A: They can live in the same ways that the Bedouin manage to live in a desert where you or I would die, and the Apache did so. They make very efficient use of what they find. And if they stay in one place for too long in too great a number they would indeed strip the land bare. But there certainly aren't millions of them in Illian.

A: Read And Find Out, my children, Read And Find Out. :)

A: No.

A: Well, let's see, it would probably take--if I made it as short as I could--three volumes I don't really think so. :) I'm afraid you're just going to have to read the books. Sorry about that.

A: In a way. Not with the last book, certainly but THE EYE OF THE WORLD took 4 years to write. Each of the other books took 13 or 14 months but the publisher brought out the second book 10 months after the first and the following books at 12-month intervals You can see there's a law of diminishing returns there. For this last book, I simply told them I could not do it again. A CROWN OF SWORDS took about 20 months to write, in fact. That's why the book didn't come out last fall or earlier in the spring.

A: Well, I'm sort of used to it. It's been going on for a long time now.

A: On the advice of my lawyer, I never admit anything. :) Not even to my wife!

A: I was 30 when I started writing. Maybe 29. I'd have to sit down and figure it out. It was a while ago.

A: An artist named Todd Hamilton is doing the work for the illustrated guide.

A: the words come partly from Gaelic, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese the grammar and syntax I believe I invented myself although it's possible that another language usees the same. Of course, just as with English, I have deliberately put in some very illogical inconsistencies.

A: You guys get to sit around with your feet up between books! :) I bust my hump writing them.

A: Yes, the Dark One is the only source of the True Power.

A: I forgot who asked this, but it wasn't difficult to get Tor to publish my first novel. Tom Doherty liked what I write. I've been writing for 20 years and I told him that I had an idea for a multi-volume book I didn't know how many books and probably any other publishers would have thrown me out of his office but Tom said OK!

A: I have a standard letter that I send to people when they ask for permission to do role-playing, in which I grant them very limited permission to do this. It says, in effect, that you have permission to do it in this instance as long as you don't try to make a profit off of it.

A: There may be a very few copies left of the poster at the publisher in NY. I don't know. I don't think they have any plans to sell it. There were a certain number made to give away during my last tour. Whether any remain is beyond me I'm afraid I need to go now. Thanks to everyone for your interest!

A: There is no title for Book 8. Not yet. My working title is "Book 8" and will probably remain that until I am, oh, 2/3 of the way through the book.

A: That's correct. They are historical novels and I think they will appeal both to buffs of history novels, "The American Revolution," "The War Against the Tripoli Pirates," and also readers of what I have heard called "sober romances". The people are certainly full-blooded, shall we say, and there are a number of romances in there.

A: Yes, and a personal interest in history.

A: That sounds like the finest kind of butter to me and if you don't mind, I'll keep one hand on my wallet.

A: Probably in January or February of 1998. I am scheduled to hand it to the publisher in November of 1997. I have slowed down a little bit in order to stay alive to the end of the series. My wife, my publisher and some other people convinced me that I was killing myself maintaining my old work schedule.