Shaun Farrell: Let’s start off by talking about your new book, Promise of the Witch King, which was published in October, and tells a story involving Entreri and Jarlaxle, two characters from your Forgotten Realms novels. Now, they may be villains, but they are dynamic characters much loved by your fans. How do you see these characters: villains or heroes?
R. A. Salvatore: Well, they haven’t done a lot of heroic things, but they have done some. And when I look at the term villain, you have to keep it in context. Zaknafein, Drizzt’s father in Menzoberranzan, took great pleasure in killing Drow Matrons. Now, that would be an evil act. But if you put it in context of the society he was in, then how bad was he really? So that analogy, I think, holds to Jarlaxle very well. Beyond that, Entreri, given his background, which I’m going more into in the next book, sees his world in the same manner. Parts of the black and white work in fantasy with monsters, but with protagonists there always have to be those shades of grey. So, do I see Entreri as a hero? No. Do I see him as having the potential to do heroic things? Absolutely.
SF: Those shades of grey make them characters that fans latch onto. Especially when in a lot of fantasy books, there aren’t shades of grey. Everything is black and white.
RAS: I don’t think that’s true in a lot of fantasy books. I think sometimes it’s more subtle, but most of the fantasy books I’ve read – I don’t know, maybe I’ve just read good ones! – but I find shades of grey in a lot of the characters. Not with the monsters. The monsters are often times supposed to be embodiments of evil. But with the characters, there are often those shades of grey, I hope. Otherwise, it’s not real.
SF: Well, what can you tell us about where the relationship between Entreri and Jarlaxle is going?
RAS: Well I can tell you that the reason I’m having so much fun with it, is that I’m 70% done with the next book, which will be the last one for awhile, and I still don’t know whether they will hug each other or kill each other. That’s what’s always so much fun for me. When people are reading Promise of the Witch King, they’ll probably come to believe that Entreri is being manipulated by Jarlaxle. I guess the big question is, does Entreri know it? If the answer to that is yes, then why does he let it happen? If you get through those two questions, the next will be: What is he going to do when he’s done playing this game? I’m not sure yet. A big part of the book was the speech Jarlaxle gave Entreri where he basically explains to Entreri that he was his muse. I think that caught Entreri off guard.
SF: Is this one of those books where the characters are really telling you what the story is versus you plotting it out and really knowing from one point to the next what’s happening?
RAS: Well, I have news for you: that’s been all of my books. That’s the way I write. The characters tell me their story and I just go with it. I have the character in my mind. The trick is to keep him internally consistent. If I’ve managed that, then following the character along on the adventure is easy.
SF: Not a big outline guy, huh?
RAS: I do an outline because the contract calls for an outline and it gives me an idea of where I want to be at any given time in the book regarding the overall story. But, not a big outline in terms of the actual events that will precipitate whatever changes I see coming in the characters, no. I outline more along of the line of: Section three, how is Entreri going to deal with Jarlaxle? Those are the questions I ask more than the actual events that come up around it. The events are the dressing. A lot of my books are character driven more than they are plot driven. Those are the types of books I like to read. Those are the types of books I prefer to write.
SF: Those are the types of books that seem to stand the test of time.
RAS: I don’t know. You could be right. If I can remember the main characters and get a smile on my face, then I remember the book. I suppose there’s some truth in that. It’s just instinctive with me. It’s nothing purposefully set up one way or the other. It’s just the way I tell a story.
SF: How emotionally invested do you become in these characters you write about?
RAS: Hugely. I remember when I was writing Halfling’s Gem I thought I had killed Captie-brie. I had to stop writing. I walked downstairs; my face was white as a sheet. My wife and a friend looked at me and said, “What’s the matter with you?” I said, “I just killed Cattie-Brie.” It hurt like heck. I am hugely invested in them as friends. I sound like a lunatic here, but I suppose I am! They become very real on the level of a character you’ve been playing on a computer game for five years, for example, and has become your alter-ego in that game and you become very enamored with that character. It’s hard to walk away from that. Or a character you play in Dungeons and Dragons for years and years. It would hurt if that character got killed. It’s the same thing when I’m writing the books. These are characters I’ve created. I’ve invested an enormous amount of myself in them. Yeah, I know they’re not real, but on a different level, in the imagination, they are real.
SF: They are also real in the sense that any character you create has come from you, so there is some part of you in that character.
RAS: That’s scary when you’re talking about people like Entreri, but I have to agree with that!
