For many years the only chance a fan had of speaking to Terry was to meet him at tour events or conventions.
With the establishment of this website in 2000, Terry began accepting two questions from each fan per month. On the last day of the month, five questions are randomly drawn. Terry answers these five questions and they are posted monthly for your enjoyment.
Below are the questions selected from July 2018 and Terry’s answers! Enjoy!
Note: This section may contain spoilers!
JULY 2018 ASK TERRY Q&A
Happy Days, Everyone,
At least, I hope they are since we are finally into summer and warmer weather. Some hard stuff everywhere this past winter – sleet, snow, wind, hail, tornadoes, snow storms (blizzards) flooding and wrath of God. Sort of like politics, don’t you think?
So with that in mind, here we go with the latest edition of Ask Terry:
Isiaha writes: I never noticed this until reading The Skaar Invasion. But in your more recent books you put quite a lot of emphasis on the personal relationships of your characters. Almost as if each story is getting a teen romance kind of thing going on. A great reference is Dar Leah falling for the Skaar leader Ajin in mere minutes. I noticed this started since the Dark Legacy of Shannara (referring to Mirai and Railing). The Defenders was a mosh of love triangles. To me it seems it has become more prominent in your more recent books. I am curious to what sparked the motivation to the young love prominence to the books (not trying to be a critic, just curious)?
Terry Brooks replies: Well, I guess I am still trying to make up for my own pathetic younger years when romance was an elusive part of my life. But also, I think it brings us closer to the characters. I might point out that Dar did not fall for Ajin – he wanted nothing to do with her. She was the one who did all the falling. I should warn you I am probably not done with this sort of thing either. Although you won’t find much of it in the new epic fantasy I will start writing in the Fall.
Jeb Holt writes: Now that you are in the process of chronologically wrapping up the Shannara series, will we ever learn the primary use of the emerald, saffron and white Elfstones apart from defense?
Terry Brooks replies: I wouldn’t hold my breath. Some questions won’t be answered until I go back into the series with additional stories. Or someone else does, if I can’t.
Ozzie Martinez writes: As a new reader that was introduced by the show, I would like to know if you ever imagined after writing Sword, how big the lore and the following of Shannara would be and get? Was writing 30+ books, short stories, novellas what you envisioned when writing these?
Terry Brooks replies: I started out intending to see if I could write one book. It took seven years. Then I decided to go on and wrote another. It wasn’t until Heritage of Shannara that I began working in sets. And I never dreamed I would end up writing forty books. I thought I would either fall out of favor or lose interest or quit before then. But here I am, still writing and very lucky to be doing so.
John Riggs writes: I have noticed that the majority of your signature that I see are simply your name; is there any significance for when you add a date with the month and year?
Terry Brooks replies: Usually I only add a date when asked to do so by the readers. This happens infrequently and mostly with collectors. I am not encouraging everyone to start doing this because it really slows things down at an event and makes no difference to most of us.
Nate Weinand writes: Is there any new news on the Landover front, either book or TV series? Any luck on Shannara Season 3?
Terry Brooks replies: There is news on both fronts, but I am not at liberty to talk about either. I will just say that as soon as I can talk about it, you can be sure I will. We are hard at work on both projects.
Bye for now. Got to go take out the garbage and see if that deer is still out there, patrolling the yard.
With magic,
Ask Terry
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