You guys know David B. Coe? I've seen his books around for a while now, but I haven't been able to crack on yet. I've just read a quite interesting interview with him, though, and maybe I'll have to finally give him a try. He's promoting a new book called The Horsemen's Gambit, which is the second book in his Blood of the Southlands trilogy.

What interests me in the interview is that he seems to have a similar approach to combining serious "real world" elements with his fantastic stories. Take this question and answer, for example...

Q) Race, prejudice, ethnic identity -- That all sounds pretty familiar. Is Blood of the Southlands set in a created world or our own?

DBC) It's definitely a created world, but as with all my work, Blood of the Southlands touches on issues of great importance in what we call, for lack of a better term, the "real" world. My LonTobyn series [Children of Amarid, The Outlanders, Eagle-Sage] touched on ecological themes. Winds of the Forelands and Blood of the Southlands deal with race. I have another project that I'm working on that focuses on drug addiction. I write books that I hope will entertain. I strive to make them fun -- as I said, there's lots of action and intrigue, romance and even humor. But they also deal with serious issues that resonate with social concerns in our own lives. I do this because I find it more interesting to write books that grapple with big questions. And if some of my readers come away from the books thinking about race or ecology or substance issues in a new way, all the better.

The whole interview is here.

Take a look. He certainly seems like a nice guy, and he's living the full-time fantasy writer's dream. That's always a good thing to read about!

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