What I can say is that I'd never heard of Abercrombie, Bakker, Morgan or any of the other writers lumped (or sometimes not lumped) into this supposed race to the bottom.

I would be very surprised to find that other writers were doing what has been suggested - but I've been very surprised before. here I can only speak for myself since I have observed that my writing process is very very different to many other authors. Thirdly, many of these comment carry the implication that this 'darkness' is some calculated and commercial tactic that authors enter into after close study of current trends to milk the public. It just wasn't interesting to me to write that. If I had then I doubt anyone would have published it, but since I was writing without any thought for publication I had complete liberty to do so. I could write something infinitely more dark with no effort.

Secondly there's the implication that I tried to be as dark as possible and Prince of Thorns was the result. Firstly I've never felt my work to be particularly dark and it seems that the bulk of my readership agree with me.

Dark darker darkest