Patrick Rothfuss talks new Kingkiller novella The Narrow Road Between Desires

Today is a big day for The Kingkiller Chronicle: author Patrick Rothfuss is releasing his first new entry in the series in nearly a decade. No, before you blow up our comments, it isn’t The Doors of Stone, the long-awaited third novel in his trilogy. It isn’t even technically a brand new story. The Narrow Road Between Desires is an expansion on one of Rothfuss’ previously hard-to-find novellas, The Lightning Tree, about Kvothe’s Fae protégé Bast. The Narrow Road Between Desires brings a new level of detail and richness to the novella.

The Lightning Tree was originally released as part of an anthology with an all star line-up of authors called Rogues, edited by A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin and15-time Hugo Award-winning editor Gardner Dozois. That version was published the same year as Rothfuss’ Kingkiller novella The Slow Regard of Silent Things, and as it turns out, there are some surprising connections between the two. The Narrow Road Between Desires tracks a whimsical and moving day in the life of Bast, replete with more than 40 gorgeous illustrations by Nate Taylor, the same illustrator who worked on The Slow Regard of Silent Things.

I had the pleasure of speaking to Rothfuss about The Narrow Road Between Desires. We discussed never-before-revealed details about how he published the original Lightning Tree novella, why it warranted “The Slow Regard treatment,” and how he breathed new life into Bast’s story for this updated edition. And yes, we talked a little bit about The Doors of Stone.

You can watch the full spoiler-free interview below, or continue on for a mega-size written transcription of the highlights. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

DANIEL ROMAN for WinterIsComing: The Narrow Road Between Desires is the first new release in The Kingkiller Chronicle world since The Slow Regard of Silent Things, which came out in 2014. We’re gonna get into the details about The Lightning Tree in a second, since this is a reimagining of that story which you had previously written…but I wanted to start off by asking: how are you feeling with your release date for this first new installment in the series coming up?

PATRICK ROTHFUSS: I’ll give you the answer I wish I could give you, which is what I consider the Hollywood answer. Like you always see these interviews and no matter what the person is asked, it’s like, “So what was it like working on this movie?” And they’re like, “This was a dream come true! These people are my new family! I have never known love or satisfaction before working with director so-and-so.” Because God help you, if you ever imply a slightly negative thing, you will never work in this town again. You’ll be marked as a troublemaker.

Similarly…the problem is, there’s no team. So my version of that, it’s like, “Hey, so you got a new book coming out.” And what you want to hear is, “Man, I’m just so excited…to show my art to the world. I’m so proud of it. I’m so happy.” And it’s not that that’s not true. It’s that…god, I’m old and shattered and a ruined human being. And there have been times where…I was happy to put the book out, and I’m like, this is good and people get to read it and I know there are people out there that want to read a thing by me…and this is a thing by me, so then they will be happy. But it’s also hard to not think that instead of everyone being like, “Yay, a new book. Thank you.” Instead, they’re gonna be like, “Eh, this isn’t what we want,” you know? And it’s sort of like if you make dinner for your kids and you work on it all night and they’re like “You said we could have McDonald’s.”

So I’m really mixed. I am excited about it. There’s parts of it that I’m really excited about, I’m really proud of…and the illustrations Nate did and all of it. If I think about that, I get excited about that. It’s just that after more than a decade of every time, I’m like, “Here’s a cute picture of my child” on Twitter and somebody’s like, “Why are you not doing the thing I want?” I’m nothing but a human flinch now. So I wish I could be only the excitement…but I’m not as much of the flinch as I could be, so yeah…[that’s] a little good. Yeah.

DR: The original version of this story was called The Lightning Tree, and that was published the same year as The Slow Regard of Silent Things. It was in the Rogues anthology, which was edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. Can you walk me through the process for why you decided to revisit this story about Bast, from inception to how you pitched this to your publisher and then got into the actual work of reimagining it?

