I try to pester Christian Dunn from time to time. As soon as my schedule allows, I plan to make a real pest of myself and get some hot, slippery Chaos action. Paul S. Kemp More Quotes by Paul S. Kemp More Quotes From Paul S. Kemp Cale is my signature character in the Forgotten Realms. The most popular character I've written. He's a thief, an assassin, and eventually, a priest who stabs his own god in the chest. Always trying to slip his past, but never succeeding. Dark dude. Brooding dude. Born killer. But honorable, still. Paul S. Kemp dark character past I like to keep the world, to some degree, an implied setting. Paul S. Kemp implied degrees world My favorite new character isn't new, but more fleshed out - Gadd, the alekeep at the Tunnel. He's got him some teeth and tats. His history is hinted at in Discourse, and I plan to explore it more in later books. Paul S. Kemp tunnels character book I enjoyed The Mirage by M. Ruff. I'm reading Edgar Rice Burrough's Princess Of Mars right and loving it. Paul S. Kemp mirages princess reading I loved The Weird (one of the stories in it inspired Blackalley in Discourse). Paul S. Kemp discourse inspired stories Original work has no floor and no ceiling. You can reach essentially zero readers or millions. Paul S. Kemp ceilings zero reader Shared world has done some world building and brings (in the case of FR and SW) a big audience. With your own work, you're more creatively free. In a way, the shared world stuff has a high floor but a ceiling. Paul S. Kemp ceilings done world The Disney deal created some wrinkles. I'm under contract. But I'm on standby. Paul S. Kemp wrinkles deals contracts I'm unstuck in time. Also, I juggle like mad and have made myself efficient. Paul S. Kemp efficient mad made Fantasy allows for less rigorous worldbuilding and more vigorous exploration of moral questions. Sci-fi is opp. Paul S. Kemp exploration fantasy moral The Forgotten Realms is arguable the most detailed, intricate fantasy setting ever created this side of Middle Earth. It's a setting for many D&D game products and lots of fiction. It is vast, historically and geographically and so contains just about anything you might imagine, at one place or time or another. Created by Ed Greenwood. And, for the record, Ed Greenwood is one of the smartest guys I've ever met. Paul S. Kemp guy games fiction The Sundering is a world spanning event that creates ripples all across the Realms. The books in the series are connected in that they take place against that backdrop, showing different aspects of it. The stories, however, are not sequels or intertwined, though there are some Easter Eggs across books. Paul S. Kemp eggs easter book My goal is to write stories that are connected, but not sequels in any meaningful sense. Like Howard's Conan tales or Leiber's Fahrrd & the Great Mauser stories. Paul S. Kemp goal writing meaningful I always work from outline and almost always write out of sequence. It just works for me. Paul S. Kemp sequence outlines writing With young kids (I have four including the newborn) times passes weirdly for me. Paul S. Kemp newborn four kids [Writing] is harder than you think. You'll be rejected often. If you do it for money, you'll quit. Love it or don't do it. Paul S. Kemp quitting writing thinking I suppose the textbook definition of an anti-hero is pretty straightforward - a protagonist who embodies not only heroic characteristics but also some characteristics typically deemed non-heroic, even villainous. Paul S. Kemp pretty only some who I always say that characters must drive plots, never the reverse. Writing about large-scale events creates the risk that the scope of the events themselves can overwhelm the characters. I emphatically do not want that. That was the only trepidation I felt when I started 'The Twilight War.' Paul S. Kemp drive never writing war My favorite class as an undergraduate was a political theory class on justice. Now, 'justice' is hardly a self-defining term, and much smarter men than I have developed various definitions over the centuries. The class put Plato at one end and Nietzsche at the other, and off we went. Paul S. Kemp end political justice men The anti-hero walks the morally gray path and constantly flirts with redemption, and that flirtation is just a blast to write. Paul S. Kemp just gray redemption path