Inspirations

Do you have trouble coming up with new ideas? They don't fall out of trees, but it takes me so long to write a book that I usually come up with at least one or two ideas over the six months to a year that it takes to write, edit and publish, if not longer. So they keep accumulating. One of the reasons that I really like having a world to play in for a long time is that the longer I spend in a setting, the more story ideas suggest themselves because you get to know the characters so much and you get to know the implications of the magic in the world and the culture. [1]
What is your inspiration process like? I read a lot of books, I watch a lot of movies, and I make sure I have time to stare out the window and do nothing but daydream. And all of those things continually give me ideas for stories. [20]
Inspiration can come from anywhere, but good stories and good music will actually give me the proverbial tingle up the spine. And basically nothing else in life does that. So I'm always chasing that high. And that's really the inspiration. And trying to replicate that both for myself and for my readers. [33]
I get my inspiration from the beauty of the world itself, from every book and movie that I watch and read, even the bad ones, sometimes especially the bad ones. I get my inspiration from meeting folks like you who have so much energy and enthusiasm and from thinking and talking and listening to music. Everywhere can be a source of inspiration. [36]
I listen to soundtracks when I write. I can't listen to anything with lyrics because it's too distracting. But my biggest source of inspiration is simply the environment in which I live. The mountains around my house look like the mountains from The Lord of the Rings. If I have no experience with the things I write, the descriptions would probably not be as good. You have to look around for inspiration. Photos, visiting places… that which just comes out of your head ultimately has its limitations. You can do a lot, but it helps creativity if you can base it on your own experiences. [23]
You have an idea, you have a spark of thought. Do you jot it down and leave it? Or do you immediately delve into it? It depends on the idea ultimately and it depends how much of it I have. But I always write something down because I have forgotten story ideas in the past, which sucks. So the instant I have something that I think is interesting, I write it down. I won't write most of these because I don't have the time but I write them all down. I have a file here with 140 pages of story ideas, 19,147 words. I try to write it down. If I have a sense of more of the story than the initial thing, then I'll write that down. Then mostly I just let it sit and I think about it while I'm working on other stories. [28]

Would you rather lose a mental battle against another author so he could steal your ideas? Or give away your true name to your literary agent so he could control you? Wow. I trust my agent with my life. But I'd go with the first one, lose a mental battle, because honestly, ideas are cheap, execution is what matters. You could take every single idea I would have and give it to Brandon Sanderson, or any other author, and their execution would be totally different than mine, and vice versa. And quite honestly most authors wouldn't want to write the ideas I have, they have their own ideas. So that seems like the least perilous of the two options. [17]
When have the greatest flows of creativity happened for you? Whenever I know what I'm trying to write in terms of the scene, I understand what it's doing for the characters and who the characters are. And it all clicks together. And I don't have to sit there, banging my head against the keyboard trying to figure any of that out and then I could just work on writing it. Are there times where you have to bang your head against the keyboard? Or do you just get up and walk outside and just walk away from it? You need to do some of the head banging on occasion just to get past the tough stuff. But you also have to recognize when you're not making any progress and then it's better to step away, move physically in order to get your brain to move. And learning when to step away is always a challenge and has taken me a long time. [34]
What do you think about the idea that when we're asleep, our minds or souls wander off and act unbeknown to us and perhaps ideas aggregate which may lead to us waking up in the morning with sudden ideas, realizations? I think it's a very common occurrence. The whole point of creativity is that you connect two or more things that are seemingly unconnected. That's what a metaphor is or simile. "Her love was like a red, red rose." It's not literally a rose, but you're connecting two things to make a point. So when you sleep the barriers in your mind sort of descend and it's much easier to connect things. And there does seem to be some indication that if you are trying to solve a certain problem or working on something in the back of your head that your subconscious, whatever the hell the subconscious is, this older more instinctual part of the brain, continues to work on the problem even while you sleep. There have been multiple instances of scientists and inventors, engineers, who have actually thought of the solutions to their problems that they're trying to solve while while dreaming. So it's a known phenomena. And it's something that I do try to take advantage of. Sometimes I will think of things I'm trying to solve right before I go to sleep. The trick is you can't do it in a way that stresses you so that it keeps you up. So don't do this if it's going to keep you up. But it doesn't stress me to think about what I'm trying to figure out with the writing. So I'll think about that as I'm falling asleep and a lot of times I'll have a better idea in the morning or a better sense of what path to pursue and sometimes I'll actually dream of a solution. ... There's also some very solid research that says that if you're trying to learn something, whatever that something is, put in a couple hours of study, practice, whatever it is, and then you need to sleep in order for your brain to consolidate that knowledge. So if you pull an all-nighter studying, you're not going to retain the information very well. But if you were able to sleep even for just three hours, it allows the brain to take that temporary knowledge and encode it in more permanent memory. And that seems to be a very important part of the process. [19]

