[Dag]

This was an amazing Christmas present - thank you so much for the most interesting answers and for sharing your thoughts. Merry Christmas and all the best in the New Year!

[Cougar]

Definitely the best contribution from SE in a long time, I'm glad he could spare us the time to make sense of our ramblings.

Defending LoT? I guess he never read the 'It Was Pants' thread then.

[Aptorian]

Anybody got a link to this controversial "Dublin" thread? Sounds interesting.

So, still no word on Karsa's penis size.

[Macros]

its in TTH forum thread started by LoT, having not read ulysses I have no idea what the majourity of its about

[Cougar]

It actually turned into a discussion on historical accuracy by the end, but was closed after some rather unpleasant posts, some of the content has been delted now. I find it puzzling that SE believes the reason people were antagonised by LoT was because they disliked the comparison between the books. It's clearly a personal argument caused by some fairly inflamatory posting.

SE seems to believe that people took offence at LoT enjoying his work, I believe that reading is incorrect, the reaction was actually against a very poor response from the OPer, although I suppose you'd have to ask Wry et al about that. You also have to conider the posting history, not merely the thread. I for one was antagonised by his berating of Wry for questioning him on his interpretation of history, and believe me I was seriously antagonised.

To take SE's own logic, if he wishes to weigh ino the forum business, which I think we'd all welcome, then we have the right to respond as we would to any poster.

Regardless of that the way he viewed it and the response does show us an awful lot of interesting stuff. It would be great to hear more about what he thinks of forum stuff.

[Aptorian]

Cougar, on 21 December 2009 - 09:59 PM, said:

Regardless of that the way he viewed it and the response does show us an awful lot of interesting stuff. It would be great to hear more about what he thinks of forum stuff.

My first impression, with out having read the thread that was the subject of his displeasure, was that Erikson isn't exposed as often to the often trollish and arrogant way of discussing things on the internet. People can be so mean.

[Dutch]

Happy Holidays Steve.

Thanks for taking the time to answer questions and for the excerpt of the Crippled God.

About Toll the Hounds, I will never say it was a bad book, I quite liked it. Only thing that kinda bugged me at first was the "Kruppe narration" at some points in the book wich made put the book down from time to time when I was reading during breaks at work, but a certain lady at that time might have contributed to it too back then. In the end I always picked the book up and went on at the same day when I was home again.

I'm in my first re-read of the series now about a third of the Bonehunters and since I've read on the forum that Toll the Honds get even better on rereads I'm looking forward to it.

And for the rest of the people on this forum I also wish you Happy Holidays.

[Traveller]

What a great contribution - big thanks to Steve for taking the time to reply, and for the picture!

I think for some members it becomes easy to forget that he does visit the site, and read the threads, and that what we discuss here will influence how he views his readers. It really must be an experience for him to see how so many people interpret his work; good to see the praise, and frustrating when something he has worked hard to convey has been missed, or gets mis-interpreted. I just hope he doesn't get the wrong impression of the majority of his readers from a small but sometimes more vocal sample. The majority of the people here are here because they love his books, and appreciate their complexity and audacity, so we do tend to have more threads questioning, discussing and criticising the books than we do about how much we like them, as for us that point is obvious - we are here, after all.

I guess SE's comments gave me the impression that he thinks that only a small percentage of his readers appreciate what he's trying to do with his writing. I hope he really knows just how many people do appreciate his work, and has noticed how much it is re-read, and how all the layers of meaning woven through the series are noticed - if I ever meet him, or have a chance to contact him, all I'll have to say is Thank you for such a fantastic piece of work.

Also, it was nice to see I was right about Trull and the owl!

[Skywalker]

Not to go all teeny fangirl here, but EEEEEEEEEEEEK - SE answered my question!! ETA: Thank you sir; a Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you!

(and now I curse my stars I hadn't thought up more... and remember I'm a guy, not an emo Twilight-head gurl)

Ahem.

Also, awesome teaser scene is awesome. And SE's answers are majorly honest... who wouldn't want to be Iskaral Pust with the High Priestess?

This post has been edited by Skywalker: 22 December 2009 - 02:32 AM

[MTS]

I'd much prefer to be a male Tiste Andii. Those Tiste Andii priestesses sure know how to party.

Great contribution by SE, best season's greeting yet. Particularly loved the teaser scene. Merry Christmas Steve, and thanks again!

[Ain't_It_Just_]

Wowza! I can't thank you enough for the gift! Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you, SE!

I'm surprised he said TtH was his favourite-I would have thought MT, or MoI...

And the TCG excerpt...my God. The awesomeness just oozed out of it.

