Q.) I know I particularly enjoyed the allusions to Poe and Hawthorne tales, as well as other historical figures and events.  Were these allusions part of your inspiration or were they worked in later?  Can we expect more and different ones in later installments of the series?

A.) The historical and literary material was a consistent inspiration from beginning to end, but the first inspiration may have been an author to whom I didn’t allude very much–L. Frank Baum. When he began telling children’s stories, he had the idea of discarding the existing European folktales and building a fantasy that was modern and distinctly American. That’s how we got The Wizard of Oz. I wasn’t going to write a children’s story, but the idea of confining myself to a U.S. mythos for an adult fantasy was very appealing.

In The Left-Hand Way, the allusions branch out internationally to include everywhere the characters visit, but English history and literature gets the most attention.

Q.)   A similar but broader question than #5:  How do you characterize your writing style?  Do you know where the story is going from the outset, or does it develop as you go?  For instance, did you already have the basic plots of The Left-Hand Way and the tentatively titled third installment in development when writing American Craftsmen?

A.) I’m a pantser, but with trajectory–I usually have a good idea of where I want to end up, but I allow for the serendipities of writing to alter that course as I go along.

American Craftsmen was the second of three very different novels that I’d written before my series deal with Tor. Part of my writing discipline was to not do any real work on a sequel until I made a sale, and I had no idea that I’d be able to sell American Craftsmen to a publisher. However, I created a slingshot ending, so that when the publisher expressed interest, I was able to note that I’d left room for a sequel. But then Tor came back and asked for a three-book series. So books 2 and 3 were not plotted even basically at that point. It’s made for a lot of work the past couple of years, but it also means that I have some interesting manuscripts in the trunk once I’m done with book 3.

In the other sense of writing style, I try to keep things straightforward, so that when things get baroque, it’s to make them stand out.