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I grew up in South Tacoma, Washington, and the South Tacoma Public Library was
the place where I got my love of reading
and my dream of being an author.
And so I can still remember
each aisle and which ones have my favorite books...
and where the fairy tales were and where the adult books were...it was a very formative experience.
I'm an avid researcher.
My books are set in Napoleonic times,
and so I have to do a lot of research, and so I use both public and university libraries
as well as my own books.
It's been interesting to go abroad, I've become kind of a library junkie, so
so I've used the libraries
in London and Paris, places like that, and they're always beautiful.
The historic library in Prague, in the Czech Republic, it's more beautiful than most churches.
School libraries? Well, I think what the library does for authors is create an audience; they buy our books
they, of course, distribute
and introduce us to new people
and so in my case,
I think my books
are suitable for teens and so it's really important to get that kind of exposure and
and endoresment from school librarians. I think the whole book industry has been under siege
from all kinds of different pressures and of course, with the recent recession, libraries have
to cut back and it's so important,
because that's where our readers of the future come from. It's what seniors rely on, often, because they can't afford to buy books.
And so I just hope that those cuts are restored as soon as possible.
Well, I think our society works because of the free exchange of information...
that's made Western Civilization so successful.
So anytime you put a clamp on what
people can read and what they can hear,
it really gets in the way of intellectual discourse and intellectua freedom, and so
I'm very much of a Libertarian in terms of freedom of expression and oppostion to censorship.
I've got this series going
with an American hero
in a Napoleonic period, so I'm currently working on
book number seven.
Book number six is coming out in May
and so I'm probably engaged through
the beginning of Napoleon's career...on through his adventures all over the world,
so it's been a lot of fun to work on.