From my days in university, long before I was a novelist, I had a dislike of over-categorizing. My first award-winning paper as an undergrad was on ‘The Classification of Troilus and Cressida’ (Shakespeare’s)… I found it slotted in some books on his problem comedies and in others on his problem tragedies and was genuinely taken aback at the ferocity of the rhetoric academics were unleashing on each other in pursuit of one label or the other. (I know, I know … ferocious academic battles, taken aback by them … how naïve!) I wrote an ‘A plague on both your houses’ paper, arguing that what matters was assessing quality, intent, success or otherwise … not slot or label.

It is probably a colossal irony (or maybe a quixotic acting-out of my dislike of these label-things) that I seem to have faced the same issues for years. We are a categorizing species, I suppose. We find what we like and want more of it, and look for labels to tell us where to find that ‘more’. There’s nothing very wrong with this, by the way. My friend, the novelist Charles de Lint, has talked at times of wanting bookstores to just shelve everything alphabetically … problem there is what if you don’t know what you are walking in to buy? What if you like mysteries or historical fiction or science fiction … there are an awful lot of books! Intelligent retail suggests we find ways (and online stores have taken this further) to guide readers to where they might be happiest. It does tend to narrow us, reduce risk-taking in art, and … to come back to the question … it can create some problems for those of us who blur or erode borders or categories. Me? I say I write novels.

14) One last question, I've read on the Bright Weavings web site that two of your novels' rights are owned by studios, Lions of Al-Rassan and Last Light Of The Sun. Would those be your first choices to be made into movies?

I’ve been asked a lot of questions about the two film projects but never that query! What would I have picked first, or expected to see first? I always thought Fionavar and the Mosaic pair were too big to be starting points for Hollywood. Tigana may lend itself more to a limited series format, also being very long. So the two in development probably do make a great deal of sense. I can see Arbonne being picked up by a strong female producer/director because the underlying motif there has to do with the way in which the culture of the troubadours, the ‘Court of Love’ represented a major possible turning point in western history as to the status of women … and there are such wonderful roles for half a dozen actresses ranging from 17 or 18 years old to 60 or 70.