How much has Tolkien influenced your writing, if at all? I wouldn't be here if not for Tolkien. I'll be honest with that. And I think there are a number of other contemporary fantasy authors that were equally as influential on me. But they wouldn't exist without Tolkien either. So Tolkien's the foundation that so much of this genre rests upon. [33]
Which dragon in literature do you find to be the most impactful as an influencer on stories that came after it? Historically, you'd have to put in for St. George and the Dragon, the dragon from Beowulf, Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent from Norse mythology, Tiamat. Of course, then there's all the Asian dragons as well. And all of those influenced the authors that have influenced us, Anne McCaffrey, Ursula Le Guin, Wizard of Earthsea. Vermithrax Pejorative. [30]
What was the inspiration for how you approached the dragons in your books? For me it was a whole mess of fantasy that I read. Lord of the Rings, of course, with Smaug. The Pit Dragon trilogy by Jane Yolen. Dragon Singer was the first Anne McCaffrey book I read, and that got me into the Dragon Riders of Pern series. I still have a soft spot for Dragon Singer. The Wizard of Earthsea series. Raymond Feist's Magician series. As well as I think the Millennium series by David Eddings. A lot of others. Beowulf, of course. Tad Williams's Memory Sorrow and Thorn, which has some really impressively dangerous dragons in it. [30]
From just the first book and the second I can see how heavily Christopher was 'influenced' by George R R Martin. The part about the swords being imbued with spells to keep them sharp and the dragons growing forever isn't borrowing. It's downright plagiarism. I, uh, have never read GOT. Started the first book in 2011 and bailed when Bran was pushed out the window. However, Tolkien and Dragonriders of Pern were certainly big influences. [R]
Did the way Eragon and Arya ended remind you of the way Will and Lyra ended in His Dark Materials? In love, but unable to be together. Completely unintentional. I didn't read His Dark Materials until I'd already written Eragon (and plotted out the whole series, including the ending). I won't lie though: I love bittersweet endings, and Pullman wrote one of the best ones. [R]

Names

How do you go about naming all the places in Alagaësia? Well, these days I tend to think about where the name is coming from with the internal cultures of the land. So is it an Urgal name? Is it an Elvish name? Is it a Human name? Is it something else? For the human names I'm often drawing from established cultures, Germanic cultures, Scandinavian cultures. But I have a lot of invented and established things within the world itself. So it just sort of depends what I'm writing and how I'm doing it. The nice thing is because I've created various invented languages for the different races, that gives me a good starting place for the feel of some name that I might be creating. [12]
Where do the names in your worlds come from? Some are puns, Eragon is Dragon but with an 'e' instead of a 'd'. It also means an Era Gone By. Saphira is from Sapphire. The names also come from historical names: Germanic, Northern influences or were made up by me based on the rules from my world. For example, Murtagh is Irish. [23]

Does the ancient language have a canon name? I know it's never said in order to keep the mystery feel, but out of curiosity, do YOU know it? Or is it something that does not even truly have a name for you? Yup, I do have a name for it. Not sharing it with anyone, though. :D [R]