[dktorode]

Great stuff...
Awesome Q&A and great to see some real writer/reader interaction on a more personal level.

Cant wait for the last installment.

Merry Xmas Steve.
Thanks for everything

[Ulrik]

Nice and rare (in Realm of Writers) stuff from SE (despite he didnt answered my question, oh, poor Ulrik...erm, back to topic). I like his attitude and fact that he isnt afraid of two things
1) to admit that reads this forum - in many cases it would change whole site into explosion of praise and rectal alpinism)
2) spank readers who behave way he dislikes (though I think that he misread some emotions in the thread and exchanged mere internet trolling and personal attacking for something sophisticated... but I dunno... Didnt read Ulysses, so I ignored flame afterwards...)

One thing is clearly great - not everyone can gain so much feedback from his favourite author and vice versa (OK, poor GRRM probably already regrets it already... poor guy, I really dislike some sort of people encouraged by internet...)

And the christmas gift is awesome...

And hey, I liked that whiny bitch Udinaas! Ill be probably same after his ordeal.

[Kanubis]

Heh, Udinaas sometimes got to me but I had to respect someone who

Spoiler

would constantly wind up two powerful companions that could slay him in a heartbeat.

I'm glad he mentioned the 'power' passage from Bugg in DoD - outside of the heavily emotive scenes, it might just be my favourite.

I wish I'd been here to get a question in; I've often wondered how he regards threads such as "who is the best sword fighter, rank the assassins" etc. Simply because I have my doubts that he would consider things in such simplistic terms as a straight hierarchy of ability.

This post has been edited by Kanubis: 22 December 2009 - 11:46 AM

[Wry]

Wow, nice christmas present for us, think theres something there for everyone.

I knew after reading DoD that SE is more involved in here than we suspect, there we way too many in-jokes to be otherwise.


I do feel it was a bit of a slap to the people involved in the dublin thread though, for the record i've no problem with people liking TtH...

[Abalieno]

Big thank you to Steven. I am one more reader who's with you loving the experience, especially the way you write and take the risks experimenting. Many writers only stay where they are most comfortable, it takes huge courage to go further.

I only wish I discovered the books sooner instead of being just 200 pages into House of Chains (but got me all three novellas and they are the bestest written thing), and now have to dedicate myself fully to Infinite Jest (another book that takes more than dedication). But as soon the new Crack'd Pot novella lands here it takes priority.

[blackzoid]

Thanks for the great answers SE and the lovely present.

Unfortunatedly I also believe that he may have mis-read the dublin thread in question. It wasn't a simple case of people ganging up on one person because he/she compared TTH to Joyce's Dublin.
The problems arose when facts were in dispute over the real dublin of that time-period, not the imagined one of Joyce.

[champ]

Truely thank you, great that he took the time out to do the Q&A but how dare he! how can he not be spending every single minute of every day finishing the final book lol! because after that excellent extract, the suspense is surely going to kill me... Cots seems about ready to kick some ass no messing around! I cant wait!

Will be gutted though if Cots ends up dead as discussed in future novels thread as hes got to be one of my favourite characters!

Spoiler

where he sits down and puts his hands to his head after all the death at the first throne, one of the stand out scences for me

[rhulad]

Thanks a bunch for taking the time to reply, Merry Christmas and have a great New Year!

[Abalieno]

Unrelated, but not completely, Cuse and Lindelof are dealing with a similar problem: end an ambitious project with A LOT still to explain and match expectations that are out the roof.

Their answer is really close to what Erikson was saying about his last book.

Quote

TVGuide.com: With the final season of Lost approaching, what are you feeling?

Carlton Cuse: I think we're doing something new in this final season narratively, so we have that combination of fear and giddiness. The fear is, oh, what if people don't like it, what if the audience doesn't like what we're doing? The giddiness is, like, we always feel like we have to be bold with our show and if it works, and if people like it as much as we do, we feel like the final season will be a success. When there's a draw though, we stand by our decisions. We're not playing it safe in the final season.

TVGuide.com: What do you say to fans with such high expectations for your last season?

Cuse: I think it's like anything in life. I think that you have to have realistic expectations. We're going to do our best version of the show, but there's still going to be some mystery and magic and intentionally ambiguous things that emerge at the end of the show. We're going to answer questions, but at the same time, we're going to tell the story the way we want to tell it. We feel like, all we can do is make the version of the show that makes Damon and I happy. If we do that, hopefully enough people will like it.

It's an hybrid interesting read.

This post has been edited by Abalieno: 23 December 2009 - 07:48 PM