Pruning

He's a funny bloke in person, Glen, although he always comes across as quite grumpy in interviews. He said once that he got more writing done when working full time than when he retired from his day job.

I've read interviews where he said he mentally worked on stories mostly during his long commute. He'd arrive home with the ideas in his head and get them down on paper. His schedule was fixed then - his commute was unchanging and he could nothing useful but mentally write during it. I suppose that at home he many distractions and less of a fixed schedule.

He also used to allow fans to hang at his house (because he was in the "WOW! I'VE GOT FANS?!?!" stage of writing) but stopped when fans stole from his writings, including the only copy he had of his porn novel and the only copy of a mostly finished (but put away because it wasn't sold) manuscript.

The guy does come off a bit of curmudgeon, but he also once shared an office with Fritz Leiber before the auto plants days. Fritz Leiber was the one who told him not map out his world (as Tolkien had done) but leave it a blant page until he needed a new part. Cook explained how he didn't listen to that for the Dread Empire books, and sudden'y the only way the characters could escape was through impassable mountains. He took that advice for the Black Company novels, which is why there are only fan made maps of that world.

Liked his Garrett, PI series, but he hasn't put out a new story in probably 5 years so I guess that series might be done.

He's just done a new Black Company book. I bought a couple of books off him at Worldcon (he has or used to have a book selling business), and he was a lovely man. Very polite and softly spoken.