It Didn’t Matter Where You

We're Wired To Expect The World To Be Brighter And More Meaningful And More Obviously Interesting Than It Actually Is. And When We Realize That It Isn't, We Start Looking Around For The Real World.

I Never Thought About Doing A Sequel When I Was Actually Writing 'the Magicians.' I Only Ever Considered It A Standalone.

I've Only Read Three Books By Stephen King. When I Was 10 I Read 'the Long Walk,' One Of His Pseudonymous Bachman Books. In My Early 20s, While Trapped On A Family Vacation, I Read 'the Dark Half,' Which Taught Me A Word I Have Never Forgotten: Psychopomp. Now I Have Read '11/22/63.'

Becoming An Author Changes Your Attitude Too. Once You See Where Books Come From, And How They're Made, They Never Seem Quite As Sacred Again.

Fanfiction Is What Literature Might Look Like If It Were Reinvented From Scratch After A Nuclear Apocalypse By A Band Of Brilliant Pop-culture Junkies Trapped In A Sealed Bunker. They Don't Do It For Money. That's Not What It's About. The Writers Write It And Put It Up Online Just For The Satisfaction. They're Fans, But They're Not Silent, Couchbound Consumers Of Media. The Culture Talks To Them, And They Talk Back To The Culture In Its Own Language.