We caught up with Maguire (pictured, via Andy Newman) to talk about the lengthy writing process that went into this work and his thoughts on creating fantasy fiction. The highlights follow below…

Q: Describe your writing and research process for the concluding title in the Wicked series, Out of Oz.
A: It’s very interesting for Out of Oz, the fourth in a series of four books. It’s 500 pages long and the three books, lined up together, that precede it are 1000 pages. So in order to research for that, I had first to read all three books over again. While I did that, I took notes of what happened. So, I have about a 32-page synopsis of those three books in which every single scene; what happens and what’s important to the scenes is written in the first person. Even within a scene, if there’s a line break showing a different time or a different place in the world I make note of that with everyone so I know where every character is at every point.

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Happy National Poetry Month! Roald Dahl‘s prose will soon grace breakfast tables in the UK, but here’s a taste of his poetic side.

We’ve dug up this video of Timothy West and Prunella Scales reading Dahl’s version of Cinderella from his poetry collection, Revolting Rhymes. It also features illustrations by Quentin Blake.

What Dahl quote would you like to see on a cereal box?

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