Reader Question Day #20 – magic and Amazon

Manwe asks:

It’s Amazon where you sell most of your books right?

Yes. I generally sell about 60% of my books at Amazon, with the remaining 40% coming from Barnes & Nobles, iTunes, and the Sony eBookstore. So it’s unlikely I will ever do Kindle Select – I have quite a few readers with Nook devices, and I have no wish to spurn them.

When you read, do you concentrate on one book at a time, or more scattered like myself?

Generally, I prefer to read one book at a time. Sometimes I will alternate between two different books at once. I have the Kindle app on my MP3 player (a Samsung Galaxy Player which I basically use as a PDA), and if I find myself waiting in line or whatever, I’ll fire up the Kindle app and start to read something.

Sometimes I’ll read a fiction book and a nonfiction book simultaneously, and alternate between them.

Istarinmul (a city in the world of THE GHOSTS), does that have any relation to the historical Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul?

A bit. It used to be an independent kingdom called Starifel, but the Empire conquered it. Then the Shahenshah of Anshan conquered it, and part of their royal family revolted and seized the city and its surrounding provinces for themselves. Hence, the Padishah of Istarinmul and his Immortals.

The Istarish turn up quite a bit in THE GHOSTS books, since Istarinmul is the center of the worldwide slave trade, and the slavers’ brotherhood is quite powerful and wealthy. Caina really, really doesn’t like slave traders, and has absolutely no qualms about killing every single one she can reach.

ivy asks (concerning the depiction of magic in SOUL OF DRAGONS):

You seem To understand some elements of magic that others do not , was that just good research or was There more to it?

I basically made up all the elements of magic in the DEMONSOULED series from whole cloth. It’s more influenced by the fact that I’ve been playing computer games since I was 12 than by any sort of real-world magical practice.

-JM