What is the "World of Eragon"? Well it encompasses the entire Inheritance Cycle (Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and Inheritance), as well as The Fork the Witch and the Worm, Murtagh, as well as all the other projects that I hope to be doing in this setting, whether books, games, or other things. And the reason we went with "World of Eragon" instead of something like Alagaësia is because Alagaësia is hard to say and hard to spell, and some of the adventures the characters will be going on actually go beyond that land. So World of Eragon it is. Also I'm rather fond of that Brisingr symbol in the "O" there. It felt appropriate for the character, for the world, and like I said, I like it myself. [Y]
What would you say to introduce someone to the World of Eragon? Well, it's the story of a young man who finds a dragon egg. And the dragon and Eragon, they go on a series of adventures and there's duels and dragons and battles and villains and romance and all the good stuff a story needs. I think it's fundamentally a good hearted series. I don't really like to write stuff that's like super super grim. It definitely is a good place to start if you're getting into epic fantasy and you're a slightly younger reader and then as you go along with the books, adult isn't really the word, but they get more elaborate and epic as the series progresses. I was learning as I wrote the series and so I tried to put all of that learning to use with each new book. [12]
What is the difference between the World of Eragon and other fantasy series? The fact that I wrote it and not someone else! There are definitely references to other works, because I love reading about elves, dwarves, magic and dragons and I wanted to write about them. At the same time, there are some unique aspects. I believe that my magic system is unique in the fantasy genre and I have unique races such as the Werecats, Ra'zac and my slightly different take on Dragons. It's a mix of familiar and really new things. [23]

George [R R Martin] and I invented the name Arya completely independently. We talked about it: he was trying to come up with something fierce and warrior-like … I was thinking of an aria in an opera. [R]

I was today years old when I realized "Eldest" refers to Murtagh. And Roran. [T]

Me, a weeb, reading Shruikan as "shuriken" Where do you think I got the name from? Shruikan is just 'shuriken' rearranged a bit (and with the 'e' changed to an 'a'). [T]

Am I the only one who ever realized that Du Weldenvarden sounds like Do Well Then, Varden? You are not. [T]

People, Places, Things, and Scenes

Does the character Eragon resemble you? Initially, yes, a lot! But the more the story progressed, the more my hero experienced his own adventures. The common point that remains between him and me is that we both like to ask each other questions. [4]
What are the commonalities that you now still have with Eragon to this day? Curiosity. Eragon is very curious about the world and wants to understand it and learn, and that's definitely something I still have and still pursue. Probably a willingness to tackle big adventures and projects, even knowing it's going to be a huge thing. And then maybe a basic sense of optimism, all things considered. [19]
Eragon's journey appears to me from the beginning to the end a quest of research of identity, of self-discovery, the "Who am I?" question. Did you put yourself through the same examination Eragon and Saphira did on Vroengard while searching for their true names? And do you have an idea of what your true name will be? I think that identity and character and figuring out who you are is one of the central things of adolescence. Because you transition from a child to an adult and figuring out what sort of an adult you're going to be, and how you fit into society and how you're going to function as an adult once you have agency and power versus a child who usually doesn't have a whole lot of agency and power. And so that's why writing about adolescence to me very naturally becomes writing about identity and who you are. And yes, it's something I have spent a large portion of my life thinking about and figuring myself out. I think I have a pretty good idea of who I am and have had a pretty good idea for a long time. If you asked me to guess at my true name, I think I could come pretty close. [19]
Do you think emulating your characters’ actions is a necessary part of the writing process? It’s definitely not necessary, but it can be helpful. Having personal experience with a particular activity is always a plus. Failing that, books, articles, and YouTube can be a decent substitute. Given that I write about spaceships and dragons, there are somethings that I’ll never be able to encounter in real life . . . but, hey, that’s what our imaginations are for! [10]

