Dinner with Janny Wurts

This past Saturday night I arranged a dinner meeting with a favorite fantasy fiction author of mine, Janny Wurts. Janny brought Don Maitz, her husband and I flew Michael Gentry up from Virginia to join in a discussion about her work being introduced to interactive fiction within the confines of Textfyre.

Janny is extraordinary and if you doubt me, take a look at her website and review her artwork. Then I highly recommend that if you haven’t already, or if maybe you stopped short of reading through all of her books, that you should read every single word she’s written. Seriously, Janny writes as if every word is a first born child, every sentence as if it were her blood, and every character is drawn directly from her heart and soul. Even if you stumble through the complexity and density of her prose, trust me when I say that the payoffs are profound and worth every minute of your time.

During our dinner she pulled out The Paravian Sketchbook and Mike and I were floored. This sketchbook contains pencil drawings of various settings within the world of Athera and are some of the most detailed and beautiful artworks I have ever seen. I’ve been to the Vatican. the Louvre, and various other European galleries and Janny’s artistry can easily be described as brilliant.

Eventually we discussed how Janny might become involved in Textfyre, but before too long we had to call it a night. Even so, we had a great conversation and there’s hope that Janny will bring her brilliance, in part or whole, to helping Textfyre create great games.