Terry Brooks made a stop at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona last fall (2006) on a tour to promote the release of Armageddon’s Children, the beginning of a new series. He talked about the new series and answered some questions from Michael A. Stackpole and the audience. Armageddon’s Children comes out in a mass market paperback on July 31 with the second book in the series, The Elves of Cintra, scheduled for August 28^th.

At the appearance, Terry seemed very relaxed and threw in some humorous comments in his answers. To start off the appearance, he teased the audience by reading a chapter from the start of the second book and after that talked a bit about the new series.

Terry Brooks: I'm writing a bridge series between Word and Void and Shannara, on the one hand. Most of you probably already know by this time or have figured it out if you read the book. On the other hand, I'm writing a stand-alone series. This is no mean trick, let me tell you, but nevertheless, I feel confident that the way the series is structured that you'll be able to jump in without having ever read another thing that I've done. I'm sure there are many of you in that boat and you’ll be able to get caught right up and with any luck you'll feel you need to go out and buy the rest of them. My kids will thank you, my creditors will thank you, that sort of thing.

What is this story about? This is a reflection of my mood at the moment, so I'm writing about the destruction of this world. I'm picking on a small subject here. I'm going to tear it down and build it back up again. At the moment, I'm in the process of tearing it down, so we have a collapse of civilization, essentially. Governments basically are done, countries have ceased to exist, the population has been decimated by upwards of 80%. We have a series of cataclysmic events, some of them man-made, some of them natural: plagues, poisoning of the environment, climactic changes of a major scale, nuclear attacks, and if I've left anything out, please let me know, I'll see if it is in the next book.

We've reduced civilization to a very primitive level and what we have left are the remnants of civilization living in compounds which tend to be fortified complexes, mostly sports stadiums. I thought they'd come in good for something someday, converted into fortresses. We have people living in the outback and on the streets.

In the first book, we get to meet the Knights and the Ghosts. The Knights are the Knights of the Word from the first series who are the good guys. Their job in the Word and Void series was to keep the balance of magic in check. Well, they failed miserably, it didn't happen. As a result, we have this cataclysm. They are now living in the dreams they had of what would happen if they failed. They have failed, so they are living their nightmares. We have two of them that we are following closely. Logan Tom, who is 28, and Angel Perez, who is much younger. They have a lot of power, but they are all by themselves out there and there are a lot of bad guys and the bad guys are hunting them down.

We also have the Ghosts. The Ghosts are street kids. They are a small family of nine or ten members who range from 23 down to about nine or ten years of age. They are all up in Seattle in Pioneer Square.

There are also the freaks. The freaks are mutants who have been altered in one form or another of the poisoning. They are various types. There are croaks, spiders, lizards, and various other things that are too disgusting to talk about.

Michael Stackpole: Can you tell us about your writing routine?

TB: My routine, these days, is different than it was 30 years ago. When I had another job, which I had for many years, I worked when I could find the time to work. You had to squeeze it in. I also had kids at that time who were still living at home. Now I don't have another job, and I don't have kids living at home, although they hang out a lot. My schedule tends to be... Also, I'm a lot older, so my energy level drops off fast. So I'm good from about 6 in the morning to about 2 in the afternoon. After that, I find I'm not very productive on the creative front and I answer mail or take phone calls. That's my basic plan and I work under contract as Michael does and all of us who are professionals. It means that you have to produce on a regular basis. I'm on a book a year and some intermittent work as well. I know it takes me 8 to 10 months to do a book. I factor that in when I start to work on something. For me, it’s a case of stick-and-carrot: I say “if I get so many chapters done by the end of the month, then I'm a good guy and I get a reward.” I'm never really sure what that is, it must be something. So I try to work and say each month “I have to do so many chapters.” If I do it at the beginning of the month, that's great, if I have to put in overtime, I put in overtime to get it done.

MS: You've got magic and technology working here. You're using a mixture of magic and technology at the same time in this series. Did you find special challenges with that as opposed to just writing fantasy? Mixing the two can often be challenging.