I drew a map and it was like the western half of the current map. And I thought, well, this gives me everything I need. But then I was like, "oh, I want to visit this location. I want to visit that location." And pretty soon I realized I was out of space. So I didn't want to spend like days and days drawing another map because I wanted to keep writing. So I took another sheet of printer paper and put it next to the first one, and I quickly scribbled in some mountains in a giant forest. And I was really lazy. I did this in like 15 seconds, 30 seconds tops. And I was moving so fast that I made the mountains huge. And I looked at that and I was like, well, wait a minute, what if they actually were 10 times bigger than the normal mountains? And that's how I got my Beor mountains. Also, I'd read an article about the mountains in New Zealand being 10 miles high if it weren't for erosion, given their rate of upheaval. That also contributed. [34]
You grew up in Montana, is it true that the valley where Eragon comes from is based on that? Yes. There is even a mountain in the valley that is as high and the same shape as Tronjheim, the mountain where the dwarves live. And I looked at that and thought: hm, what if that was a city? You can take things from everyday life and recreate them in something. [23]

Roran and his chapters have a good bit of biblical allegory. It wasn't intentional, but I read a LOT of Biblical stuff growing up. Make of that what you will. [R]

One of my favorite parts of the Inheritance Cycle was the forging of Brisingr. Tell us about the research process you used in order to construct such an intricate and detailed scene. I've done a fair bit of metalworking myself. I built two forges as a kid. I credited in the back of Brisingr two different books I have on Japanese sword making, both of which I referenced pretty heavily because they were relevant, since Brisingr is made for meteorite steel and there's various reasons for using the Japanese method on a western-style sword in that book. So I did some research but I also had a fair bit of practical knowledge and that was helpful. That scene actually was even longer because if you know your metalworking you'll know there's definitely some things I skimmed over or condensed and it was just because the scene was too long and my editor said, "look, Christopher, just summarize or say it was magic. You've got a magic elven smith, let her use some magic, move it along a little faster. So I was aware of the things that I had to skimp over a little bit, but no, that was one of my favorite scenes to write and I think that came through since so many people enjoyed it. [34]

Is this [Japanese dorodango] what Orik's earth rock was based off of? Of course. [T]

Trauma is an element that's always been a part of these books, but it's been talked around and mentioned, up until I think the burrow grubs in Inheritance. That one is rude. They're bad. I won't lie. They came from a nightmare. That literally came from a nightmare. I shared it with the world so that it's out of my head and into yours. But when I write about something, I stop thinking about it. After it's done, it purges it from my brain. [11]
I need to know how you came up with the burrow grubs because they've always freaked me out. Bad nightmare. [T]

Was there a particular experience in your life that suggested to you that it was ultimately through compassion and empathy that Eragon will vanquish Galbatorix? No. It was the result of sort of a long chain of logic while writing the books, and a lot of thinking I've been doing about violence and responses to violence and when it's appropriate to use violence. Part of the chain of logic was the fact that I just got sick of writing sword fights. I wrote a lot of sword fights between Eragon and Arya, Eragon and Murtagh, and of course, Roran's hammer fights. So resolving the entire series's conflict just through a physical confrontation felt inadequate. There needed to be a moral component to it. One of my own criticisms for myself here is that I feel like I failed to do that with Roran in Inheritance. There really should have been a little bit slightly deeper resolution to his storyline and his confrontation with Barst that taught us something new or resulted in a change in his character. Roran's character is a little different than Eragon's because he's already grown up in a lot of ways and thus is not resolving the same issues, but a good arc, a good journey, would have reflected on what was happening with Eragon and Galbatorix. So how Roran defeats Barst in some ways should stand in contrast to how Eragon defeats Galbatorix. Maybe it does, but that's something I would have spent more time taking another look at were I to do that now. But again with Eragon and Galbatorix, just one more sword fight was inadequate. So much of the story with Eragon involved him paying attention to the lives of the ants and learning about the different groups in Alagaësia, the Urgals, the dwarves, this and that. So all of that played into this decision to have him defeat Galbatorix in that matter. And with all of that, the fact that I really didn't want there to be some obvious way of defeating Galbatorix. Galbatorix isn't stupid. He protected himself in all of the ways that one might think of protecting himself, and he's had a long time to think about that. So it needed to be something that was non-obvious. Non-obvious and yet inevitable. [19]

