so was almost, already, exhausted. "So we can all go home now and go to bed..." Then he passed around the US and UK Runes covers and contemplated a large UK advanced readers copy. "It's got alot of 'heft' to it." He said as he held it up. "Makes me feel like I actually accomplished something." He gripped that there was nothing but "funky" promos and sales projections on the front and back covers. "Not even the title's on here-come on-it's not a question of who hits the most homeruns..."
He was asked about writing the Final Chronicles as compared to the first and hinted that much more rethinking is necessary right now, "It is harder and I'm getting older..."
Someone asked him if the second book would be coming out in a year or so to which he replied. "I'd like to be working on it quicker than you know. My contract gives me three years per book and my publishers have already eaten up six months of the second book by making me do things I've never dreamed of before. They've also "forbidden" me to tell you about that." He spilled a tiny bit of the beans by saying that some of it involved writing, at least, ten four to five page promos for different bookseller/bookstores. "I have to write completely different essays that essentially say the same thing."
"This is all a shameless attempt to get you interested in the book."
After the read he fielded further questions. The first involved the prefunctional one: 'Do you have any plans to write something after the Final Chrons.' He said that the ideal of expanding Penace into a fantasy novel has been kicking around in his head and that, of course, Angus has unfinished business, Morn has issues and the Amnion are still out there. He made it clear that there will eventually be a fifth and final Axbrewder/Fastoulli mystery novel. "I'll tempted to call it 'The Man Who Kicked Ass' but I don't think they'll let me."
"Changing POV in the Gap Saga was amazingly hard, I had never, really, done that before." He said the toughest thing to do was to recreate continance based on time and the certain knowledge of the individual characters. "It had to be based on what little they know-and then fitted back in to make sense in the overall context"
In response to the work involved in the Gap SRD said, "The Last Chronicles is so complicated, it's scope is far beyond the bounds of anything I've ever attempted. Just to keep track of what's going on now and to fit that in with what has gone before will probably make me skitzophenic and, at the least, exhausted in the end." In addition, "The scope, the characters and the laws already established-just to keep those factors in context with what I'm trying to accomplish will be a monumental task." He said that Runes was the most heavily rewritten book he's ever been associated with and that it will be "a walk in the park" compared to what book two will require-and then that book three will be "a walk in the park compared to that." And so on.
He then cited a neat quote from Walter Miller's classic Sci Fi, A Canticle for Liebowitz: "Creating artificial life is like having one hand on your horse's reins while the other plays the trumpet." That got me thinking so I asked him which Science Fiction authors has inspired him the most.
"Growing up as a child of missionaries in India only four types of reading materials were available; the Bible, of course, Time magazine, Reader's Digest and mysterys. Don't ask me why mysterys, but they were there. By the time I got to High School young people eventually found a way to circulate some 'verbotten' books and the three Science Fictions that found their way into my hands were; Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human, Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination and A. J. Budgry's Road to Ruin. Needless to say, these were three pretty damm good ones so by the time we moved to the U. S. I was very excited about the genre."
He said that later on in life he met Alfred Bester and thought it was a shame that such an unpleasant man could write such wonderful books. Shortly after arriving in America he, unfortunately, discovered the "other side" of Sci-Fi reading some pulpy stuff and was very turned off by the "horrible" My Name is Vladimir Slovenski. "The arrival of Dune really fired me up and turned the tide in my respect for Sci-Fi and it (the genre) hasn't let me down since. I've just learned to be more discriminating." Along with Dune he said he really enjoyed the "Lensman" series as well.
I then asked him a question that really perked up the crowd: "On the discussion board alot of comparisions are, inevitably, made between the Covenant books and Tolkien, recently a number of members have been wondering if C. S. Lewis may have been one of your inspirations. " It's funny how the human mind works, you know I just recently completed an article for a collection that asks Fantasy writers which authors inspired or influenced their careers. I would, voraciously, read the Narnia books in Mid-School even in the barber shop as my hair fell into my glasses. As an adult I now see them in a much different light, but then-they set my brain on fire!"
I then mentioned the device of the "Wardrobe" in the Narnia books in association with E. R. Eddison, Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter on Mars and to some extent Zelazny in providing translations to other worlds like the Land.
"It's funny when people come up to me and say, 'Wow what an original ideal it was using mirrors the way you did in Mordant's Need.' It's nothing that Lewis, Carroll, Vonnegut (and someone interjected, Snow White) hadn't done before, I suppose I stole that from them too."
-He then mentioned that along those lines a book called The Dragon and the George was worth reading too...(He also directed the crowd to his new website and the Gradual Interview in particular-in essence thanking the many Watch members for their inquiries)Later I went back to the Con for the book signing where SRD signed TPTP for Skyweir, The Real Story for Ur-Vile, Gilden-Fire for dAN and LFB for me. I, of course, told him that it you liked Dune so much you must read the Neverness books. He said, "Actually Zindell was mentioned on the panel I was part of, earlier, I think I'll take look at his stuff."
Sorry to hear your plans have been shaken up by the delay. 
