Sam Smith answers a few questions about himself and his upcoming book, The Green Ember.

I love what C.S. Lewis called “dressed animal” stories. He loved them and kids usually do too, if they haven’t been talked out of them. One thinks of Lewis’s well-known statement about children getting “too mature” for fairy tales. “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

He’s using Kickstarter to presell the book and generate buzz. Watch for it this Friday.