Favorites

Which of the fantasy creatures/races did you most enjoy writing about? I obviously love dragons. Before Murtagh I would have said the dwarves because I think they are funnier than the elves, although I enjoy writing about the elves too. But the dwarves are more earthly and interesting and human in their own way. [21]
Who is your own favorite character anyway? Saphira. I used to say Eragon right after that, but nowadays Murtagh is number two. That said, I feel most connected to Brom. Because I'm also getting old and starting to get some white spots in my beard. [21]
Which of your characters would you bring along with you to a deserted island? Saphira, because she could fly me off the deserted island. [34]
Which place in your Eragon universe would you like to live in the most? Probably with my dwarves, because they live in these 10-mile high mountains. And I love mountains and I have a beard like a dwarf these days. And I think the dwarves have more fun than the elves. [2]
Which fantasy world would you like to live in? Middle-Earth can be a nice place to live in some places, especially Hobbiton. I wouldn't mind living in a Hobbit hole and writing my books there. [23]

Interactions with other media properties

I got into sci-fi and fantasy because of a magical creature. My parents had a lot of sci-fi fantasy in the house, and I wasn't particularly interested in it at the time. But when I was around eight, my grandfather was taking me through a bookstore. I saw a book that had a knight in full armor without his helmet, holding a spear, facing off with a giant scaly humanoid, dragon-like monster. And at eight years old, all I knew was that this was the coolest book cover I had ever seen in my life and that this therefore must be the best book in the world. And so I begged my grandfather to please, please, please, buy me this book. He wasn't entirely sure about it, but he bought it for me anyway. That ended up being The Ruby Knight by David Eddings, which I took home and I read as fast as I could. I got a little concerned as I got near the back of the book because I was getting through the pages and then there's only this many pages left. I started to get this weird feeling that somehow the author couldn't end the whole story in the number of pages that were left. And sure enough, when I got to the end, I discovered that this was the middle book of a trilogy. Yeah, I wasn't always the brightest kid. So I finished that and immediately said, "well, I need to know what happens". So I went to our library and I read all the David Eddings books they had. There really was no internet back then, so I didn't know what to read next. So I'm standing in the library staring at Eddings, "E". What do I read next? Well, two shelves down from "E" was "F" and there was a giant book called Magician by Raymond Feist, which had a dragon on the cover. And I thought, okay, well maybe that's good. It's got a dragon, the same magical creature. So I checked out that book and I read it and it was pretty awesome. So I read everything by Raymond Feist. And then I go, "well, what do I read now?" And well, a couple of shelves down, there was a book called Mossflower by Brian Jacques which was the prequel to Redwall, so I read the entire Redwall series. And wasn't too far from Brian Jacques to Anne McCaffrey, and there was the Dragon Riders of Pern series. So I basically worked my way through the library, just chasing the covers with dragons and talking animals, which is not the worst way to set up a reading program when you're ten. And that really transformed my life. And I just absolutely fell in love with reading in a way that I never really had before. [35]

Is it awkward though, sitting here between Dragonriders of Pern, the original series about Dragonriders, from a beloved author who was nice enough to give you a blurb for your first novel, knowing that you sort of borrowed the whole Dragonriders thing? Oh, not at all. Absolutely shameless about it. And McCaffrey was kind enough to give me not just a blurb, my first blurb. So funny thing is I did kind of repay her in the most roundabout way. I was touring in Spain and found out that her books were out of print there. And I talked them up so much that they ended up reprinting the entire series in Spain and I blurbed her books in Spain. But you know, it's a small market so it probably doesn't count. Right. No, I would say not. [31]

I was homeschooled and raised in a very rural environment in Montana. I had no access to the internet and stuff. I literally had not heard about Star Wars all the way up until I was 14. And it was referenced in the movie Space Camp. And I said, "Why are they saying 'Luke use the force'? What does that mean?" And my dad got this horrified expression on his face. Like he had failed as a parent, and so we watched Star Wars the next day. [5]

The problem with Lost is those seasons are full length seasons. I mean it's like 23, 26 episodes. It's a huge commitment. My wife watched Next Generation for the first time a couple years ago, and each season is like 24 or 26 episodes, and it's a big commitment of time. And that's part of the problem getting into something like Battlestar Galactica or something else. [21]
Deep Space Nine is the best Star Trek, because they actually managed to take the Ferengi and turn them into interesting, well-rounded, deep characters, which you wouldn't think, and not just the Ferengi, but other aliens, which the other Star Treks didn't manage to do anything like that, I think. [29]

