[Dragaera] ryhme or reason?

[John Dallman]

In article 
<Pine.SOC.4.64.0810262240540.21317 at flora03.slac.stanford.edu>, 
philiph at slac.stanford.edu (Philip Hart) wrote:

> Writ large, SKZB tells the story that is of interest to Him and sets
> it at the appropriate stage(s) of Vlad's life.  Vlad might also choose
> to tell stories from his life out of order for various reasons which
> we haven't much explored here.  Etc. etc.

When he was Guest of Honour at a convention in England, SKZB described 
his method of writing as "think of a cool sentence and write it down. 
Then think of what would be another cool sentence to go after that." 
Obviously, he was exaggerating - his membership in the PJF not 
withstanding - but it's important not to assume that an author pre-plans 
everything, or even knows what everything means when he writes it down. 

The con happened while he was in the early stages of writing _Dragon_. 
The helpful minor character Tibbs is named after a friend of mine, whose 
partner bought him the part in the convention auction, after SKZB had 
contributed it to help the con pay for his airfare. That's the reason 
for that name, which seems a little out-of-style for Dragaera.

-- 
John Dallman, jgd at cix.co.uk, HTML mail is treated as probable spam.