Nephew: Excuse me? I have an important question. How powerful is Captain Britain? Could he beat Superman?

Me, having already described the “the one who serves the story best” aspect of this kind of question and delighted to be asked: I *believe* CB’s power is drawn from the spirit of the British people, so potentially yes but probably only under ( Read more... )

Joliene asks: [What] drives your writing and keeps the juices flowing? What are the project ideas you have in the works, now that The Walker Papers is being put to bed???

Occasionally what my publisher is looking for drives my writing ideas-that’s what prompted the Strongbox Chronicles, for example, and it’s behind one of the projects I’m putting ( Read more... )

Thirzah asks keeping kick-ass real? Why is it ok to have a hero/ine shoot people in fiction, when we’re opposed to guns & violence in real life?

Well, I write about a god-fighting shaman, so I’m not sure how *real* I keep kick-ass, but… :)

I think it’s all right for us to explore violence in fiction precisely because we don’t in real life. It’s a ( Read more... )

A while back, I put forth a general call for questions about writing that people might want to ask me, and, er, I just remembered that I had the list stored, so I thought I’d answer one! :)

Heather asks: Character inspirations - from whom did you draw the personality traits of Joanne, Gary, Morrison, Margrit, Alban, Janx, Daisani, etc.

This one’s ( Read more... )

An LJ reader emailed me a writing question a few days ago, and gave me the all-clear to use its answer as a blog post, so I’m going to give it a shot. The question (and its surrounding commentary, which I thought was relevant) follows:

I know that some authors find rewriting easier (in some ways) than the initial creative process. Me, I can whip ( Read more... )

I asked people on Facebook to ask random questions for me to answer. Q&As behind the cut. :)
( Read the rest of this entry » )