TB: For those of you who are readers of the Shannara series, you know that in the last six books in that series I've reintroduced some small forms of science as a part of the way in which the world is evolving. So we're moving away from magic into science rather than the other way around which is what happens in The Great Wars. Here we're starting out with science at the point of its destruction and collapse and we'll start to see the rise of magic come in. Obviously you have to find a balancing point to make that happen, but what's real important, I think, is that you have to be real careful to not to rely on one or the other at the wrong time and let them interact in a way that doesn't feel right. Fantasy, as we can both tell you, is very, very difficult to write from the point of view that it has to be believable. Particularly, not funny fantasy, but epic fantasy or any kind of dark contemporary fantasy. You have to believe it. If you do not believe what we're writing, if you don't believe in the characters, then the whole thing falls apart and you aren't going to stay with us. I think that's what we have to work hardest at.

Audience: Do you outline before you start?

TB: I am the guru god of outlining. Yes. I have friends who are not this way and I try hard to change their habits-sometimes I am successful and sometimes they just ignore me. But yes, I believe strongly in writing to an ending. I know my endings and I write to that ending and I like to have building blocks in place along the way. Does that mean I will follow that path? No, it does not. But it's a nice blueprint to look at from time to time and the fact is I do change my mind quite frequently, because as any writer will tell you the writing of a story always is the thing that determines where it needs to go and how it needs to evolve.

Audience: I know you get this question everyplace you go but where do you get your ideas for plot happenings and characters? The description is wonderful.

TB: Everybody has a different answer and I used to give fairly flip answers until I wrote Sometimes the Magic Works and I began to really think about where I got my ideas as opposed to just throwing some off the bathroom walls. The truth is that these days I mostly get them out of newspapers. I read the newspapers and I just get furious. I don't know about you but I can't watch the news on TV - I only yell at people. I start thinking about these things. I start thinking about what's going on and I start thinking about what the ramifications are and you know one thing leads to another and pretty soon I come up with something I need to write about and I pretty much go from that.

It gets easier.

Audience: I want to know: when do you think you might be doing another book for Landover?

TB: Well, Landover… here's the thing about Landover. Actually, the publisher has paid me to write another book about Landover some time ago and they ask this question very often. However, I have managed to stave them off by optioning the rights to Universal Studios to the series so I say we shouldn't do that book until we see if they're going to make that movie, and then if they're going to make that movie then we should do that book and bring it out commensurate with the movie and just think how many more copies we'll sell and their eyes light up. So for the moment I've put them off, but I'll have to do something in the next three to five years but I haven't put a timetable on it.

Audience: With the studios all looking for fantasy, they've made Lord of the Rings and Narnia, I'm surprised you haven't said anything about Shannara.

TB: Well, it's good they're getting all these lesser works out of the way first. Then eventually they'll get around to those of us who are more talented, the living legends. You know, the best part of making movies with dead people is the negotiations are much easier.

Audience: I just really admire the way you melded the Earth and Shannara together, because I wasn't sure that they meld well, but you made it work.

TB: Thank you. I wasn't sure either, and in fact I'm still not entirely sure. It was a fairly big gamble, but I just decided I had to take a shot at it.

Lee Whiteside: At what point did you decide that Shannara was the future of Earth after the Apocalypse?

TB: I really only made that decision recently. Obviously it's something I've been asked over the years and I've kind of put that question off by saying “what do you think?” It's my favorite response for questions I have no answer for. And I didn't think about it too much because I didn't think it was important, I thought it was one of those things that best happens in the mind of the reader. But even when I wrote The Word and the Void series, I had not at that point decided that that was a lead-in to that. The only thing I really knew when I finished that series was that when I went back into it, it would be through the dreams of the Knights of the Words and that it would be the future and it would be dark and Road Warrior-ish and so forth. It wasn't until about 24 months ago when I started working on what I thought would be the next installment that it struck me it was an opportunity if I wanted to take advantage of it. A kind of scary opportunity but I just thought “you know, I really kind of think this is maybe where it's all been pointing at, and I'm going to talk to my editor about it.” She got all excited about it and I said “well, I guess I'll give it a shot.”

Audience: What did you read in junior high and high school?

