Didn’t you collaborate on a book with Steven Brust?
Of all the books I’ve ever written, I think this one was the most pure fun. This book began with a letter from Steven Brust. I’d collaborated with Steve on a number of stories for the Liavek anthologies in the 1980’s. We’d discovered that we shared many of the same philosophies about writing and story telling then. Out of the blue, I one day received a note from Steve. He said that he’d started writing a story and that some of the magic in it reminded him of one my other books. Would I care to try a collaboration? Well, I was in the middle of writing some other book at the time and had no time at all to spare. I sat down to write him a note to that effect, but thought I’d just read the chapter he’d sent me one more time. And instead of writing him a ‘no, thank-you’ note, I ended up writing the next chapter of the story and sending it back to him. When the manuscript next came back to me, it was three chapters long. I added another one, and sent it back. We volleyed the chapters back an