The original Prisoner television show is the most prophetic piece of science fiction in a lot of ways because it deals with loss of privacy and individuality, the strength of the individual against the system of government. And the cool thing too is that I think The Prisoner is definitely an auteur piece. It was written by Patrick McGuinn who also stars in it and he also directed the majority of episodes. And it directly follows from his earlier series Secret Agent Man. When that show ended he was at a party and there were some governmental officials and someone asked him, so what does a secret agent do when he retires? And he said, I don't know, you tell me what does a secret agent do when he retires? And the bureaucrat just kind of goes, well we take care of them. And that was kind of the beginning of the concept for the show. A lot of people hate the ending. I actually quite like the ending but there's a sense of absurdity to the show as well that I think is very well suited for the nature of modern life given that although we live in a Heinlein future in the sense we have rockets taking off and landing vertically as God and Heinlein intended, at the same time, we live in a very strange modern life and Philip K. Dick captured that, but I also think the prisoner absolutely did. So if you haven't seen The Prisoner, I can't recommend it enough personally. McGuinn had some really strong philosophy driving it underneath. He was a very religious man, actually very similar to Gene Wolfe, both Catholic. And that drove a lot of his beliefs and approach to the material. [21]

I'm not necessarily a fan of the way George R R Martin writes. House of the Dragon pretty much started with a bloody scene about a young mother who had to pay for the birth of her child with death. My wife was just heavily pregnant, I turned off the TV and didn't look back. But there is no arguing about the quality of Game of Thrones and the enormous cultural impact of the series. All respect. [18]

I've had to read Dragons Love Tacos to my son more times than I care to remember. Look, dragons do not love tacos. Dragons love some of the things that go into tacos, like cows or maybe sheep or goats. But dragons do not love tacos. And this is sheer slander upon the whole race of dragons. [14]
They'll probably like the ground meat that sometimes goes into tacos, but no, dragons don't eat tacos. Come on. [34]

What was the first game that you played where you thought, I really love games? Crystal Quest. If anyone remembers that. Old game that was on the Mac Classic. I got up to level 99 on that or something. It was insane. But, yeah, Myst, Riven especially, the Marathon series, Mass Effect trilogy. Loved Control recently. I've spent way too many hours playing Far Cry 5 because it's set in Montana and looks exactly like Montana. And there are some similarities to things in that game, to actual real world stuff, which is kind of weird, but it's cool. I don't know. Too many games to list and they're all awesome. [26]
I played a lot of classic Mac games, we're talking about like on the old Mac Classic, so things like Crystal Quest and Starship Mono and things like that. And then later on, when the computers upgraded, I loved the Myst series, so Myst and Riven. My friend had a PC, so I got to play the original Doom and Wolfenstein 3D and all of that. On the Mac, I loved the Marathon series. That was a huge influence on me with storytelling. I'm really excited that they're rebooting it or doing a sequel to the Marathon game finally over at Bungie. So the Marathon trilogy. Unreal Tournament 1999 is still the best shooting game I've ever played in a lot of ways, a tournament game. So yeah, all that stuff definitely had an influence on me. [12]
All of my gaming experience was computer games, video games. One that had a huge influence on me was the old Myst series. Personally I love solving puzzles, so that's the first thing. And also the concept of the series, especially with the second game, Riven, it's all based around people writing books that create new worlds. And you get to go in them and solve puzzles and understand how that world works. And that just tickled every single part of my brain back in the day. [26]
Now, funny thing with Spyro is that the company that made the Spyro games actually worked on the Eragon video game back in the day. Now, I've never played the Spyro games, but my wife is a huge fan of them, and I like Spyro. Proper number of legs. The wings are a little small, though. But sheer force of personality, and at least Spyro's not a dog dragon. [13]
What do you love about Mass Effect? I like the RPG elements, but I like the universe. I like the setting. I like the fact that really their big jump is they assume the existence of this element zero that if I'm remembering it correctly, allows for all of the technology. And then they don't break the laws of physics past that. They assume there's one break from what we know and then explore that. But I love the setting. I like how much blue they use. No, seriously. And if I'm remembering correctly, one of the planets in Mass Effect actually is the planet from Dragon Age. So they've tied in their two different franchises, which is cool. I have so many wonderful memories with the characters and in the world of Mass Effect that in some ways it was almost like a Star Wars experience for video games. [21]
There's great aliens in Mass Effect. I seem to recall Wayne Barlow, an artist, creating a cool book with some aliens in it. [29]

