…the book was a stinker. It was not a good book. It was in that era when if you put an elf and a sword and a dragon in it, you could publish anything. And I said basically, this is terrible. Then made the mistake of saying, "I could do better than this." The four Sword-Quest juvenile books I did come from that statement. And Susan has to accept a certain amount of guilt for the rest of my career because of that.

Crescent Blues: You are still packaging games and putting games together. Could you give Crescent Blues readers an idea of your current projects?

Bill Fawcett: Two online roleplaying games. I'm also involved with a number of lesser online role playing games, and I'm currently working with on a multimedia project -- including computer, paper and book -- for a cyberpunk project with a number of people, including one of the founding authors of the cyberpunk concept. We're updating the concept to move it closer to today's standards and attitudes, and more of what has significantly affected the attitudes of that community -- the tech community. And that is the Matrix concept of "In the Net."

Beyond that I occasionally get involved in card or board game concepts. In fact I'm talking with a company here [at DragonCon] about assisting in a peripheral manner that would use my military history background in a game that may be coming out in about a year from a major company. The game involves the military and images of main battle tanks and soldiers and things like that.

Crescent Blues: Given your long-time involvement with Dungeons & Dragons(r), did you catch some of the trailers and stuff related to the movie, and how did it look to you?

Bill Fawcett: It looks beautiful. We'll see if it has a plot, but it looks beautiful. I mean when you adapt something like Dungeons & Dragons you can have something that is wonderful like Baldur's Gate or you can have something that is awful like Quag Keep. That was not Andre Norton -- a brilliant writer, whom I admire in almost everything. But Quag Keep was an obvious attempt to do D & D, and it was not, let us say, the most well crafted book she has produced out of the many brilliant things she has done.

Crescent Blues: Have you ever thought of taking your passion for history and translating that into designing a game along the lines of your Mycroft Holmes or Mme. Vernet stories?

Bill Fawcett: Actually there was an even more direct thing that I worked on -- a design for that a company that was not financially able to go through with it. At one point they were working on doing a Highlander(r) game in which you could deal with each century [Duncan MacLeod] was alive. So you had everything from 17th century Scotland to the modern times -- every war Duncan was in and everything else. You literally would have been able to play this game in about five or six different recreated eras.

The problem with that was that it meant five or six sets of terrain and programming, and it became a very expensive project. Eventually it became economically unfeasible to do the game in the way it was created. And when it became non-historical, it became a lot less interesting to me. Eventually another company took the license and is doing an online Highlander(r) game that is coming out soon, but it's not that game.

Crescent Blues: What other aspects of your career would you like to discuss?

Bill Fawcett: Let's talk about working with Quinn a little, which is a fascinating process, because like an army in battle, neither of us ever does quite exactly what the other expects. And almost invariably in Quinn's case, it's a wonderful change that I more than heartily approve of. She's the heart of the Mycroft series -- growing more and more so as they progress and she gets deeper and becomes more involved with the character.

She has developed a wonderful insight into how someone from that era would [conduct intelligence operations]. This is not just a clone of James Bond. This is someone who doesn't like to work hard but likes to use his mind to outwit people. Someone who is staunchly devoted and supporting to Queen and country -- or King and country, in this particular case. Quinn has a wonderful way of putting herself into that mindset.

Crescent Blues: Do some of the books in the series take place after Queen Victoria's death in 1902?

Bill Fawcett: Some of them. It's Queen and country first, then King and country by the time the last two take place.

Working with Quinn -- it has been very interesting to watch how a paragraph description of a chapter evolves into that chapter. Then how you go back and modify and change what you've written. I've learned an awful lot working with Quinn as far as the creative process.

Wasn't it Harlan Ellison who was commenting that for all we admire his writing, he worries that people will figure out how much he hasn't learned yet about writing? [Chuckles.] That's not just the humble and intelligent side of Harlan most people don't see, it is also a very realistic statement for almost every writer I know. I mean writing is a craft that you can never develop completely. And it's not because of changes in writing itself, but because there's never a point where you can't put more into it.

Crescent Blues: How has your collaboration with Quinn changed from when you started?

