"During the many centuries that magic, here on this planet, was presumed to have worked, there were at least as many theories as to how magic worked as there were cultures and religions."

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More quotes from: Lynn Abbey

• "A dozen years is a long time in the world of publishing. The market is ..."
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• "Editors of invitation-only anthologies tend to be a secretive lot. We're looking for very specific ..."
• "Editors of open anthologies actively seek submissions from all comers, established and unknown. They are ..."
• "Every so often I'd be able to write a scene with greater flourish because I'd ..."
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• "For a good fiction writer-and that includes writers of SF and Fantasy-there is simply no ..."
• "For me, the rise and fall of the 1980s incarnation of TW was deeply personal ..."
• "For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel. "
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• "Gamers, especially the game masters, who are the primary audience for any game box, want ..."
• "Getting the new anthologies up and running has had its share of unexpected pitfalls. I ..."
• "I always make sure I have an escape clause that allows me to pull my ..."
• "I can usually tell the difference between a short story idea and a novel-length one ..."
• "I construct timelines for each story and a master timeline for sequencing the stories in ..."
• "I do have a small collection of traditional SF ideas which I've never been able ..."
• "I do keep a small file of samples from not-yet-invited authors. The cold, cruel fact ..."
• "I don't have any signed contracts right now, but my agent's out there shaking the ..."
• "I don't so much think of myself a fantasy writer as a writer of histories ..."
• "I don't strive for perfect continuity, which is good, because I'd never achieve it. "
• "I guess it's good to be known for something. "
• "I have a problematic relationship with magic: when push comes to shove, I don't believe ..."
• "I have some history books that I come back to when I'm trying to debug ..."
• "I love writing Thieves' World, but I feel a responsibility, too, to the other authors. ..."
• "I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time ..."
• "I was one of those rare and fortunate writers who did not go through an ..."
• "I went to Oklahoma to recover from a shattering divorce and I couldn't have found ..."
• "I wish I knew how to imagine a short story, because I rather like the ..."
• "I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans. "
• "I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful ..."

• "I'm always trolling for trivia. "
• "I'm currently working on my third book about Emma Merrigan, curse hunter and university librarian. "
• "I'm dense when it comes to discouragement. "
• "I'm no athlete and my piano lessons were going nowhere; I got good marks in ..."
• "I'm not constrained by being a genre writer. Any story I can imagine, I can ..."
• "I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed ..."
• "I've always seen Thieves' World from two perspectives-as a business property and as a creative ..."
• "I've developed a reputation as someone who can turn a sow's ear into a silk ..."
• "I've done a lot of shared-worlds and work-for-hire. Ask me if I think it's always ..."
• "I've got two degrees in medieval history. "
• "I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels ..."
• "I've thought about writing in other genres, but my imagination just doesn't seem to lead ..."
• "Ideas are a writer's cheapest commodity. If I never had another idea, I still couldn't ..."
• "Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to ..."
• "If all my dreams come true, I'll have a chance to write a straight-up historical... ..."
• "If I aim for a short-story idea, I then get to spend the next portion ..."
• "If I want to write SF, I'll have to write it under another name. "
• "If you write, one of the questions you're always trying to answer is, Where do ..."
• "In a general sense, all my protagonists eventually find themselves in situations so totally beyond ..."
• "In my high-school sophomore English class, we were given that hoary old assignment: write a ..."
• "In the best of all possible worlds, Tor will publish one anthology per year and ..."
• "In the last few years I've become more reliant on the Internet for research. I'm ..."
• "In the process of defending the integrity of my story, I would clean up the ..."
• "It took me about 12 years to reach my million-word mark. The challenge now is ..."
• "It's been a long time since I've written old-fashioned sword and sorcery; I'm hoping it's ..."
• "It's been great to work cooperatively with a group of talented authors again, but the ..."
• "It's harder to get stand-alone material published, but it's worth the wait and effort, and ..."
• "It's only recently that the special effects industry has evolved enough to be able to ..."
• "It's possible to become so comfortable with one's style and structure that one ceases to ..."
• "Last year I went on a Venice jag and now I'm planning a fantasy that's ..."
• "Magic works differently for every author who's written for the series. "
• "Magical realism is based on magical magic, that is, the happening of things that cannot ..."
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• "Most readers seemed to like the never-ending conflict, but politics is not sword and sorcery, ..."
• "My magic is always empirical-it can be analyzed and replicated. "
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• "One of my great passions is the collection of historical trivia. "
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• "Persistence pays and so does a willingness to follow directions. "
• "Right now I think the most interesting SF and fantasy is being done in serial ..."
• "Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. ..."
• "Some of the best advice I can give an aspiring author is trivial. Most times ..."
• "Thanks to bigger and better computers and their indexing capacities, I hope to keep a ..."
• "That bedrock faith that I could write was what blinded me to attempts to discourage ..."
• "The actual process of selling my first novel was exciting at the time. I was ..."
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• "There is nothing that compares to an unexpected round of applause. "
• "There's a lot of hearsay and worse out on the Internet and, though I write ..."
• "Thieves' World is otherwise known as the project that ate my life in the '80s. "
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• "We're out to prove the naysayers wrong. Maybe a shared-world anthology can't hit the bestseller ..."
• "We've had a few inquiries from companies and individuals looking to develop an interactive, web-based ..."
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• "When done well, the shared universes are richer than their single-creator counterparts. "
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• "You usually don't get the copyright or reprint rights in a shared-world or work-for-hire situation, ..."