With Europe ), final volume in the bestselling The Demon War Cycle, coming out in a few short weeks, I invited Peter V. Brett to do an interview to discuss the book and many other things. Despite being extremely busy, he accepted my invitation and provided some in-depth answers to most of the questions. This should give fans something to sink their teeth into as they wait forto be published!Here's the blurb for:Enjoy!-----------------------Frantically. I planned to finishby the end of 2016. I had this whole spiel about how I would submit it at 11:59:59pm on December 31. The baby was due Jan. 25, leaving me approximately a month to write, the Demon Cycle novella I hoped to publish right beforeAlas, I ended up losing most of December to doctor’s visits, hernia surgery and recovery. I was pulling all-nighters in January as the biological clock ticked, and turned in the first draft of the book around 4am on January 25th. Sirena graced us with her presence on the 26th and I allowed myself two months of paternity leave before getting to work on the second draft.Man, I’d been fretting over that for ten years. But every time I had doubts, I reminded myself I had a very strong outline, and held course. When I was confident, I worked. When I had doubts, I worked. Chipped a bit off the stone every day, solved each story problem in chronological order as I made a steady march to the end. Looking back, I don’t believe there is a significant difference in writing quality between the times I was confident and when I had doubts.Now, with the final copyedited manuscript delivered to the publisher, I am as confident as I can be that I stuck the landing.Everyone loved it, and at least one confessed to tears at the end. But there were some frank discussions about how the first draft could be improved that helped a lot. I definitely rushed the last few chapters in the days before the baby came, and that was immediately apparent on reread.But after my own editing pass and two months of rewrites, I’ve addressed every concern, revising several chapters from the ground up. The current draft is an order of magnitude better IMO. My editor’s response after reading it was “Bravo, sir”.Of course, reader reaction remains to be seen. No doubt there will be readers who don’t like all my choices, but there would be, regardless of how things ended. Regardless, I expect the vast majority of my readers to be more than just satisfied by the series climax.Yes and no. Some of the storylines in the series follow a smooth progression laid out in my original outline from almost a decade ago. Arlen and Jardir in particular face challenges, betrayals, ethical trials and character growth that had been laid out from the beginning.The greater challenge was the large supporting cast that built of over the course of the series. The original plot provided an outline for many of them as well, but it was looser, as some characters grew in prominence and others were taken off the board as the story grew in telling. Getting everyone’s timeline to sync up for the final chapters, even as groups of characters operate in various settings, far removed from each other, was extremely difficult.That said, no matter who your favorite character is, you can be assured they have their own hero moments, and a satisfying conclusion to their arc. Even minor characters from the earlier books make cameos and have moments to shine.Without the demon king Alagai Ka, the demon hive order begins to break down. Lesser mind demons attempt to start new hives all over Thesa. Their hatchling demon queens will need enormous amounts of food in their early stages of egg production, but conveniently, the humans are walled into their cities like larders. The demons swarm, threatening extinction for all humanity unless Arlen and Jardir can overcome their differences and stop it at the source.The new covers are amazing, but that’s no surprise. I owe a good deal of my success to Larry Rostant’s cover art.I would argue theJardir cover remains one of the most powerful and eye-catching covers in fantasy, but my personal favorite will always be the UScover, the red Inevera. That was the first cover where I pitched an idea to Del Rey and they had Larry bring it to life exactly as I imagined.andcovers have been much the same, so I have real personal affection for them.From the very beginning, I wanted to put a mind demon on the cover of, and I am so thrilled that it is not only happening, but exceeds my imagination. The awesome people at Millennium FX built a demon model for Larry to shoot, and it is just terrifying. But it was also high time Leesha Paper got a cover treatment, so we made that, as well. If you’re interested in a world of detail about the process, I wrote a piece about it on Tor.com: http://www.tor.com/2017/03/03/the-demon-cycle-the-core-cover-process/ It’s still stressful, but now that I’ve been through the cycle a few times, I can see the curves coming and navigate them with greater ease. I’ll read all the reviews for a couple months, then drop off when they all start to sound the same. I’ve come to see criticism is mostly a matter of personal preference, and don’t take it as personally as I once did. I still want to be proud of my work and make my readers happy, and I bend over backward to produce the best work I can, but once it’s done I don’t second guess much.There is certainly pressure for whatever I do next to do well, but I don’t want to spend too much of my life tracking sales data, making charts, and fretting over publisher expectations. Some authors glory in that sort of thing, but for me that way lies madness. All I can really do is write the best books I can, and give it my all when it comes time to promote. I think some writers can become either convinced of their own greatness, or start to view their work as just a product on an assembly line, and that’s when quality can drop off. Thankfully I have never had those problems. Others get so tied up in knots over their spreadsheets and worry over reader/publisher expectations that it becomes crippling and leaves them unable to work. I feel that undertow every day, but have yet to be pulled in by it.concludes the Demon Cycle with a great deal of closure. Every POV has a firm resolution, as does the overall story. I have plans for a sequel series that takes place 15(ish) years later. I already have main characters and rough plots worked out, but I am not in a hurry to get to it. For the first time in over a decade, I am creatively (and contractually) unfettered. I plan to take some time to bask in that, and will likely try something new before getting back to demon books. I have some ideas I am playing with, but it’s too early to talk about them in detail.This question is very common, and I think misleading, because it implies that you need to choose. The reality is that all three work together. The characters shape the setting which shapes the plot which in turn shapes the