PR: You know…reimagining is as fair [a thing to say] as anything. I don’t know what I would call it other than that. The Lightning Tree got its start because I was invited into an anthology that was before Rogues [because] Gardner Dozois—like king of modern anthology—and Martin were teaming up to do some of these anthologies. And I had just been published a couple of years and I got invited and I said no, and it broke my heart because this was the cool kids. This was like Neil Gaiman, all of the authors I’ve either always read or like my new fancy people I’ve met once or twice at a con. And I get to hang out with these people in the anthology…and I had to say no. And I knew it was the responsible thing to do because I was working on The Wise Man’s Fear and that was behind and that was a nightmare. It was sad and scary and it was bad, because I really screwed up by not being as honest…I didn’t know what I was doing. And so I wasn’t as straightforward with my publisher as I should have been. I honestly thought [it was] mostly done, I’ll do it in a year…and I was wrong.

But so I had to say no. And I felt like a kid stuck practicing his violin when everyone else is outside, like catching frogs or I don’t know whatever kids do. And so then Rogues came around and I’m like Wise Man’s Fear is out. Now I get to hang out with the cool kids. This is my treat to myself.

And the first thing…it’s about rogues and I always want to do the different thing. So I’m like, I know there’s gonna be con men, I know there’s gonna be thieves. I know all the tropes, like I’ve lived my life in the fantasy genre. And I’m like, “What about Auri? What about a trickster rogue?” So I started writing a story about Auri, thinking that she would be a cool counterpoint to the archetype of rogue. And I started writing it, and it didn’t turn out like that…and it’s like, oh…okay…so this is a book where nothing happens and nobody talks and I don’t even know if it’s a book, and it’s certainly not a short story.

DR: Was that The Slow Regard of Silent Things?

PR: That eventually turned into Slow Regard. And I wasted a lot of time on that. And again, it wasn’t wasted overall because I love Slow Regard, and a lot of people have told me it’s their favorite thing that I’ve done or it’s the first thing of mine that they read. It has a very special place in my heart…but I was supposed to be writing a short story, not an unpublishable novel length vignette-experimental-what-the-fuck. Because I had to put a story into this anthology.

And then I’m like…oh, I’ve got the story of Laniel Young-Again. I was working on that as a novel, can I take part of it? And here’s the thing. At that point, I was torn between…I am horrible as a professional, because I know I already had a reputation of missing my deadlines and whatever. But also I know that a lot of people [were] really excited about my stuff and they wanted a story from me. And so [a tiny] part of me had the beginning of that terrible thing that ruins people where it’s like, “I bet I could just give them something out of this half finished novel that I had to lay aside. They’ll just be happy because they’re getting a Pat Rothfuss story.” And so I took a chunk [that] had a bit of an arc out of the novel that I’d started to write and then again, I’d stopped to go work on, you know, the stuff I should do. And I sent it in and George was like…”You know, I don’t think this is the story, because it kind of doesn’t have like…a beginning, a middle, an end. It kind of doesn’t do what a story does. Kind of seems like kind of the beginning of a thing…that you got…but it’s not a thing by itself.”

And for one, I’m like f***, I was so obvious. Two, I’m like, dude, he could have just said like, yeah sure. Because he doesn’t need to wait longer for another thing. He doesn’t want more work. But instead he’s like, I don’t think this is right for the anthology. And I don’t think it’s really the thing that we should put in the anthology, like it’s not a story. And I was like, okay, so I can’t pull that shit. And again, I was only thinking it [a little]. But if I had done that once, oh god, I might have tried to get away with it again and again.

It turns out I wasn’t the last one to turn my stuff in, but it felt like I was because I was past where I said I would. I’m like, “What am I gonna do?” So then I’m like, “Bast!” Everything I write with Bast is easy and fun and everyone loves Bast. And literally anything he does is gonna be rogue-like because that’s his whole deal. And so from beginning to turning in the draft, one month I wrote Lightning Tree. Which was originally called Bast’s Day, the worst title ever.

But beginning to end—and then of course, I did a copy edit later—it’s like 20,000 words. And so a finished 20,000 words for me in a month is lightning fast, ha ha ha. And that’s how Lightning Tree came to be. And George Martin really impressed me with the fact that like, he wasn’t going to take the easy way out. He was gonna actually call me on my bullshit and I really respected him for that and I still do. And as a result I got to do this story. I felt proud of it and then I moved on with my life.

