Grasping for the Wind

Byers Interview

FantasyBookSpot has a good interview with Richard Lee Byers, author of Forgotten Realms Series' The Year of Rogue Dragons and The Haunted Lands.

His comment about shared world fiction I thought was spot on.

"And finally, there are people who think that shared-world fiction is inherently a lesser beast than non-franchise work. Which I've always found curious, because I've noticed that if you do something like retell the story of King Arthur or the Trojan War and do it with reasonable craft, the same people will mostly think that's commendable. But if you do a story set in the Forgotten Realms, where, although you didn't make up the setting, you at least made up the plot and characters, they consider it an inferior creation. I don't follow the logic. As you can probably guess, I think that stories are good or bad depending on how good a job the author did, not on whether they're shared-world pieces or not."

Posted by John on April 25, 2007 12:57 PM | Posted to Fantasy | Forgotten Realms | Interviews
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