For at every stage of your civilizations there are numbers of you who put aside selfishness and dedicate their lives in service to something they see as being greater than themselves. I say you may prevail, I say not that you will. For in each of your generations there are men who choose to serve the gods of darkness.

Probably all the books I’ve ever written have been efforts to define the boundaries of humanity.

Actually ideas are everywhere. It’s the paperwork, that is, sitting down and thinking them into a coherent story, trying to find just the right words, that can and usually does get to be labor.

I had immediate success in the sense that I sold something right off the bat. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake and it really wasn’t. I have drawers full of – or I did have – drawers full of rejection slips.

More immediately, I’m currently working on another Dracula in which there will be connections with ancient Egypt. That’s about as far as I want to go in commenting on current work.

I wouldn’t like to just do one story or one type of stories all the time.

The comments I most appreciate come from ordinary readers who’ve happened on one of my books at some time of stress in their lives, and who actually credit the book with helping them through a bad time. It’s happened a few times in forty years.

There are interactions with characters within the game which I think are pretty neatly done considering the limitations that you have to work with. I mean, a computer can’t really generate a character that talks back and forth with you successfully.

Only towards the end of this process are any of the chapters in fully readable condition, a state of affairs that used to alarm my wife. But Joan’s got used to it.

In stories, any number of imbeciles may be encountered, ready to deliberately insult strangers who are aiming deadly weapons at them. In real life, there are only a few folk so suicidally inclined.