Fantasy author Larry Correia is fantasizing, but not the way you think. While he's at BEA, he's in a culinary state of mind. "I'm a food guy," he admits, "and I don't often get to hang out in New York. My editor, Jim Minz, used to live in Manhattan, so when I'm here, I hook up with him and we bounce around from restaurant to restaurant."

First things first, though. The creator of the bestselling Monster Hunter series is autographing galleys of Son of the Black Sword today, the first title in his new epic fantasy series, the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior.

But it won't be long before the Audie Award winner is back to work, upholding his reputation as a prolific writer averaging 10,000 words a week. After all, there's this series to deliver, with three books under contract. "I have a planned story arc for three books, about this character set in this world. But you know how it goes—you plan and then it goes a totally different way."

Correia—who grew up reading J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Brooks, Raymond Feist, and David Eddings—describes the setting of the series as "a world with rigid, brutal caste systems. The main character is a roving magical law enforcement officer from the strict central government, and he's the agent of the inquisition. When it starts, he's a bad guy in a merciless system." He adds, "It's my first epic fantasy where I'm building a world from scratch. This world is not any kind of western society."

His own world is split between writing and promoting. Since 2009, he's written, on average, two books a year, even before he quit his full-time job as an accountant two years ago. His last book was Monster Hunter Nemesis, which pubbed in August 2014. "Son of the Black Sword will be my 12th book," he says, quickly adding, "but the 13th is done. Also, I've written 24 short stories, and those are just the paying ones." Not to mention that he's a blogger with a very big social media presence, whose fans are known as the Monster Hunter Nation.

As for promoting, Correia says that his publisher, Baen, calls him its "road warrior" because he tours all over the country. He wasn't able to do BEA last year because he appeared at 13 (mostly sci-fi fan) conventions, including ComicCon (New York and Salt Lake City), GenCon, WesterCon, ConVergence, ConGregate, and ConStellation. "I will never do that many again—I could've written another book," he says, laughing. "So this year, I'm only doing six."

Today, 10:30–11:30 a.m., Correia will be signing galleys of his new book at Table 10. 

This article appeared in the May 28, 2015 edition of PW BEA Show Daily.