DR: I enjoyed the original Lighting Tree, which I read back when the Rogues anthology first came out…but The Narrow Road Between Desires to me is a much more meaningful story. It feels like it’s something deeper than just a day in the life of Kvothe’s Fae companion, which is what the original kind of felt like. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about your process for how you approached this story. Did you intend to rework it into something with deeper meanings, with maybe some deeper implications for Bast, or did that just happen organically?

PR: Again, here’s the answer I know that I should give that would make me look cool, which is I knew that I had more to say. You know, I just knew…there were such depths that I wasn’t able to explore before I had developed my craft. Nah.

What it was is, a bunch of things have prevented me from getting some stuff published that everybody, including me—me more than anyone in a lot of ways—[wants] published. And not just the third book, but other projects. I wrote a big chunk of a novel and then I’m like, I should stop and go do something else, and now I wish I hadn’t, wish I’d finished that. The graphic novel I’ve got almost done with Nate Taylor, The Boy That Loves the Moon.

And so I’m like, it’s been so long…I really want to get a book out, you know? My publisher wouldn’t cry [either] like, “Hey, can you do your job so we can do our job and then people get to read a story?” I mean, one of the things was DAW lost its home. Like DAW is no longer with Penguin now, DAW is with Astra. And if you think that didn’t influence when we could put books out then boy, that’s a whole different story. Maybe link to an article out there because I haven’t talked about that publicly yet.

But I’m like, I wanna start getting some books out and I want [to coordinate with] the new people I’m working with, with Betsy, my editor over at Astra. And I’m like, hey, let’s get some stuff out there and let’s figure out how we work together. I wanna get back in the game. And the best way to get back in the game is probably not the immense iceberg of a conclusion to my opus or whatever fantasy monstrosity. And I thought, you know what would be easy? Nobody remembers this anthology. People don’t read anthologies. I like that story and people loved Slow Regard, which focused on a secondary character. Why don’t we give Lightning Tree the Slow Regard treatment? I’ll have Nate Taylor illustrate it. I’ll tidy up the language, I’ll write an author’s note. We put in some pictures and then there’s a thing to publish and we work on our process. I kind of get back in the swing of things. I get to publish again. And then once the wheels are spinning, I’ll keep moving forward and publishing stuff. Everybody wins and it’s easy. It’s already done. It’s a good story.

And so then, I’m like…I’m just gonna take a pass, and I’ll tidy up some of the language if anything catches my eye, and then we can officially say “author’s preferred text” or some vaguely BS-y thing like that. And instead, I added like 15,000 words and rewrote half of what was already there. And instead of “Hey, Nate, will you do me like a dozen, maybe 20 illustrations”…he did more than 45. Like all those chapter headers.

DR: I love the chapter headers. They’re some of my favorite pieces of art in the book.

PR: Poor Nate. That that came towards the end. [I kept adding ideas to them] and suddenly every chapter header is a bespoke piece of art that required several other little pieces of art. But Nate is a saint, and he killed it.

And so [then] what happened is as I was reading it, [I found places that needed to be expanded]. And I’d been thinking about the Embrils for literally years. You know, because every culture has its own fortune telling. And so I’m like, oh my god, of course, this belongs in there. But honestly, I added some things and I expanded some things and I moved some things but similarly, nothing happens in this book that didn’t happen in the other one. Like the summary of these two books is almost the same except they’re vastly different, you know?

Tolkien said I wrote this story from the beginning to the ending, and then once I knew what it was about I wrote it from the ending to the beginning. And actually I know what that’s like because I did a draft of what I used to think of as “the book,” which is Kvothe’s story. And then I went back and [had to figure out how] to turn it into books? You know, it’s way too big. And then I spent like another seven years working on Name of the Wind as the front chunk of that. [Then I had to make it] make sense all the way back to the beginning and work all these threads so that it plays out in the right way.

With Lightning Tree it was the same way. For something in an anthology, I was really proud of it, but as something that was just gonna stand on its own, I realized that I hadn’t written it [that way]. Now it feels more like a discreet thing unto itself, like Slow Regard, whereas the original Lightning Tree was okay for an anthology, but I wouldn’t have felt good with it by itself.

