‘Goblinopolis’ actually began life as a stream-of-consciousness blog on LiveJournal in late 2004. I was depressed and frustrated by oneviciously negative Amazon review of my first novel ‘Tangent’ and decided to write a humorous fantasy story as a form of therapy. I got a lot of fan mail from the blog and this convinced me eventually to combine the entries into a single polished narrative. The name Goblinopolis came to me first and I tailored the story to fit. I determined that it would take three volumes to tell the story I wanted to convey in its entirety, so ‘The Tol Chronicles’ was born.
I’ve been a humorist since junior high school. I wrote my first parody, ‘I Snored at the Rings,’ in 1972 (before I became aware of Harvard Lampoon’s ‘Bored of the Rings’). I still have my pencil-drawn map of ‘Muddled Earth’ somewhere. While I’ve been writing literary humor for publication for decades, ‘Goblinopolis’ was my first attempt at humorous fantasy. Comparison with the dean of that genre, Terry Pratchett, was, I suppose, inevitable. Truth be told, I’ve never made it entirely through
one of his books, although I do admire his style and intellect. The only book of his I own is ‘Unseen Academicals;’ I swear I will finish it one fine day. I doubt N’plork will ever be as well-loved as Discworld, though.