TB: Well, there were these magazines... No, I read science fiction. I grew up in the '50's and all boys read science fiction. There was no fantasy at that point that anybody was paying much attention to once you got past Oz and maybe Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. But we all read Heinlein and Asimov and all the masters from the early days and we were all excited about it. You know, I ran with a bunch of those kids who built rockets and bombs and we blew up a lot of stuff so that was my initial passion and then after that I graduated to other kinds of stories, European adventure stories and so on. I think, like most of us - and I think this holds true for Mike too - that you start and at different stages of your life you're reading different things and you kind of graduate from one set of things to the next and each of them makes an impression on you. You learn something from each set of types of books you read and that carries forward into what you do with your writing.

Audience: Are there any current authors that you look forward to reading?

TB: Well, yeah there are lots of them. I don't just read in my field either; I should hasten to say that. I think most writers don't tend to just read if we're writing fantasy or science fiction or something like that. We don't just read that, we read lots of other things too. So I have a number of authors whose work I like a great deal and I'm always looking for new books by new authors. I'm reading one right now as a matter of fact that's kind of interesting called The Lies of Locke Lamora that is by a writer out of Canada named Scott Lynch, who, unfortunately, publishes for a rival, but never mind that. It’s still a great story.

Audience: What would you say your percentage is of non-fiction to fiction?

TB: I would say it's probably 60/40. It's close though. I read a lot of non-fiction. I read a lot of military history, a lot of ancient civilizations, a lot of exploration stuff, anything about Africa. I'm stimulated if I read an author I admire, whose language I admire, or imagery I admire or the way they put a story together. It kind of empowers me to try harder and do better. I use that as a kind of fuel...

Audience: Are you going to write any more books?

TB: Yes, I am. I have a set of books planned for the conclusion after the conclusion of the High Druid series, but I'm not sure when I'm going to start on those. I actually do not know what I'm going to do after I finish the three books in this current series. I have to do those first, and then I'll decide.

Audience: How involved are you in the publishing process?

TB: I'm fairly involved these days. I've been with the same publisher since the start of my career. This has the benefit of having outlived everybody I started with, or at least outlasted them. They've all moved on to other things. In fact, there's no one there who knows or has read all the books because there's been such a turnover so they have to rely on me. And you know, that's sad, because my memory's shot all to pieces. I have control over my cover art. I work with an artist and my editor on what the covers will be for my books. I approve what happens with their marketing, all that sort of thing. I plan my tours so I have a fair amount of control. I don't determine size of print runs or packaging or anything like that because that's not really in my purview. That's up to them to make those kinds of determinations. I probably have as much to say about what goes on as anybody in the field these days. Live long enough you get something for it.

Audience: How much time did you spend working out the details of the map in the first Shannara book before you started to write?

TB: A fair amount, I guess I would say. You'll notice that a fair number of things crop up that are new, from book to book, I mean nobody thinks that far ahead. I mean, as you get to book 12 or so you're coming in with new stuff and whatever. I'm not very good with maps and my spatial sense is terrible so I've had a lot of help from my editors that I've had over the years-that I've just marched my guy 100 miles and that's pretty tricky in just 24 hours.

Audience: Now that you've decided to blend the Word and the Void series with the Shannara series, are we going to see any books that tie them together more closely?

TB: The set of books required to cover this time, which in Shannara is about 1000 years, I'm figuring at least 6 to 9 books. I'm not going to do them all at once, I'll get brain cramp, but I figure I'll do the first three and then take a break to do something else and then get back into it, You know 300-500 years in the future we'll have new characters, a new setting and so forth. It's a long-term project. No question about it I'm going to have to bear down.

Audience: Are you taking good care of yourself?

TB: I don't have to-I have a wife. She looks after me.

Audience: Now that you're blending the series, do you ever think of something and then think, you know…

TB: I think you do-like most writers this is not something you turn on and off with a switch, it's not like you leave your work at the office and go home or anything like that. I'm always getting new ideas and I make notes on it and I can see what it means doing this 8, 9 books. I mean that's a year for each one, unless I find a way to speed the process up or clone myself. How about Terry Brook's Presents…hey, it worked for Clancy, it worked for Patterson - I could do that. The good news is that, if something should happen to me -God forbid - luckily, Judine has a trunk of unopened manuscripts at home that she will bring out and you can bet that those manuscripts will be gold by the time she has to bring them out.

