While I was writing Mechanique, I watched hundreds of hours of circus footage—both the shows themselves and whatever behind-the-scenes material I could get my hands on.

You have to constantly ask, what’s being betrayed: the unicorns themselves, or the medieval cultural ideal of them? If the latter, is that a bad thing? Is it betrayal or subversion?

Cabal certainly has a moral set, although it’s unlikely to win him any plaudits. He would argue that his moral scale is simply greater than most people’s and that he does not concern himself with the minutiae.

Connor Cochran asked me to do a book for Conlan Press that would be a set of Schmendrick stories set before The Last Unicorn. I’d never gone back there, so I thought it would be interesting.

I think one of the parts of a story that writers ought to think about is how the story gets told. We have more options than simply third person past. The way we choose to tell a story matters.

“The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr” highlights one of Martin’s greatest strengths: the ability to see the value of the smallest character and to give that character a voice.

Fantasy should be as ”real” and lifelike as a contemporary novel or story. In some respects, possibly, a little more so.

We have all had the experience of being so angry that we say something or do something that hurts the people that we love. I think the idea that we have the potential for a monstrous self is very compelling.

Whenever you travel, you see glimpses of people who you’ll probably never see again. Some people get very curious about that, and some people hardly notice; the story sprang from the idea of two such people meeting.