I've still adopted quite a bit of the mainstream "high fantasy," I suppose. To some extent I think that's inevitable, given the sort of stories I want to tell. But it's the differences, the spaces between the expectations, with which I most enjoy playing.

Fantasy is also a good place to play with concepts of good and evil, of responsibility and morality. It's a place which is actually designed to let us build heroes and villains who are bigger than life. It can be pure escapism, but there's always a mirror hiding somewhere deep down in the depths, waiting for us to look into it, often when we least expect it.

And, finally, from my own perspective as a writer, fantasy offers a welcome break from science fiction. I'm a production writer, and I produce somewhere around two million words a year. That's a lot of time in front of the keyboard (well, wearing the voice-activated headset, in my own case), and switching gears helps refresh the sense of wonder and enjoyment that keeps me writing. As any of you who have read my science fiction are undoubtedly aware, I like writing series. I like big story lines, that don't really lend themselves very well to resolution between a single set of covers. And I like to watch characters, events, and societies evolve and grow over several volumes. But maintaining the energy in a series, keeping up the writer's own interest to a level that makes new books enjoyable for his readers, requires occasional breaks. In many respects, the Bahzell novels have represented breaks for me.

At the same time, they aren't something I write only as a vacation from my "real writing." The very thing that makes them a break for me is the enjoyment I find in working on them and the different constraints and opportunities my fantasy characters face as opposed to my science fiction characters.