Bill Fawcett: I would say probably Quinn is carrying more of the burden in some ways. When we first started it was about an even split on writing. Quinn is now doing a larger amount of the final draft than I am. The reason we're doing this, among other things, is to make sure it has a consistent voice. When you have two writers, there is a tendency for you to be able to tell that you have two writers.

The novels also have grown in sophistication and detail of plot. We've gone from one subplot to multiple subplots, and when dealing with those, Quinn does the final phrasing. As I said, I admire her skill. So it was never a question that she would be the one to make the books a better read -- because we're trying to make the books an easier read as far as style, while we make them a more difficult read as far as content.

Crescent Blues: Is there anything you and Quinn ever disagreed on, and how did you resolve the issue?

Bill Fawcett: Ummm, you know, I can't think of anything we have ever adamantly disagreed on once we decided on what we were going to write. Once we decided what the book was going to be about. It has been a very smooth collaboration on that level

Crescent Blues: Of the characters you have written with Quinn, which ones are your favorites?

Bill Fawcett: I still like Mme. Vernet, obviously a personal passion of both of ours. In a way, Mycroft came about because of Mme. Vernet. There's a line in one of the Holmes novels -- the same one, The Greek Interpreter, that explains Mycroft. The line before the one describing him is: "My mother was the . . ." Do you remember the quote?

Crescent Blues: "My grandmother was the sister of the artist Vernet."

Bill Fawcett: Lucien Vernet is the artist being referred to, and he is the child of Mme. Vernet and her husband. The timeline fits. So basically, we have the French Norman ancestry of the Holmes family that was married into [derives from] our character 100 years or 70 years earlier. [Chuckles.]

Other than that, the character I identify with the most -- so of course I love -- is the assistant to Mycroft Holmes through whose eyes we see most of the books. And he is the character that both Quinn and I love dearly and have, because of that, tortured with romantic difficulty. We dropped a wonderful redhead in front of him, and she is constantly in every novel. But we love him dearly like a little brother that you torture on the way past the graveyard.

Crescent Blues: And you do torture him. You have put that poor boy through some major things.

Bill Fawcett: Battered, bruised and bewildered from tying one on.

Crescent Blues: Where do you want to go with your writing? Anything you want to do?

Bill Fawcett: My next look at writing, the next things that I'm involved with are books about both contemporary and historical novels that are also fiction. And I am working another major science fiction author whom, given any luck, I can get to do the bulk of the writing. Again.

Crescent Blues: [Laughs.] Which is your style.

Bill Fawcett: And I've got one set in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, but I'm not really free to say anymore until we get further into it.

Crescent Blues: How do you feel about the way the Internet has affected the way people write?

Bill Fawcett: It hasn't yet. It's just scared everybody.

Crescent Blues: How so?

Bill Fawcett: Everybody is paranoid about what ebooks and e-short stories and e-magazines will do to the rest of the world. So far the benefit of selling the books over the 'Net has changed the way books are sold and, to a degree, has hurt the independent stores. It's hurt the small stores. It's had that effect.

But as far as the content in the literature -- other than opening it up to more people being able to put stuff up that otherwise would never be published -- it's not effected those who are published in what or how they write, in my opinion. Maybe a little of where we sell but not what or how we write. That's pretty much remained constant.

Crescent Blues: Do you think the electronic media will ever become a force in publishing?

Bill Fawcett: I think it is a force in publishing. It is influencing publishing already. I think that a lot of that will be decided by technical matters that are not yet determined -- whether we can get an ebook that is actually as comfortable, as easy and functional as a paperback. And whether or not print-on-demand can be replace bookstores -- a situation where you can go up on a computer, read a few chapters, read a few words, look at an illustration, then order the book right there. So a bookstore need be no larger than a series of cubicles [where you view the texts] and one print machine, rather than thousands of volumes. That will, if nothing else, save several hundred million cubic feet of trees killed for pulp every year.

The other thing I hope electronic publishing will do is it will make it tough enough that they'll get rid of those tear-the-cover-and-pulp-the-rest routine, and go back to the pre-paperback norm of books are returned, and you print what you can sell.

Crescent Blues: Anything that you would like to add?

Bill Fawcett: No. I don't have original ideas; I just write.

Teri Smith and Jean Marie Ward