My favorite game these days is Minecraft. If you put a gun to my head and told me I can only have one game for the rest of my life, I'd pick Minecraft right now. If you go to my YouTube channel, you can see my storage system, which is mechanized and can store every single item in the game, either in shulker boxes or bulk storage or chests. It's mechanized. If you're familiar with the Hermitcraft series, they actually invited me on the server as a guest at one point. Scicraft, I got to tour with them. I built a machine to kill the Ender Dragon with one arrow. I love Minecraft. The problem is I could spend so long playing Minecraft, I will never write another book in my life. So I haven't played it in six months. But I really want to update my storage system. So we'll see. [26]
You went almost a decade from the time that you published Inheritance to the time that you published another book that people cared about, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. What were you doing during this time besides Minecraft? Have you seen my storage system in Minecraft? I have, it's pretty solid. It's not just solid, it's like I built a computer in Minecraft. Honestly, I could have written another book. I was going to say, imagine if you had written a book instead. What was I doing in those ten years? Well, I suppose I was just relaxing on my giant pile of money. Plagiarism pays, nepotism pays, I was just relaxing, enjoying life. And then I decided that I should probably, pay tribute to a lot of the sci-fi games and movies that I enjoyed and pluck up a bunch of pieces from them and paste them all together and put out a new book. And that was To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. That's fantastic. Absolutely. And you know what's even better? It won Best Sci-Fi of the Year over at Goodreads. I'm starting to wonder if you might be a pretty smart guy. People have said that on occasion, but I don't really believe it. Yeah, I wouldn't either. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. [31]

Who wins in a fight, Kratos or Eragon? I'm enormously fond of Eragon and he does have magic at his disposal, but we are talking about a man who literally killed the Greek pantheon and then the Nordic pantheon. So I hate to say it, but I think Kratos has it here. Not to mention that technically his son becomes the Midgard Serpent. [30]
Who would win in the fight? Eragon or Anne McCaffrey? Not the dragons, the author? Well, look, Anne McCaffrey gave me my first blurb. I kind of have to go with Anne McCaffrey there. [30]
[Rebecca Yarros:] How would our dragons interact with each other? I think your dragons would consider Saphira a bit soft. But I think Saphira would rise to the occasion. She's more humane. Like she's more human. She has more like a softness to her, as where mine are superior jerks. Well, I think also she's trying to be nice for the nice little squishy humans around her. And if she were stuck with a bunch of dragons who weren't quite so nice, she'd probably go a bit more feral. [33]
What would Eragon's signet be if he was in the Fourth Wing world instead? Probably something with fire, firebending essentially. The first spell he ever used was Brisingr, which was fire. So probably something with fire. I think that that seems appropriate. I could come up with something more exotic, but let's face it, Eragon's kind of basic. So it's going to be fire. [33]
I assume Roran would have carried a 45-70 govt in a different timeline. He absolutely would, if not a 45-90 or even a 50-110. [R]
What Taylor Swift song do you feel most represents each character? I’ve never listened to a Taylor Swift song, so … How is that even possible?? You must not have listened to a radio in the last decade. You would be correct. That is actually insane. What kind of music do you listen to? I love classical. However, mostly I listen to movie & game soundtracks while writing. And when not writing, I've had enough music, so don't listen to stuff. I can't listen to anything with English lyrics while writing. Messes with the words in my head. Nothing while lifting? Heh. Heavy Metal. Amon Amarth. That sort of thing. [T]