From the article:
It takes a few moments of calculation, but Ed Greenwood is confident when he comes back on the line. "The one on my computer right now," he says from his farmhouse near Cobourg, Ont., "is book 164." Greenwood, 43, who writes fantasy novels and guides to role-playing games, can't remember a time when he wasn't endlessly scribbling. (He writes even while posing for photographs, and in one year crafted 11 books.) The stepson of noted children's writer Barbara Greenwood, he was inventing sequels to his favourite stories by age 7. When he was 16, Greenwood found the instructions to a role-playing game inadequate, so he wrote his own and sent them to the manufacturers. Their acceptance of the changes led to a trade magazine column, and by 1979 he was dispensing advice to other game players through an alter ego, a wizard called Elminster.
In that persona, Greenwood began to write game-playing guides, and geographical and historical backgrounders for his fantasy realms. In addition, he writes novels about Elminster, and other characters. He also attends conventions as the wizard, "a dark-bearded version of Gandalf, with a fake British accent, eccentric and crotchety." Elminster, in fact, can be "terribly annoying," Greenwood cheerfully admits in his travesty of an upper-class-twit voice, but "some years he brings in astonishing amounts of money." Like 1994, when Elminster: The Making of a Mage -- a fat hardcover novel Greenwood wrote in just 16 days -- sold out its 75,000 print run between Boxing Day and New Year's Eve.
Until last year, Greenwood also worked full-time as a Toronto library clerk, cramming regular shifts, lengthy commutes and four hours of writing into his day. "But," he laughs, "I got Sundays off." When it's suggested that a mere four hours daily hardly seems enough time to produce his prodigious output, Greenwood responds, "Oh, but I could get in 14 to 16 hours on a Sunday." Didn't he say he had Sundays off? A puzzled silence is followed by dawning enlightenment in author and interviewer both. "Off work," Greenwood clarifies. Even now he works part-time at the public library in nearby Port Hope. "I like meeting people," he says. "Anyone who comes through the library door is a potential book character."
