I still recommend reading travel guides as an insight to a traveller's perspective on fantasy worlds. Nearly all characters end up travelling at some point, and they have many of the same needs and concerns covered in travel guides.

The Black Magician Trilogy' was about a conflict between countries and was very limited and almost claustrophobic in its range of settings, while 'The Age of the Five' was about a conflict between continents.

The first rule of world-building is available physics, which basically means that if you want it to feel real, it has to follow the same rules as this world, from gravity to how human behaviour works. If you have a fantasy element that doesn't obey the laws of physics, make sure that it has a fantasy explanation.

I wound up studying art and design, got a job at Lonely Planet Publications as a designer, cartographer and illustrator.

I love HGTV. I love working on my house and have really been bit by the 'luxury remodeling' bug. 'Million Dollar Rooms,' 'Million Dollar Listing'... any show that can give me design inspiration, I soak it in and try my hand at it. Home Depot is my second home!

Just as I have broken the monopoly of film music as being synonymous with popular music in our country, I want to prove that cricket is not the only glamorous sport.

Will you tell me, 'Oh, painting is a special art, whereas anyone can write prose passably well'? Can he, indeed? ... Can you, sir? Nay, believe me, you are either an archangel or a very bourgeois gentleman indeed if you admit to having spoken English prose all your life without knowing it.

Being one of my sources is exhausting. It's not one interview and you're done. I keep going back until I feel like I understand everything.