Wielding a Red Sword (44 page)

Just about this time, my right shoulder began bothering me chronically. It hurts when I stretch or reach too far. We’ll check with the doctor when we have time, but meanwhile it is progressive and worrisome. I have lost partial use of both knees, and it doesn’t please me to have the same thing happen to a shoulder. I’m still doing my exercises, such as the chins on the study rafter, but it is now painful to get my grip, and I can’t descend all the way. I still do thirty, operating in the restricted range, but, if the shoulder gets worse, that exercise may be denied me. Since I have always felt that the end of my physical exercise program will mark the beginning of the end of my life, this is not a minor matter to me. I now do seventy-five Japanese pushups in under four minutes, sometimes under 3:30; my best time is 3:03, beating the time that evoked the kidney stone in
Pale Horse
by more than a minute. I hate doing them, but I would hate even more to have to give them up. My runs are slowing, too, and I am no longer able to break 21 minutes for three miles, or 22, and usually can’t break 23. I am minded of the line from W.B. Yeats: “The hour of the waning of love is upon us.” I love my physical fitness, perhaps the
final relic of my youth, and I feel the hour of the waning of it. I fear that even the Ping-Pong will be ended by this particular incapacity. Well, I’m past fifty now; the war against age and death is one that every person is fated to lose. But I am conscious of a significant loss, right at this time.

In one week in this same period, I addressed three different school classes. I don’t like taking the time, but I do support education, so I give these local talks when requested. One was to Penny’s college-level English class, and Penny took our brand new video camera and recorded me, as I think I mentioned in Part I of this Note. By coincidence, it was in the homeroom of a different teacher (the school fire jumbled these things)—one who had angrily told her classes that “Piers Anthony is wrong.” That dated from a prior address I had given, when I had stated “You no more need to know the names of the parts of speech in order to use the English language correctly than you need to know the names of the muscles and ligaments of the legs in order to walk correctly.” I was once an English teacher, you see, and I take exception to much of what is currently being taught. I believe that less effort should be expended on irrelevant material like parts of speech, and more on relevant material like how to balance a checkbook or understand mortgage interest—things a person could use in today’s world. So I repeated my statement—and this time received applause for it. Of course the teacher who objects to my attitude was not there; I did take the trouble to greet her when she arrived. I am not, of course, wrong. Another presentation was for a selected group in a different school in the county, the attendees being students who were fans of mine. But the challenge was the third, to a second grade class. The youngest fan I have had a letter from was eight years old; these were in the seven-year-old range, and none of them had read any of my books, but they were interested in writing. They were doing books of their own, as a class project. I wanted to be sure not to overshoot their level of interest, so I told them about how the baby ogre in
Crewel Lye
foiled the dragon and about the monster-under-the-bed, and these were things they related to.
Then they had an Author’s Reception with refreshments they had prepared, so it became a social occasion. I think it was a success. That, too, is on the videotape. Certainly it was an interesting experience. But this sort of thing does take time, and is one of the reasons I failed to complete this novel within the two-month period I had allotted.

And in this period the question of a motion picture option was settled. In 1984, interest in the Xanth series developed, stipulating a payment of $300,000 for each novel made into a movie, with the possibility of using all nine Xanth novels. But there was also interest in Germany for cartoon adaptation for the first three Xanths, for $500,000. Which was the better bet? The American deal might peter out after the first novel, so was not necessarily better, and of course there was no telling what quality of movie might be made. We pondered, and finally gambled on the American deal, and I signed the option contract. Time passed, and finally it was apparent that the option was not going to be exercised. So it goes.

This was also the time of the Sharon/
Time
magazine and Westmoreland/CBS libel suits, both resolved some-what indecisively, as wars often are. Freedom of the press—I believe in it, but it does get abused, and I think it is best that an accounting be made periodically. And on a lighter note, this was the time when the war between men and women erupted on a new front. Ann Landers conducted a survey and reported that 72% of her women would rather be cuddled than have sex. Furor followed. Mike Royko conducted a hilarious counter-survey, getting the men’s side of it. I, of course, have a fairminded solution: let the women wear placards bearing the numbers 72 or 28 so that the men can make more informed decisions about dating, marriage, etc. Any man who prefers Cuddles can probably have her. The divorce rate might drop precipitously. Not to mention the marriage rate. (And to think they call me a sexist!)

