The release of The Orc King marks the 20th anniversary of your beloved character, Drizzt Do'Urden—back on center stage for the first time since the No. New York Times bestseller The Two Swords. How was writing Drizzt in this book different from when you first began writing him 20 years ago?

R. A. Salvatore: Obviously Drizzt is a character I've come to know intimately. I've watched him grow, after all, and seen the last 20 years of his experiences up close. When I first created Drizzt, I used broad strokes to subtly flesh him out—particularly through the first three books. Then, in the Dark Elf Trilogy, I drilled deeper into those formative experiences that had led to this guy we've come to know. Since that point, I've been walking a road with Drizzt, through all these years and adventures; it's almost like I'm learning as he's learning, I'm growing as he's growing. His progression has been "real," because it mirrors my own, and by progression, I mean my understanding of life and love and relationships and what's important and what you just think is important, and all the rest of it.

Long-time fans are clamoring to read The Orc King. But the book also has great appeal to first-time readers who may not be familiar with The Forgotten Realms or Drizzt. How did you work to meet the needs of both audiences?

RAS: J.R.R. Tolkien was my first fantasy love and I rightly credit his work with inspiring me, but a better model for what I'm doing with the Drizzt books would be Sherlock Holmes or James Bond. Each book in this series has a beginning, a middle, and an end, though that end will often lead to the next logical journey/adventure or will only partially resolve the current one. I pick up readers with every book and haven't heard too many complaints about people becoming lost. It's a balancing act, and if I do it correctly, not only will a reader get an enjoyable few hours with the story, but he or she will be compelled to go back and follow the previous adventures of these characters.

You've been known to talk about how technology has influenced your modern-day writing. For example, message boards, you've said, have led you to include more adverbs and attribution. In what other ways would you say that your process has evolved from when you first began writing?

RAS: Wow, too many to list, certainly, and probably a whole bunch of things that I'm doing now of which I'm hardly, if at all, aware. It became apparent to me that absent attribution of dialogue, readers would get confused, and that subtle sarcasm was often lost upon many of my (particularly) younger readers. Rather than get imperious and overblown about it, I sat back and wondered why. I found my answers in watching my own teenage kids blasting around through a series of discussions (simultaneously) on some instant messenger program.

That was truly a moment of epiphany for me. It would be so easy to roll my eyes and blame the reader, and decry modern education or too much television or bad parenting or lead in the paint, or whatever else might make me feel better about myself. The truth of it is that I witnessed my kids processing and responding to information and conversation at a speed far surpassing anything I might attempt. The trade-off for that speed is subtlety. Instant message conversations and message board flame wars include, with every bit of dialogue, attribution. And without the proper emoticon—the smiley face, the frowning face—sarcasm (since we're not talking about face-to-face communication here) becomes insult. Kids are more isolated today, but at the same time they're more social; that's the paradox of the Internet. Kids are much more ignorant of the non-verbal cues that direct the intent of conversations. I expect keyboards with emoticon pads any day now, and books with smiley faces won't be far behind. Please understand, that's not a value judgment!

So other than those obvious and deliberate shifts (the road to hell is no longer paved with adverbs? I think it's always been paved with obscure references that serve no better purpose than to prop up the ego of the writer and the few people who get them, anyway), I would say that the biggest changes involve the depth of character and the passage of time. When I first started writing, it never occurred to me how long five years truly might be. I've had friends move away and drift out of my life, and it is amazing to me how different things are when you meet up with them a few years down the road. That paradoxical perspective of past, present and future has taken on new meanings in my work, particularly when I'm talking about a group of characters who have been walking along their respective roads for 20 years now.

If Drizzt were around today, how would he see our world?

RAS: He would be disappointed. He would see true challenges being shuffled aside because they're too threatening and cheaper gratification being sought in all the wrong places. On a more personal level, he would probably be infused with great hope, tempered by the reality that the human condition, the fear of change, the roots in tradition will always mean 19 steps back for every 20 steps forward. Frustratingly slow, I'd say, even for a dark elf who might live 800 years.

The Orc King is the first book in your new trilogy. Without giving any spoilers, what can fans expect of the new Transitions series?

RAS: They can expect a wild journey of three separate adventures, and at the end of the ride, they will look back and say "wow" as they truly realize and digest the changes that have come into the lives of Drizzt and his companions.