DR: Speaking of revisions. This is kind of a hard question, but something that jumped out at me while reading The Narrow Road Between Desires…I was talking with my wife about this literally the day before I read the book, and I always try to pay attention to synchronicities…but basically this idea that perfection is the enemy of good enough, or in terms of art, perfection is the enemy of good enough to share.

And when I read The Narrow Road Between Desires, I was surprised that there’s an element of perfectionism that almost seems to be ruminated on throughout the book. In the dedication—which is beautiful—there’s a hint of perfectionism. It’s in Bast’s character, in some ways that weren’t present in the original Lightning Tree. Even in the author’s note at the end. What do you think about this idea that perfection is almost like a capricious master that will move the goal posts on you…but as an artist, there’s also such a drive to find it. And how does that fit into your work and your view of being an artist?

PR: You know…that’s a fair question and in some ways, obviously I can’t answer it well. Or I could give a pithy answer. I could teach a seminar on it or like do a mental health panel, honestly. What’s funny that you brought it up is, I do think about it a lot because it is one of the myriad of things that kind of spikes my wheel in terms of productivity. If I care about [something] enough to want to do it, then I want to do it well.

But what is doing something well for me…the joke here, because I’ve done a charity and I’ve had people who’ve helped me, and assistants, and people I’ve worked with…and sort of the joke for a long time has been our motto should be “settling for excellence.” A lot of people say the perfect is the enemy of the good, or the perfect is the enemy of done. But it’s way too far for me to settle for good. It’s too much. If I could settle for 98% sometimes my life would get so much easier.

But if it’s important…like, for my kids, [they] don’t deserve B+ parenting, they deserve the absolute best. And if I’m making a meal for somebody, even if it’s like, I’m gonna bang together some quick ramen…this will be excellent, this will be really good quick bang together ramen. Which suddenly it’s like wait…now it is taking 20 minutes. You could have had a whole ass meal instead of just ramen. But it’s the best fast ramen you’ve ever had. And we do have the herbs from the garden and I have peeled the garlic, thank you. And there is some egg in it.

But it’s something I’ve been thinking about, and I’ve been doing some live streaming lately to kind of just get back out in the world, keep interacting with the readership. And we did one about the audiobooks and I got on with Nick Podehl and Rupert Degas, one of whom is my U.S. audiobook narrator, the other one is in the UK. And it was funny, I was just there to talk about audiobooks because it’s cool. And Rupert was like, oh, sometimes you just do it and it’s your job and you don’t care…but your books though, they stuck with me. I could tell that this was something kind of important. And to be clear, he wasn’t saying, “Some stuff I just turn the crank and I don’t care and I half ass it, but yours I really pull ass.” No, he was like, you know, sometimes you do your job but then sometimes it’s a little different. He and Nick stuck around for three hours and at one point, he’s like, “So how much do you work on this?”

And I’m like, “You know, for Name of the Wind, it depends on how you count a draft. I did have at least, like, 300 beta readers. But…probably between 400 and 700 drafts depending on how you count them.” That’s like, printed out, and not just reading through it on the screen. And he’s like, “Is it worth it?” And I’m like, [whispers] “I don’t know.”

And here’s the thing. Have you ever read a book, and it feels like they gave up part way through, the ending sucked? And you’re like, god damn it. Back in the day it was the third Matrix movie and it’s like, aw man. If I can make it better, why wouldn’t I make it better? Because when you read something of mine, I want you to feel like I really respected your time and energy. And if you spent 20 bucks on this book, I don’t want it to be shitty. I don’t know at what point I’m getting a diminishing return. At some point it does need to be taken away, there is the deadline.

And so I feel like [with The Narrow Road Between Desires], I was able to do such stuff with the language, and we got so good in the illustrations and I landed the emotional notes with Rike and Bast so much better. I feel like I did it…but also it went from being, “Oh, I’m gonna brush up the language and publish the easy thing” to like six months of intensive stuff where I brought in sensitivity readers and therapists who specialize in childhood trauma and people who understand fortune telling. And I research how like leather is made because I’m crazy, you know? But I like where it ended up.

