Good day, Janet.  Please tell us a bit about yourself..

I'm Janet Morris, writer, novelist, long-term strategic planner, and analyst. My writing and editing spans fiction and nonfiction, including papers, articles, op/eds, novels (from science fiction and historicals to simply "novels") and short fiction and non-fiction.

Your first novel, High Couch of Silistra, was published in 1977. Tell us about that sale. It must have been a great feeling.

I wrote the first three Silistra books for my own enjoyment. I knew no one in publishing. A friend said they thought it should be published and sent High Couch to Perry Knowlton of Curtis Brown, Ltd.  Perry called me a few months later and said he loved it and would represent it and me. I was shocked. Perry represented me for the next fifteen years. Fred Pohl bought High Couch and the two sequels, and commissioned a fourth Silistra book. This allowed me to write full time.

Since then you have published over 20 novels, some co-authored with your husband, Chris. Which has been your best seller? Do you have a favorite, and why? 

My favorite books are not necessarily the best-sellers. I loved High Couch, and it had 4 million in print when Carnelian Throne, the fourth in the series, was about to be published, according to Bantam then. Many books have done well. My favorites of all are "I, the Sun," a biographical novel about Suppiluliumas of Hatti at the time of the Amarna pharoahs in Egypt and The Sacred Band, the newest in the Sacred Band of Stepsons series.

You were part of the original Thieves’ World books, first published in 1979. From the series came the popular Tempus and the Sacred Band of Stepsons. Tell us about Tempus and the history behind the Sacred Band.

Tempus is my all-time favorite character; he's been with me for thirty years. The Sacred Band of Thebes and Herakleitos of Ephesos were the historical basis for these stories. Tempus and his Sacred Band of Stepsons needed more room than they had in Thieves' World(R), so we wrote a series of novels: Beyond Sanctuary, Beyond the Veil, Beyond Wizardwall -- all of which got hard-covers and were SFBC selections. Then we wrote three more (the 'Beyond' trilogy): City at the Edge of Time, Tempus Unbound, and Storm Seed and collected the five original TW Stepsons stories, plus nine new and rare Sacred Band tales, in Tempus (with his right-side companion Niko).