SF: You recently signed a contract to write five more Forgotten Realms books. How long do you think you’ll continue to write Forgotten Realms novels?
RAS: As long as people want to keep reading them, I’ll keep writing them. I haven’t put a time limit on it. I’m not tired of writing the characters in any way, shape, or form. I still have fun playing in that world. It’s a fortunate coincidence (laughter) to me that I have a way of telling a story that people want to read, and they pay me to do it. I get to make a living doing something I love. I don’t take that for granted at all. And it’s not like I’m trapped in the Forgotten Realms. I could write any book I want and get it published at this point. Which is more than a lot of very talented unpublished writers can say. And there are an awful lot of very talented unpublished writers. So, Forgotten Realms for me is almost like home base. These guys I’ve created are like family, and even when I’m doing other things, once a year I go back and visit my family. I have no intention of stopping.
SF: So it’s still just as exciting as ever. That’s cool.
RAS: It really is, but on a different level. You know, when I first started it was like, “Oh, my God! I can’t believe this is happening.” And now it’s become old hat. I mean, I’ll get a phone call, “Hey, you just hit the New York Times.” Ok. A lot of that kind of surrounding exciting is gone. But, I still get letters from kids who say, “I didn’t read a book until I read one of yours.” And that excitement has not dimmed. When I was on this last book tour, I went to a school in Lexington, Kentucky, and I spoke to a bunch of kids who were incredibly excited about the books and were reading them in class and having a wonderful time with them. And I’ve received a bunch of feedback from some of the teachers in the school saying how these books are turning kids on to reading, and they feel like it’s making such a positive shift in the atmosphere of the school for some of these kids. So, that never grows old for me. For me, that’s heartwarming. It makes it all worth while.
And as far as the actual writing goes – no, I’m a writer. It’s what I do. I’ll be writing until I die, I’m sure. People always ask me, “I want to be a writer. What advice do you have?” My advice is always the same: if you can quit, quit. Because if you can quit, then you’re not a writer. If you can’t quit, then you’re a writer. I can’t quit.
SF: Forgotten Realms is certainly a very large series containing many volumes. What do you do to try to help introduce new readers who might be picking up that book as their first one?
RAS: I try to write books on different levels. At the very basic level of a book my primary goal is for someone to pick up the book and have an entertaining adventure with some characters they can care about. I think you can pick up any one of my Forgotten Realms novels, 23 of them now, and read it without having read any of the ones preceding it or any of the ones succeeding it. I think I’ve been doing that from the very beginning. If you look at a model for what I’m doing it would be more along the lines of Fritz Leiber and the Fafhrd Mouser books, or James Bond, or Sherlock Holmes, or something like that. Some of the other models we see in the fantasy genre – like what Robert Jordan’s doing and George Martin’s doing and Terry Goodkind’s doing – you couldn’t pick up the eleventh book of the Wheel of Time and read it. You really have to build to that point. That’s not true for the Drizzt novels, or any of my Forgotten Realms novels. No matter which one you pick up, hopefully you’re going to go on an adventure with some characters you find likeable and enjoy it. I picked up a whole bunch of readers with A Thousand Orcs, and a whole bunch more with The Lone Drow, and a whole bunch more with The Two Swords.
When you write fantasy, with every book that comes out you know you’ve lost readers. Many times you’ve lost readers because they left the military, or they’ve gone away to college and they don’t have time to read, or they’re out of college and they’re getting married. You lose readers. That’s just the way it is. With every book you’re hoping to pick up readers, and I’m not going to rehash the entire Drizzit story at the beginning of every book. It would take a book to do that. You can pick up Promise of the Witch King and not know who Entreri and Jarlaxle are, and hopefully by the end of the book you’ll have a better idea of who they are, and hopefully you’ll really want to find out where they came from
SF: You mentioned earlier that you just finished a book tour. How are people responding to Promise of the Witch King?
RAS: I haven’t heard much negative at all, but I wouldn’t on a book tour. That’s not where you hear it. Even more than that, I’ve noticed on my message boards and some other places that some of the responses have been better than I expected, quite honestly. I tried something a little different with this book. I made a very small scale of events around two characters. I put them in a very tight place and kept the pressure on them from all sides rather than this huge, interweaving political drama going on all around them. I did that on purpose. I wanted to see if I could do it in the Realms, and I’m not planning on doing it very often. But every now and then it’s fun to be able to do. I like that contained adventure feel of it. But I wasn’t sure how it would play out. I wasn’t sure if people would just see that and miss the other things that were going on that would develop the characters and give hints as to where they’re going to be in the next book. So far I haven’t had that problem at all. A majority of the feedback has been very positive. But that’s what you expect because you don’t write your books for the people who don’t read your books, you write them for the people who do!
