Beth asked Patricia C. Wrede:

Which book was the most fun to write?

Patricia C. Wrede SORCERY AND CECELIA, hands down. It started as a game - Caroline and Even near the end, it was more a general sense that the characters' adventures were coming to a close and we needed to start wrapping up loose ends than it was a definite "This is nearly the end of a book." We didn't actually decide it was a book until we'd finished the game and started looking at the huge pile of letters we'd accumulated.

What that meant, for both of us, I think, is that while we were writing the letters, we both felt we had complete freedom to just throw in something off-the-wall, without worrying about how it fit into the plot or where the story was going. I've played other letter games that petered out in the middle (though at least one generated a character that the author pulled out and used in a novel); this was the only one that had enough plot and underlying structure to end up a novel without a ton of additional work.

We did need to make some revisions, of course. I believe we rearranged a couple of letters to make the timing of events work better, and then each wrote one more to make the changes fit, but we didn't have to mess with the actual plot or the contents of the letters much.

So yes, SORCERY AND CECELIA was definitely the most fun, because it was a game. Also, I only had to write half of it.

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