: Both reading and writing have been at the very center of my personal life since early childhood, but as I matured, a writing career seemed so unrealistic and risky that I felt compelled to become an artist instead... Yeah, I know. The same thought eventually occurred to me, so in 1996 I decided to stop stalling, and took a year's sabbatical high in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains where I could seriously concentrate on writing - and ski three times a week right across the street at Sugar Bowl!

There I became a much better skier, produced one of the most dreadful fantasy manuscripts ever to darken 800 pages of paper, and, despite all that, discovered there was nothing I had ever enjoyed more than writing - not even skiing.

After that, my friend, Debbie Notkin, a freelance editor of quietly legendary achievement, and an indescribably patient and subtle mentor, took pity on this literary Liza Doolittle, and taught him with astonishing skill and patience to write gooder. As I got gooder, my pleasure in writing increased until the most unpleasant thing about writing was the way my day job as an artist kept interfering. There was simply no further way to deny that writing was truly my last, best heart's desire. I kept at it until I'd managed to write a reasonably decent book. The rest, I hope, will be "history," (as opposed to "toast").

: Well, er... probably not. Publishers cherish a certain time-honored tradition of keeping writers and illustrators safely apart - even when they're the same guy. It causes no end of trouble when they're allowed to mix.

You see, there is another dirty little secret which has helped (perhaps providentially) propel me (quite literally) toward writing at last. In the year 2000, I celebrated the millennium by riding my mountain bike around a sharp hairpin turn into the grill of an oncoming panel truck. I learned three important things that day: always wear a helmet, (I still have the five pieces of mine enshrined at home), never wear a walkman, and if anyone so much as breathes the words, "urinary catheter," shoot first, ask questions later. During the following year, I learned a fourth important thing: some elusive, visceral connection between my head and hand which had made drawing such a ready, reflexive activity had been broken. After considerable effort to 're-learn' this former knack, I finally conceded in 2004 that it was simply not going to come back.

Now, before you go wetting your hanky, let me say that I am happier than ever and feel nothing but fortunate! Though I can no longer do hand-rendered art, I still do digital art quite proficiently. And to be honest, I enjoy writing even more than I enjoyed art even at the peak of my career. I expect to be so absorbed in the writing end of things that the art end will be left very happily to any number of far more talented illustrators - as any truly legitimate author ought to do anyway, mind you.

: The hardest thing about art was getting started. The hardest thing about writing is making myself stop. Other than that, not much difference. They are both intensely visual exercises for me. As an artist, I was watching a "still" image constantly changing in my mind, and doing my best to record what I saw in one frame. As a writer, I am watching a movie in my head and doing my best to record what I see - and hear, and smell, and touch, and feel. Frankly, a much richer experience for me. One picture may be worth a thousand words, but I can draw a lot more pictures in one thousand words than I ever could have done in months using pencil.

I don't start a story until I know both how it begins and how it ends. The middle is for discovering as I write my way between those two points. I do usually make an outline of some kind fairly early on, which I regard as a useful crutch to be continuously abandoned as the story itself suggests far better directions and devices to me along the way. Within a month or two after I finish, I usually realize what I should have written, and, so far, seem to need only a month or two more to go back and write that instead. Then all I need is a good editor, (which I have been unspeakably fortunate to have on several occasions now), to pry my eyes the rest of the way open.

: So glad you asked! Despite all appearances to the contrary, no.

I suffer no urge either to champion or to attack any of humanity's vast spectrum of spiritual traditions. There are both very sympathetic and very unsympathetic Christian characters in The Book of Joby, as there are both sympathetic and unsympathetic liberals and conservatives, rich and poor, male and female, etc. Some aspects of the story clearly depart from standard Christian doctrine.

My reasons for writing a fantasy novel so imbued with overtly Judeo-Christian imagery and subject matter really sprouts from an earlier period in my life when I was very intrigued with Native American spirituality. I soon realized that, while I might gain and apply much useful insight from their teachings, these were all crucially underpinned by a whole fabric of innate, even unconscious assumptions and understandings that one not raised Native American, steeped in that culture from the start, was never really going to "grok" as they do. That's when it began to register that the fantasy novels I had read with such enthusiasm since childhood were also usually housed in veneers of some other culture's mythology. In most cases neither the writers nor their American audiences seemed likely to have much visceral understanding of, if even academic familiarity with, the Norse, or Celtic, or Asian mythologies being alluded to. It seemed to me that a lot of potential richness and meaning was being lost by housing our own myths and folktales in skins so devoid of more layered depth to their readers.