It still has all the classic fantasy elements anyway. It’s high adventure, incredibly fast paced, and it’s got two characters that have been playing off each other for several years now. I’m very comfortable writing with Entreri and Jarlaxle and those two getting on each other’s nerves.
SF: Do you enjoy being on the road?
RAS: Yes and no. In the age of the internet, a lot of the feedback an author can get is devastating. That’s the nature of the beast. Authors are much more remote from publishing houses than they used to be. You don’t have the support structure in place for an author that you used to have with a publisher. Editors are much busier today. Travel budgets are cut way down. You don’t see your editors. You’re a very isolated person when you’re an author. You are sitting at home with your family around you. Now that’s fine as long as you keep perspective on things and keep Bob Salvatore and R. A. Salvatore as two separate people. But when you enter the realm of R. A. Salvatore you have to be doing so with some feeling of what’s going on out there, and you can’t get that other than the very stilted way of through the internet. So getting out in front of readers, going to bookstores and meeting the people who read your books, is a critical ingredient in the emotional health of any author.
SF: You need that interaction.
RAS: You need that interaction, you need that feedback, you need to put faces to the letters. And that’s what going out on the road does. From that perspective, I have to get our there every year, and I’m glad that I get the opportunity to get out there every year. On the other hand, flying everyday kills me. I’ve been home for more than a week and I am still exhausted. You have to do it, and you don’t just have to do it because the publishers tell you. As an author, you need to meet the people who are reading your books.
SF: Bob, let’s talk the fantasy genre as a whole for a minute. What do you say to critics who dismiss the value of fantasy?
RAS: The same thing I would say to critics who dismiss anything out of hand. If that’s the way you feel, great for you. This has been going on since before I came into the fantasy genre in 1988, and it hasn’t really changed all that much. There’s this huge fight going on about fantasy has to be literature with a big “L.” You know, it’s entertainment with a big “E,” and if that’s all you think it is, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with simple escapism. It can be valuable just for that. Now, I happen to think that people can get more out of it then that. Giving someone something they like is the first ingredient in the participation of that reader to go deeper and ask deeper and more meaningful questions about their own life. And you can draw many metaphors and analogies in a fantasy world that are relevant to a soldier sitting in Baghdad, or a teenager who feels like an outcast in high school.
I guess the bigger question is what do I think of critics? Not much. What do you think of critics?
SF: (Laughter) Well, it’s always easier to criticize than it is to create.
RAS: Ask yourself what’s the purpose of it all? I’ve written forty something novels. I’ve sold more than 10,000,000 books. I’ve received, literally, hundreds and hundreds of letters and emails from people who have said that they never read a book until they picked up one of mine, or parents who said, “I couldn’t get my son or my daughter to read until I gave them one of your books.” I’ve gotten emails from people who have been in serious car accidents and were now facing physical disabilities that they thought would overwhelm them, but because they read my books and saw my heroes, they now feel like they could overcome it. And then I’ve gotten follow up letters from them six months later when they’re in an entirely better place. I’ve met people who have told me heartwarming stories about how they were in a bad place in their life, and they met Drizzt, and he helped them get through it. Now, I’m sure many authors, most authors, I would hope, get this kind of feedback once in awhile. But my point is, if you think I’m going to apologize for what I’m doing, you’re out of your mind.
SF: That’s really what’s it’s all about, to. That’s what you were talking about going on book tour for, is that incredible connection with your audience.
RAS: That’s it exactly. Everybody’s here for a short amount of time. To my way of thinking, if you leave it a little better than you found it, you’ve been a good person.
SF: When I heard you speak at Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego, you talked about how difficult it is for young writers to get their work out there. Could you share what you said then with our readers?
RAS: Oh, yeah, absolutely. The publishing industry is continuing to use a model that was based on the old style of publishing where you had to publish a couple hundred thousand books to get the price per unit down to make a profit. And even though all of that is changed, for the model that is being used, the author is still making a pittance. A publisher can publish one book and sell 100,000 copies and make a certain profit. They publish ten books and sell 10,000 each and make a very similar profit. Or they can publish 100 books, and sell 1,000 each. But for the writer, you’re being paid per unit. If you sell 1,000 books, you’re not going to eat. So, because the formula hasn’t changed to reflect the changes in publishing, it’s very difficult for people to make a living in this business.