Audience: How close is the finished book to the outline?

TB: More so in the past, when I was a more dogmatic, linear fellow. These days I tend to be less satisfied with that, so I don't know. I tend to throw the outline out about 3/4 of the way through these days and start over. There's a lot more changes in the storytelling part than there used to be.

Response to a comment by Stackpole:

TB: We both have been writing 30 years you won't last in this business 60 years if you're bored. You won't last for 60 years if you don't have something to fuel you beside the promise of a paycheck. So what you really need is a connection with the material and the excitement of knowing that there's an undiscovered path that you're going to go down when you write the book. And that's what really drives you as a writer, is that you know there's going to be discoveries and some interesting things happen.

I tell everybody that if there is a scene in the book that you are writing that you are afraid to write because it's too hard, than you must write it. That means it probably belongs in the book you know, and it probably means that you need to challenge yourself to do that kind of scene because your instincts are probably telling you something.

Audience: How much of your law training helped you with your writing?

TB: I tell you, the thing that helps you about being a lawyer is that it's all about organization and to some extent about dramatics. I was a trial lawyer, so there was a lot of that. A lot of that sort of feeds into the storytelling aspect of writing. Obviously the language is so archaic and what you do is not in presenting cases in so in isn't of any use at all. But certainly, the organization is extremely important. You know, you have to meet deadlines and get things done. That's all part and parcel of what being a lawyer means and it certainly is about being a writer. Unless you're a literary writer… then never mind.

Audience: What made you go from being a trial lawyer to writing fantasy?

TB: I tell you what baby, it's a short putt! I was a writer first, I've been a writer since I was 10 years old… well, I've been writing stories since I was 10 years old. I always wanted to be a writer. I was one of those kids who knew what they wanted to do. I just didn't know how to get there. So in order not to starve to death in typical writerly fashion and turn to drink I went to law school and became a lawyer and that's how I supported myself while I was finding a way to break into the business.

Audience: How do you deal with continuity?

TB: Well, that's the beauty of an outline, of course. That you can look at where you were going and what you had intended and see how it impacts the story if you're going to make this change how big of an impact is that going to be – how much are you going to have to work at doing your rewrites? Occasionally, it means some substantial rewriting, but its all part of the deal you know going in. What I don't want to do, is what some of my fellow writers I know do, which is to write 100 pages, decide they don't want it and throw it away. I go into cold sweats when I hear about that and I think "for crying out loud, why didn't you think about that a little more?”

Audience: Have you found in the series that there are these little serendipitous things that you just tossed in there and then they become of great importance later?

TB: Oh, yeah I'm always looking for connections. And really, I think that anytime I finish a book it's going to tell me what the next book needs to be. And by the same token, the writing of it gives you clues to what it's about and what its potential is that you don't know until you do the writing.

Audience: Do you have any characters that are your favorites or that are close to your heart that you've written about?

TB: They're all so marvelous. Gosh, you know - I don't know that I could pick any particular character or set of characters. I mean, they all mean something to me or they wouldn't be in the book. I'm about as much attached to the evildoers. I mean, all characters are all reflections on who we are in a weird sort of way. I don't think you can completely disassociate yourself, or you couldn't write about them at all. So that's hard to say. They all mean something to me in different ways. I kind of like the loners and the outcasts as much as I do anybody. Kind of a vague answer…

Audience: Is it tough to kill characters?

TB: Nope. I think that you have to be willing to kill off anybody; at least, I know I am. There just has to be a reason for it. You don't just wake up and decide “well it's time to kill that guy off.” I think you have to have a reason for it, it has to advance your story, there has to be a purpose behind it or it gets out of control. I remember quite well, when Lester Del Rey was my editor on the first book - I killed off a lot of people he brought back to life. He said "What are you doing? You can't just kill off all these people, you're going to lose every reader that ever cared. You've killed off everybody that matters." And I said, "yes, but it’s so dramatic!” "Get over yourself" was Lester’s reply.