That's when I began to think about writing fantasy for an American audience set in our own culture's body of supernatural lore. Could I use this motif to communicate in subtler ways with an audience who would attach all kinds of significance, conscious and otherwise, to details and unspoken allusions they recognized - whether subscribers or not - just by having been raised and formed in the culture woven through with all that lore? Would this be a richer, more nuanced fantasy for its particular audience?

Of course, each reader will attach very different significance, positive and/or negative, to various elements of this "familiar" Judeo-Christian motif, but they will make such attachments as they might not have done via some more unfamiliar context. Thus, I hope my tale might have a richer more varied life independent of anyone's intentions - including mine.

Clearly, a tale imbued with such subject matter cannot avoid suggesting theological statements - intended or otherwise, but I am not trying to write about God or Lucifer here. I don't know either of them nearly well enough to presume much of anything about them worth saying. What I am trying to do is use more familiar archetypes rich with innate associations to tell a story to us, about us and us alone.

: Yes, it is, but if I told you where, I'd have to kill you... Or, rather, hire someone to do so. In the Italian tradition from which I spring, it's considered gauche to do it yourself.

: As I write this, I am nearly finished with a second fantasy novel - unrelated to The Book of Joby - and have three more books all outlined and ready to go after that. There are many, many other stories circling the airport in my head, waiting to land.

: I am a fantasy reader almost exclusively - very little science fiction - and thus, many profoundly important and deserving authors are absent from this list, which, I fear, will contain few if any surprises: Tolkien (read to our class by an enlightened 4th grade teacher in the early 60s, The Hobbit launched my whole interest in fantasy literature. I am, of course, unique in that regard), Ursula LeGuin (who, in my opinion, defines the phrase "lyrical," and writes profoundly meaning-stuffed novels with greater consistency and frequency than any other author I've encountered), John Crowley (whose book, Little Big, once changed the course of my life - er - for the better, of course), T.H White (by whom my own first novel is in no small way informed), Greg Bear (whose fantasy duology, Infinity Concerto and Serpent Mage - now all in one volume called Songs of Earth and Power - helped define my own sense of what a fantasy novel ought to be), Patricia McKillip (whose every novel moves and mystifies me in the most delightful and thought provoking ways), Orson Scott Card (whose Ender's Game forever changed my once intolerant disinterest in Science Fiction), R.A. MacAvoy (whose Damiano Trilogy remains a perennial favorite and not too subtly informs some of my first novel as well), Guy Gavriel Kay (whose novels Last Light of the Sun, Sailing to Sarantium, and Lord of Emporers moved me literally to tears at times... please don't tell anyone), Lois McMaster Bujold (who also defied all my worst assumptions about science fiction, and whose Challion series once helped me to think very differently through some difficult times), Sean Stewart (whose books have also occasionally made me cry - largely because I fear I will never write that imaginatively), Holly Black (whose urban fantasy always feels viscerally credible in truly delightful ways, and whose website is really, really entertaining, though I've never had the cheek to speak when visiting), Jasper Fforde (who is responsible for a number of chronic laughter-related injuries), and too many more to list here.

: Right now, the paperback version should be on bookstore shelves pretty much everywhere - except for the few unfortunate places where it is not, but you should be able to order it even there. The hardback version is also available, though you will only find it actually on the shelves at independent book stores. At the chain stores, (Borders, B&N, B Dalton, etc), they stock only the paperbacks, though you can special order it through those stores as well. It can also be ordered in either version on Amazon, of course. It will also be available at any of the conventions and bookstore signings I'll be attending during the coming months. See the appearances schedule to find out when and where those are.

: See above.

: Um... that depends upon which ones you're referring to. Yes, small animals, whole bananas and a flock of wild turkeys really have fallen onto my car out of various perfectly clear skies. Yes, I did once successfully administer artificial respiration to an octopus. But, no, I never saved the life of a Beverly Hills dental hygienist using nothing but a butterfly net, a trowel, and a spool of dental floss. That one is just a wild rumor.

: As I've never even had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Black, I really don't know why I'm asked this question so often, but according to her website both eyes are, and always have been, real. I have, at present, no reason to doubt her.