SF: So writers end up stretching themselves too thin because they’re trying to put a book out every three months.
RAS: Absolutely. It becomes a matter of how do you pay your health insurance and feed your family. From a practical point, very few people writing books are going to make a living at it. Also, you have to understand that because everybody has a word processor now with spell check and grammar check, everybody thinks they can write a book. So the sheer weight of manuscripts rolling into the publishers is overwhelming. It’s a very difficult business to break into, and an awful lot of very talented people are not going to get published.
SF: Can you give us names of writers who you think deserve more attention than they’ve been getting?
RAS: That’s a hard question because you would like to hope that the business part of it, as far as attention, would self-correction, but there are a few authors that I’m surprised aren’t doing bigger numbers than they’re doing. Greg Keyes would be one of them. David Gemmell in the U.S. He’s doing very well in England. In the U.S. his numbers really haven’t been what I think they should be.
SF: It seems that many of the fantasy books being published are installments in a series or part of a trilogy. Do you think this trend helps or hinders new writers?
RAS: Uh, a little bit of both. I think if you have an interest in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or one of the other licenses that are putting out quite a few books, it’s probably an easier road than trying to break out with your own intellectual property. I’m not going to knock shared world fiction, because that’s where I got my start. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I hope anyone who gets an opportunity like that will put as much effort into writing that type of a book as they would into writing a book of their own making. On the other hand, there’s only so much room out there. The licensed books really do fill the shelves. It’s harder for a new voice to be heard. The editors are busy with licensing. You’ve got an editor that has twenty license books to put out. He’s going to have less time to read original work. Like everything else going on in publishing today, it’s a mixed blessing.
SF: I heard you say in past interviews that school beat the love of reading out of you.
RAS: Absolutely.
SF: Are you concerned with our education system and how it effects the likelihood of children falling in love with reading and therefore becoming adults who love reading?
RAS: I’m concerned that there are a lot of conflicting pressures put on kids these days that take up a lot of their time. And in that type of environment it’s very hard for an English teacher to invoke a love of reading, to get that kid to understand the value of spending hours and hours with a book when that kid has so many ways to spend his or her hours.
SF: There’s a lot of competition.
RAS: I’m a true believer that if you give someone a book they want to read, they will teach themselves to read. Harry Potter has done more to promote reading than the entirety of English education classes in the high schools across the country. On the flip side of that, forcing kids to read books that are irrelevant to them, as I was forced to read, turns you off to reading in a way that’s hard to ever overcome.
SF: You serve on the board of your library. Ray Bradbury is always encouraging people to get into the library. Do you think the library is an endangered species? And, if so, what can we do to save it?
RAS: Well, libraries are actually going through this right now. In their meetings they talk about their changing role in the community. So libraries now also serve as places where people can loan videos, for example. They have Y-FI in them and computers that can be used. You look at circulation. You look at what people are actually doing when they come to the library. I was stunned when I joined the board to learn how many people show up at that library everyday. We’re not a large town, but we get a thousand people through the door everyday. A lot of that is to use the internet, and that’s going to happen even more. We’re building a new library that’s going to have Y-FI through it, so people will be coming in with their laptops. So, the traditional library as the storage house for books has certainly changed. That will be one function, and it’s up to the libraries to alter their mission accordingly. They are, though.
SF: Are you saying we’ll see Starbucks in the library soon?
RAS: I hope so. Don’t you?
SF: I think it would be great.
RAS: Wouldn’t it be great if the library became the free internet café for people? I don’t have a problem with that.
SF: While they’re there, maybe they’ll look at some books.
RAS: Yeah. One of the things our library is doing in the new library we’re building is putting in a 140 seat auditorium. The hope is that we’ll be able to do book tours. We’ll be able to go to the town and say, “Hey, we’ve got an author coming to town. We’ve got a reading at the library. Come on out!”
SF: You’ve made your mark writing fantasy, but is there any other genre you want to tackle?
RAS: Sure. There are other things I want to do. When I do them my name won’t be attached to the book. No one will know it’s me. There’s one book in particular I’ve been wanting to write for a number of years. I knowing I’m being cryptic.
SF: (Laughter) I was trying to decide if I should ask for more details.
