Creating a world is a slow process

Patrick Rothfuss was well aware that the natives were growing restless.

"I had somebody come up to me in a Pizza Hut and ask me where the hell the second book was," he says.

But the author, who spent nine contented years as an undergraduate in his native Wisconsin, is clearly not a guy who will be hurried.

It took him seven years to write The Name of the Wind, the acclaimed best-seller that was the first installment in his projected fantasy trilogy, The Kingkiller Chronicles.

The sequel, The Wise Man's Fear, came out this week. Four years later.

Yes, Rothfuss, 37, is taking his own sweet time unfolding the tale of his hero, Kvothe (pronounced Quothe).

But the wait has been worth it.

Writes noted fantasy critic Paul Goat Allen on BN.com: "I have never read anything so totally immersive - and audaciously innovative - as Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle. The saga of Kvothe is nothing short of a timeless, towering masterwork."

Rothfuss' narrative wheel is not only slow, it grinds exceedingly fine.

The 700-page Name of the Wind barely took Kvothe into his teens. The nearly 1,000 page The Wise Man's Fear advances him only a few years further.

"I know better than to read reviews but I do it anyway," says the scruffy scribe. "Somebody described my pacing as 'glacial.' I wasn't thrilled, but I think they meant it in a not entirely unflattering way."

At this point, it probably won't surprise you to learn that Kvothe's slow-cook progress is intentional.

"I'm a fan of books that are almost languorous in their storytelling," Rothfuss says. "That is a little bit lost sometimes in the modern media that we have."

It isn't the books' lengths as much as it is the writer's meticulous work habits that make for such a sporadic publishing schedule.

"I'm obsessive. That's the word for me. I obsess - perhaps to the point where it's moderately dysfunctional," he says, laughing.

"I tend to put a book through about 100 revisions. If anything, that's an understatement. If there's another author out there who does this sort of revision, I would really like to meet him. Maybe we could form some sort of support group," he says, laughing robustly again.

Rothfuss has invested the Four Corners world of The Kingkiller Chronicles with remarkably rich and intricate detail, right down to its music, its myths, its currencies and its colloquialisms.

He's always been a bit of a pedant. Asked how his parents would describe him as a boy, he states, "My mom would have said precocious. My dad might say snotty. But they're talking about the same thing.

"My mom once lost track of me at the zoo and when she found me I was lecturing a man about the difference between dromedary and Bactrian camels. I was about 31/2."

Born in Madison, Wis., Rothfuss went to college and still resides in Stevens Point, a small city about halfway between Oshkosh and Wausau.

Back when he was a perennial and penurious student, he wrote the passage that sparked his wayfarers-and-wizardry epic.

Here is how Rothfuss' legendary adventurer introduced himself:

"My name is Kvothe . . . I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during the day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep."

"That was the first piece of the book I ever wrote," he recalls. "I sat down at a computer, not even my computer. I didn't have a computer. I couldn't afford one back then. When I wrote that I kind of knew where the character was coming from."

Much has changed in the intervening 17 years.

At one point, early in the interview, he calls a timeout while he moves to another extension.

"We have a new baby," he says of himself and his longtime partner Sarah. "And the phone is one of his toys. Turns out, drool is not good for the device."

The success of The Name of the Wind was more life-altering than fatherhood.

"Going from a pretty happy slacker to a professional writer was a shock," he says. "It's always been kind of weird finding out that people like it as much as they do because for a decade, the only people that liked the book were people that I had given the [manuscript] to. Personally put a copy in their hands. Suddenly, people I've never met are talking about it it. Even people in other countries. It's a little surreal.

"A couple of weeks before the book came out, my agent called and asked, 'Would you mind if Jerry called you?' I said, 'I guess not. Who's Jerry?' He said, 'Jerry is your film agent.' I said. 'I have a film agent?' "

With his sequel just hitting the shelves, you know Rothfuss is dreading the question, but it's hard to resist asking: When can we expect the third installment?

"I know better than to make any wild statements about when it will be done. I've learned that lesson in spades," he says. "I can say it will be years."

In the meantime, Kvothe will have to wait.