characters. These are the water, soil and sunlight a story needs to grow.There is one more Demon Cycle novella,, under contract. This story will tie directly into, occurring simultaneously with events in that novel. But as with the other novellas,can be read as a standalone book separate from the novels, and the novels can be enjoyed without reading the novellas, but they are designed to complement the novels in a way that deepens the story.is set in the town of Tibbet’s Brook, where the Demon Cycle began, and resolves the open plotlines and character arcs there. Fans of the Demon Cycle will see a familiar cast and setting. New readers will have a standalone story that also acts as an introduction to the Demon Cycle.I have plot ideas for two other novellas, but like the sequel series, I am not in a rush to get to them.While I appreciate and respect the concerns of those readers, I reject the assertion that the depictions of sexual assault and its repercussions in my books are casual. I did a great deal of research before addressing the topic—some of it based in personal experience helping friends who were victims of assault—and readers of the series as a whole will attest that characters continue to deal with the effects of trauma throughout their story arcs. I chose to include those situations and topics because I believe we serve no one by pretending such things don’t happen.Out of the fourteen POV characters in my series, four—one of them male—are victims of sexual assault. That was deliberate, and not so far from real-world statistics. The assault does not define them, but in each character it absolutely played a role in the person they developed into, for better or worse. This was something that was important to me to address in this series. The inhumanity of humans was always more interesting to explore than the demons.There is a running theme in the Demon Cycle books about survivors. People whose normal lives were turned upside down by trauma that pushed them onto a new path. Arlen Bales sees his mother torn apart by demons and is never the same again. Six-year-old Briar accidentally sets his house on fire and orphans himself. The idea that people shattered by tragedy can pull themselves together and go on to do amazing things is the essence of heroism in my books.I certainly sympathize if sexual assault is not what some people want to read about when they pick up a fantasy book, or if they personally did not like the way it was handled. I stopped readingwhen I was in college because I didn’t want to follow/root for a protagonist who was a rapist. But I did not immediately assume Stephen R. Donaldson was a bad person and start sending him hate mail.There is a difference between not wanting to spend your personal time on a piece of art that presses the wrong emotional buttons for you, and personally attacking the artist without taking the time to understand who they are and what they were trying to say.But for all the negative response, there have been overwhelmingly positive responses, as well. Readers, some of them victims themselves, who got in touch to thank me for not shying from the topic, and for showing how victims can go on to accomplish great things.I am something of a strict taskmaster, and plot my books meticulously. I keep my POV characters on a pretty short leash, but there are always exceptions, often in the form of supporting characters who cause unexpected disruption, like Elona Paper, or who grew unexpectedly like Gared and Wonda Cutter.That said, I have a very clear idea in my head of my characters and their belief systems, and some of them are quite rigid. Sometimes the plot will call for them to behave in a way that is out of character, and they rebel. Usually about once a book, Leesha refuses to comply with a plot demand and I need to revise a few threads to accommodate.No. Not ever. I love interacting with readers and hearing their thoughts and feelings on my work, but these books have been plotted for years, and I have never read a review or spoken to a reader that left me regretting a choice I made, or pushed me to alter my plans.Yes and no. My original submission to Random House was a completed first book,, the first third of the second book,, along with a VERY detailed outline for the remainder, and about five pages of bullet points for, andI’ve kept to pretty much all of those bullet points, but of course they expanded over the years. I have outlines for each book that are hundreds of pages long. Characters and story arcs were added as I went to fill gaps and tell the story I wanted to tell, but it happened in an organic fashion, always moving the story toward the next of those original bullet points.I feel pretty satisfied that my books turned out the way I intended them to. I know that seems like a cop-out answer, but I don’t look at any of my books with regret. In first drafts there are always mistakes. Some of them are whoppers. But that’s what rewrites are for. I wouldn’t turn in a book I wasn’t 100% happy with.There is a misconception that an author needs to be either a gardener or an architect, but it’s more a spectrum, with every author falling somewhere between the two. There are seeds George planted to see what fruit they would bear, and there were also secrets he was holding the door for since the beginning of ASOIAF.Personally I skew pretty far to the architect side of the spectrum. Before starting a novel I write a stepsheet that can be upwards of two hundred pages long, outlining all the chapters and what happens in them before I start writing any prose. I don’t know any other author that takes a similar approach. It is just how my mind works, I guess.But that said, while I was writing the climactic scenes in, I was repeatedly amazed at how little things from the earliest books I had never meant as more than throwaway details bore unexpected fruit and sometimes resulted in moments so perfect I am tempted to lie and say they were intended all along.Not really, though I have occasionally surprised myself by getting choked up or laughing aloud when listening to my own audiobooks.To suggest fantasy is mere escapism that cannot speak to higher truths is reductive, condescending and ignorant. However, to suggest fantasy is some unique art form that has exclusive access to revealing certain truths speaks of artistic delusions of grandeur.My job is to tell entertaining stories and make a reader feel an emotional connection to a group of characters and their trials. It is my hope that such empathy and some of the concepts my books explore can be applied to readers’ own lives, but that is not their primary purpose.I love all my children equally.Can I just answer with a GIF of an eyeroll?That they should all buy my next book.I’m not a big fan of messing with the timeline. Paradoxes and unintended consequences, you know. If anything, I would go back and slip him a flashdrive with all the completed books in the series. Ten year vacation!