RAS: Well you can ask . . . Of course there are things I want to do. I’m a writer. I want to put all my thoughts down, not just the ones that pertain to the fantasy genre. Now some of the things I want to say I can say in fantasy books, and other things I really can’t. Or they would be better served in another genre, and when I feel that way I’ll write it. But when I write it I wouldn’t have my name on it because having my name on it would bring expectations, good and bad, that would hurt an honest reading of the book. If I wrote a book about something in contemporary America, for example, the people who read my books for a Drizzit sword fighting scene would be upset that I don’t have sword fights in it. On the flip side, the people who dismiss my books as fantasy flop, or whatever, would never read the book expecting anything weighty, and if you read a book with a sneer, you’re never going to get anything out of the book. So there is no way that I or any other author who is known as a genre author could do something outside of that category and get an honest read of it.
SF: I want to ask you about your brother. I’ve heard you speak candidly about your brother’s death and how it impacted your view of the world. When I was earning my B.A. in Literature, we studied different writers who were catapulted in their writing because of personal tragedy. John Keats and Fyodor Dostoevsky I remember most strongly. How has your loss impacted the way you see the world, and therefore the way you write?
RAS: It has been for me a continual reminder of carpe diem. It has been a continual reminder to me that in the end we are all going to the same place. On the one hand, you have to be careful when you have a loss like that that it doesn’t put you in the state of mind favoring nihilism, right? “What’s the point? We’re all going to die.” On the other hand, you also have to keep in mind what’s really important in your own life, in your own small sphere. When my brother passed away, a thousand people showed up to see him off, if you will. You’ve never seen so many adult men crying in your whole life. And that reminds me what the real meaning of the word success is, right there. The things that are really important in life. So that experience, for me, has become first and foremost a grounding of who I am, of what it’s all worth, of the difference between R. A. Salvatore and Bob Salvatore. They really are two different people, to some extent.
SF: Yeah, it provides a great deal of perspective.
RAS: Absolutely. It’s hard to even begin to explain to people who haven’t gone through it, the eye opening experience of losing a contemporary you love, as opposed to your parents – who many people will lose. I lost my father twenty years ago, and it hurt like heck, but it was expected and it didn’t make me face my own mortality. I lost my brother, it wasn’t expected. He was only a few years older than I am. In fact, he was the same age I am now when he died. It makes you think about an awful lot of things.
SF: Bob, what writers influence you the most?
RAS: Well, I would say Tolkien, because he’s the one who got me back into reading. When I read The Hobbit my freshman year of college, and I kept saying, why didn’t somebody give me this book when I was in the eighth grade? So, certainly, I have to tip my hat to J. R. R. Tolkien for reminding me why I read fantasy, and for reminding me first and foremost what I hope readers get from reading my fantasy books. I would say Fitz Leiber and his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books. It made a big impact on me in the concept of the hero and the camaraderie factor. Terry Brooks has had a big influence on me in terms of his ability to build a world and to keep hope in his books. That’s a very special aspect of fantasy literature as far as I’m concerned – this belief that you can make the world better, that the hero really does matter. I think Terry does that brilliantly. Other than that I would have to go back to James Joyce, who’s been a big impact on my life. His short stories, not his novels. God, not his novels! But, whenever I get cocky as a writer I read the last four pages of The Dead out loud, and I am humbled. I think that is the greatest piece of writing in the English language.
SF: If you could collaborate with anyone on a novel, who would it be?
RAS: Living or dead? (Laughter)
SF: Your choice. Well, let’s do living first.
RAS: Terry Brooks.
SF: How about dead?
RAS: Probably Joyce. I’d just let him write it and take credit.
SF: What are you reading right now?
RAS: Right now I’ve got a book by a guy I consider probably one of the greatest living novelists: E. L. Doctorow. But I haven’t started it yet. That’s on my next to read list because right now I’ve got a couple of books to read for my job as editor of the Everquest book line. So, as soon as I’m done with the work books, I’m going to read Doctorow.
SF: Finally, one last question for you. You live in Massachusetts. Last year the Red Sox and the Patriots won the championships. It didn’t work out for the Sox this year. What’s your prediction on the Patriots?
RAS: They win the division, they make the playoffs, they win one game, and then they’re out.
SF: They loose to the Colts?
RAS: I don’t know if anyone can beat the Colts, but I don’t think the Patriots are designed very well to do that this year. But, you know what, I said that last year, and they not only beat them, they pounded them. If I had to look at it objectively, there are a couple of teams out there this year that I really don’t want to play: San Diego, Denver, Indianapolis. They all look pretty strong to me, but it’s still early. There are still six games to go. So, who knows?
SF: Bob, thank you for your time.
RAS: My pleasure.
