I'm just curious about your world-building process.

[Michael]

I'm just curious about your world-building process. How did you dream it up, how long did it take, what's your method? Were you influenced by George R.R. Martin at all? Did you tap into your past as a Dungeons & Dragons role player perhaps?

Back in the 1990's I was writing pretty regularly and producing a novel a year approximately. I started thinking about the story and building it's world back then but I never had time to write it, because I was generally involved in a particular other book that I was writing "for publishing" whereas these stories were just me entertaining myself.

When I didn't find any traction in publishing I quit altogether...but Royce, Hadrian, and various adventures and intrigues in their world kept invading my head. I really was just kind of "filing" it with no expected use.

My hiatus lasted about a decade and by then I had so much squirreled away that the first two books just came out in a flood. I wrote the first in one month and the second in the same amount of time. After that it slowed down a bit but having had more than a decade to "noodle" it over made it pretty easy.

As to influence by George R.R. Martin. I've only read about the first half of Game of Thrones and I did that in late 2011 - so after the books had been published both by myself and Orbit. I actually wasn't very "well read" in the fantasy genre at the time of writing. It was a favorite of mine when younger, but I had been away from it for a long, long time. It's only post revelations that I've started reading.

Which brings me to Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. I hear there are a lot of similarities between them and Royce and Hadrian. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I hadn't even heard of those books until a reader pointed out my "homage" to the series because I named a building "The Grey Mouse Tavern" that naming was purely coincidental and I've never read Lieber's books. One day I will...but at the moment I'm still writing stories with Royce and Hadrian and I don't want to risk reading Lieber and adjusting the dynamic of my pair. In this case ignorance is bliss and I'd prefer not to know. The day people see my "currently reading" to be one of Lieber's books will probably be an indication that I don't plan on writing any more Royce and Hadrian stories.

As to D&D...wow it's been about 30 years since I played it. I was a DM and made up a bunch of campaigns. I'm sure there is stuff from way back then that made it into the books, but it must be on a sub-conscious level, because nothing explicit comes to mind.

I have had a number of people write to me to say they have DM'd games based on my books - an extremely flattering compliment. One guy mentioned that one of the party members was killed when trying to pick-pocket Royce. I'm guessing the chances of success were pretty low. I probably wouldn't put the likelihood of death as high as this DM did...but I found it an amusing story nonetheless.