[Ribald]

Hi all, SE agreed to do an interview with me on my blog, so here is the first part of it. The rest will be posted as soon as it is cleaned up.

[worry]

Man you're killin it lately.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Will you take reader-suggested questions for the next one?

EDIT: Really love the length of Steven's answers!

I feel like this bit

Spoiler

Anyway, one could easily write an essay on the parallel structure between Gardens and Dune; it’s all there, right down to epitaphs and quotes opening chapters.

was a bit of a wink wink nudge nudge.

EDIT2: I thought this was an interesting line.

Spoiler

I wonder if this isn’t how all idealistic visions sicken and die, chipped away at by people (producers) lacking faith in the original vision, lacking faith in the promise of humanity itself.

EDIT3: One thing I'd suggest would be to work on the typography a bit to improve readability. While you could definitely benefit from the use of a typeface other than those in your 'Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif' stack, I know that custom web fonts are not to everyone's tastes (or you could use a different web-safe typeface, like Georgia). Despite that, there are some small changes you could make to the current typeface — bump up the font size to 17 or 18 px, slightly increase the contrast by making the article text a value similar to #CBCFD1, and then increase the leading to 26 or 27 px.

Don't take the above as gospel; just a jumping off point. Play with it.

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 19 April 2016 - 01:24 AM

[Puck]

Whoo, that was a good read, thanks!

On an unrelated note, I agree with Whisperz re the typography, it's a bit of a strain on the eyes to read long texts on your site.

Edit: Really, the entire trilogy as a epic poem? I think my eyes fell out of my head upon reading that. I mean, what it led to is awesome, but just the idea is mindboggling.

This post has been edited by Puck: 18 April 2016 - 09:28 PM

[Andorion]

I love reading SE's interviews. He is so direct and frank! He really does not hedge much. What he said about the tone of the Kharkanas trilogy is very interesting. I wonder what we will be describing it as after Walk in Shadow.

Also comedic Thel Akai!

Posted to r/Malazan

[Coltaine -]

Great interview. And really interesting.

[Ribald]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 18 April 2016 - 08:25 PM, said:

EDIT3: One thing I'd suggest would be to work on the typography a bit to improve readability. While you could definitely benefit from the use of a typeface other than those in your 'Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif' stack, I know that custom web fonts are not to everyone's tastes (or you could use a different web-safe typeface, like Georgia). Despite that, there are some small changes you could make to the current typeface — bump up the font size to 17 or 18 px, slightly increase the contrast by making the article text a value similar to #CBCFD1, and then increase the leading to 26 or 27 px.

Don't take the above as gospel; just a jumping off point. Play with it.

Thanks for the feedback. Some of my options re: fonts are a bit limited because of the 'theme' from wordpress that I am using, but I have tried to tweak it a little. Let me know if that is an improvement.

[Traveller]

Kind of surprised he says that he hasn't read AsoIaF. Whatever anyone thinks of it, it seems odd to completely bypass such a popular series in the genre, and to have no opinion about it.

Great interview, thanks for sharing.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 19 April 2016 - 08:54 AM

[Gorefest]

Forge of Kharkanas?
Great stuff again, can't wait for part two. Very much agree with leaving some mystery in place, too often authors try too hard to prove they've thought everything through by killing all the mystique.

[Siergiej]

Quote

Kind of surprised he says that he hasn't read AsoIaF. Whatever anyone thinks of it, it seems odd to completely bypass such a popular series in the genre, and to have no opinion about it.

I think he mentioned somewhere that he read the first novel, but didn't like it all that much.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Traveller, on 19 April 2016 - 08:03 AM, said:

Kind of surprised he says that he hasn't read AsoIaF. Whatever anyone thinks of it, it seems odd to completely bypass such a popular series in the genre, and to have no opinion about it.

He's writing very different stuff though - he's also said he's not a reader of Tolkien in the past, so I don't think it has to be a necessity to read something just because it's big in your corner of the bookshop.

Thanks for sharing Ribald, great interview!

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

It looks much better, except I'd bump up the line-height a bit.

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 19 April 2016 - 12:17 PM

[Ribald]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 19 April 2016 - 12:16 PM, said:

It looks much better, except I'd bump up the line-height a bit.

To be honest, I have no idea how to alter the line height. So any tips or tricks on this would be great.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Ribald, on 19 April 2016 - 12:27 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 19 April 2016 - 12:16 PM, said:

It looks much better, except I'd bump up the line-height a bit.

To be honest, I have no idea how to alter the line height. So any tips or tricks on this would be great.

Your 'style.css' file contains the line:

p { margin:0 0 1em 0; padding:0; line-height:160%; }

You can change the line-height to a percentage or a pixel value (or em too). I'd suggest 26 or 27px.

One other small thing is that the space between paragraphs should be more consistent (see: https://vgy.me/VFhJVN.png), and possibly a bit smaller. For instance, in this section https://vgy.me/ctCfCJ.png you can see that there is a lot of space between the end of SE's answer and your next question (the spacing between paragraphs inside SE's answer is good). There are two <p> tags between the end of SE's answer and your next question, which adds a lot of space. I would do something like this instead: https://vgy.me/HR2HXw.png (remove one of the <p> tags between and then change the other one to a <br> [which is a line break])

Now, as to how actually to do this in your editor without manually editing the HTML, what characters are you inputting between these paragraphs? Two hits of the Enter key?

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 19 April 2016 - 01:24 PM

[Ribald]

I thought I was consistently doing one 'enter' strike between my question and SE's answer. And then Two strikes between his answer and the next question so that there was a clear gap between questions.

The reason for this was, ironically enough, to make it easier to read the separate questions.

I freely admit that my knowledge of web design is noobish at best. I am much more comfortable as an editor and an analyst.

And thanks again for taking the time to help me out.

This post has been edited by Ribald: 19 April 2016 - 02:19 PM

[Salt-Man Z]

Hm, I actually find the new look harder to read, but I can just adjust my browser instead of telling a stranger how to design his website.

[Ribald]

Salt-Man Z, on 19 April 2016 - 03:32 PM, said:

Hm, I actually find the new look harder to read, but I can just adjust my browser instead of telling a stranger how to design his website.

Well, bugger. Now I am in a quandary about what to do.

[petete]

Fantastic interview, I always enjoy reading Erikson or Esslemon's Q&A.

Shame about the rpg rulebook, that's not an immediate corncern. I'd prefer a crpg tho: I think that MBOTF is way more popular than The Witcher was before its first game, is it really such a big undertaking for a videogame company?

[Lycaenion]

Traveller, on 19 April 2016 - 08:03 AM, said:

Kind of surprised he says that he hasn't read AsoIaF. Whatever anyone thinks of it, it seems odd to completely bypass such a popular series in the genre, and to have no opinion about it.

Meh, I haven't read the books, and I'm not planning to. I started watching the show last year though, and am all caught up, but even though I like the show just fine, I've never felt the urge to start reading the books. Haven't read other popular series like HP or WOT either. Just not my kind of Fantasy. Perhaps GOT's not SE's as well.

[Siergiej]

Quote

Shame about the rpg rulebook, that's not an immediate corncern. I'd prefer a crpg tho: I think that MBOTF is way more popular than The Witcher was before its first game, is it really such a big undertaking for a videogame company?

The Witcher was developed and published by a Polish company. And Sapkowski is big in Poland: way, waaaaaay bigger than Malazan. So I guess we need to wait for a Canadian gamedev company to pick up MBotF and Ubisoft Montreal is probably busy fixing bugs in their current titles