"Well, the landscape here in Paradise Valley in Montana where I live has had a huge impact on what I've written. I don't think that I could have written the Inheritance Trilogy if I had lived in a different area, or if I had written it, it would have been completely different.

"When I look out my window I see this fantastic landscape of the Beartooth mountains, which are just extraordinary, and they provide constant inspiration for me. I hike and climb and spend a lot of time outdoors, and what I see and what I feel and all the observations I make when I'm outside, inform my writing, they really do inspire me."

"And I don't think that you can just imagine these things just out of thin air, you have to actually be out in the forest and smell the trees and feel the moss under your feet and know what that's like in order to describe it properly."

"Many of the characters that readers were introduced to in book 1, Eragon, return in Eldest, some don't, for various reasons, but readers can also expect to encounter a whole array of new characters, lots of new elves and dwarves, and there's even a red dragon, which appears on the cover of the second book. And if readers keep their eyes open they may even see another weird cat lurking around in the corners of the story."