So it’s something I am examining in myself. I’ve literally talked about [it] a couple of days ago with a couple of people, and I’ve started writing in the blog again. And I’ve said, hey, I’ve wanted to write like six blogs by now and I’ve written some of parts of them…but I’m gonna write a crappy blog for you because a crappy blog is better than a perfect blog that I do a year from now. I gotta tell you about some stuff. And so it’s a part of a series, it’s the Quest for Non-Perfection and it’s so hard for me.

This is a great example. Have you seen this? I just got this back from the printer. [Holds up a calendar.] This is the sexy Bast calendar. And I worked on it with Julia [Maddalina] and we got it done—because I wasn’t going to talk about it until we got it done—and then I’m like…it’s so good. Great, now I just have to market it…and I’m like, I care about this and it’s so good…how can I get the word out? Because I gotta market it perfect, otherwise no one will see it. And it’s like I gotta get the graphics to show it off. I gotta get the promo graphics perfect. Oh no. And so it’s everything that touches the thing that I care about needs to be good.

And so what is it, Monk, if you ever watched that show? The running joke was, “it’s a blessing…and a curse.” And so I’m trying to learn how to manage it because I don’t mind it when I do it on the book. I don’t mind it when it’s with my kids. But I should learn how to write like a 70% email, you know? That’s way more answer than I probably needed there, but yeah, that was a good question.

DR: Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I was interested to hear it because that was something I didn’t expect when I read the book that kind of jumped out of me and I was like, “There’s something interesting here.” So thank you for getting into it. I think we’ve probably got time for one more big question…

DR: My last question is whether there’s anything from the process of working on The Narrow Road Between Desires that you found helpful or think will help you in your work on The Doors of Stone? No pressure If you don’t want to talk about this. I understand people come at you all the time about book three, but I just kind of wanted to open the door if you would like to say anything relevant to that.

PR: Just being in the world again and writing again, more actively like to a purpose to get a thing out. It’s always helpful. A lot of times I write something and I’m like, well this…it doesn’t serve the story, I gotta take it out. It doesn’t go away. I put it somewhere, or I just think about it. And honestly now…you know, I didn’t create the Embrils just for this. I think about the world, I think about the characters, I think about this stuff all the time. And then there’s places for it in the book.

So in some ways, like with Slow Regard, you got to meet Auri and you learn more about her and you learn more about the Underthing and you learn more about alchemy. But so did I. And all of that enriches the world and therefore it enriches the stories that I’ll write in that world. And the same thing is true here. I got to work on more about Glammourie and Grammarie, and Faerie everything, and Bast in the town. And so that enriches the world and it all ties together. And now I have Embrils to play with as a known thing. Yeah, it all ties together.

DR: One last quick, fun question for the road! If you could have any one fictional character tell you their life story in the sort of manner that Kvothe is telling his story to Chronicler, what character would it be?

PR: Oh, that’s a good question. Man, I feel like a sellout for saying Gandalf, but I want to hear Gandalf’s mental process. Gandalf’s been around for a long time. Oh…nope, hmmm. If I had to pick between Tom Bombadil and Gandalf?

No, I’d still pick Gandalf. There’d be just a lot of chasing bees and kissing girls [for Tom Bombadil]. I’d get tired of that after a couple hundred pages.

DR: Patrick, thank you so, so much for your time. It’s been such an honor to speak with you. Just like you said that it’s nice to be back writing in this world, it is a pleasure to be back reading in this world. I hope people enjoy it.

PR: Well, and thank you. I know you have some more to ask and you’re very gracious to let me sort of talk myself out. If you wanna have me back, we can do part two and we can get to some of the stuff you didn’t get to ask. Thank you so much.

An enormous thank you to Patrick Rothfuss for stopping by the site to discuss The Narrow Road Between Desires and his work! You can watch the uncut version of this interview on the WinterIsComing YouTube channel.

If you enjoyed this interview, you can also catch Patrick Rothfuss in conversation with various authors and other creatives on his Twitch channel, where he’s been running a discussion series during the lead-up to the release of The Narrow Road Between Desires. The launch party stream for the book goes down today, November 14 at 6:00 p.m. CST.

The Narrow Road Between Desires is out today from DAW Books, wherever books are sold.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels