Kristian Williamson asked Michael Grant:

One thing I really love about your series is how there are no cardboard-cut-out characters. Everyone matters, you care whenever someone dies and they all seem like people that you might have known a couple years ago... As a writer myself, how do you make the reader care and empathize with all of your characters, not just the most important ones?

Michael Grant Thanks! The answer is I'll be damned if I know. One of the reasons I always refuse to do 'break-out sessions' or anything to do with teaching writing is that I don't have any idea how to write. I can write, I just don't know how it happens.

I don't really love characters, rather I think of them as employees. They work for me. And I'm not remotely social - in fact I think I developed as a writer when as a kid I had to come up with various excuses for not hanging out with people. Maybe that helps, that emotional distance. I don't know.

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