Frank has written more fantasy than anything else, so we asked him, “Why write fantasy?”

So what’s so special about fantasy?

For me, above all else, fantasy is highly imaginative, literally magical both to write and to read. To paraphrase Elton John, ‘It’s as if something unknown had come into your life.’; According to Neil Gaimon, all fiction is fantasy. I would modify this slightly to say that all fiction that contains an element of magic is fantasy. Fantasy, in its own inimitable way, while not factual must read as if it is true. To paraphrase GK Chesterton, fantasy is more than true not because it tells us that demons exist but because it tells us that demons can be defeated.

Fantasy demands a lot of imagination from both writer and reader.  Epic fantasy creates a whole imaginary world, with rules of its own, yet obeying fundamental “immutable” principles.   I wonder if the intellectual interest of writing fantasy derives from two things: the breadth of creativity needed to create an entirely novel world, with all of its governments, rules, wars, different peoples, with their histories, and the creative freedom that comes from putting believable characters into such a challenging setting.

Hey – let me invite you to click here take a peep at some brilliant artistic creations by the artist, and my friend, Mark Salwowski, illustrating some characters and some of the action from the Three Powers epic fantasy series.

Click here to view the artwork