And Bantam Books ran a five-page promotional ad in various periodicals, showing reproductions of bestseller lists with their books thereon. But Anthony got shown five times in that ad for the Del Rey novels
On a Pale Horse and Bearing an Hourglass
, the first two volumes
in this series. I’m sure Del Rey joins me in thanking Bantam for the free publicity.

I typed a record 125 letters in the month of Jamboree, and in FeBlueberry I had a manuscript and a book to read and blurb, sent by two publishers with whom I am not doing business, and another expected from a third publisher. No, this is professional courtesy; I do for other writers what other writers did for me when I was in need, though I am a slow reader and it takes me days to get through a book. But about the letters: most of them were cards, as I have become adept at reducing my responses to that length, though each remains individual. Most other writers, I understand, do not bother to answer their mail; certainly I could save a lot of time if I did not. But those are living, feeling people out there, and I feel that they deserve answers, so as long as I can, I am answering. I have no secretary; I bash them out, with typos, strikeovers, and all, on my manual typewriter. (The computer printer can’t handle cards.) By going wholesale to the card format, I have managed to keep up.

One day I received fifty letters: forty-four in a package from Del Rey, six from elsewhere. Next day I typed thirty cards, and the following day twenty mixed cards and letters, and the third day, seven, saving the complicated ones for last. Only then did I get back to work on
Sword
. But you know, I don’t suffer from Writer’s Block, while many other writers do. I can not prove this, but it is my suspicion that those writers who are callous about social responsibilities, so do not answer letters, also tend to be callous about their business commitments: correspondence and books. If this is true, it is poetic justice. At any rate, I believe I write about as many letters and as much fiction as anyone in the genre, and I would like to think the two are linked. There are those who have called me naïve about this sort of thing, though.

And you know, those letters can be interesting. Let me give a couple of examples, positive and negative. One letter in that bunch of fifty informed me that a fan had
named her prize colt after me: Piers Anthony Jacob. She says he is the prettiest horse alive. That seems only natural to me. I have asked the publisher whether we can run a picture of that horse on the back flap of this book. Might as well improve that aspect of the volume, after all. Another letter, received as I worked on this Note, is anonymous—no name or address, so I can’t answer it. I regard anonymous missives as fair game, so I’ll quote excerpts here: “It is becoming abundantly clear that your endless, thoroughly boring rants, diatribes and dissertations ‘justifying’ (through the many scenes you have depicting them) violent, humiliating [undecipherable word here] and soul-destroying sexual assaults against women are just thinly (very!) disguised versions of apologiae of the same sorts of assaults on children of either sex.” It contines in similar vein, psychoanalyzing me and concluding that I am trying to expiate guilt for similar things done to me as a child, and finishes: “Do you
really
want the whole world to remember you as ‘Piers Anthony, the Battered Child’?” No novel of mine is named; those familiar with my work are free to make their own conjectures about the accuracy of this charge. Yes, I answer this kind of mail too, when able, though I am not as polite as I am to more positive fans. But as you can see, my mail is not boring.

In FeBlueberry it slacked off, with only thirty-nine letters, but the books-to-be-blurbed took up what slack there might have been. Still, by the end of the month I was two days from completing the editing of the novel. The editing consists of reading it through on the screen, printing out my bracket-notes relating to other projects, deleting both bracket notes and marginal symbols (I have special macros to facilitate that, such as one that locates and highlights all the material between the next set of brackets, so I can check it before deleting it), correcting my own typos and spelling errors (yes, we have a spelling-checker program, but it’s easier to do it myself), revising awkward sentences, and adding new material where required. This editing replaces the second and submission-draft typings I used to do and takes about a quarter the time. So I knew I would wrap it up just a couple of days into Marsh.

And on Marsh oneth (1th) came a package from Del Rey Books containing eighty-six fan letters dating back to Jamboree and Dismember. I should have known that if I used Ogre Months I’d get ogrish mail! There was nothing to do but read them (which alone took about six hours) and answer them (six days). So by the end of the Seventh I had answered eighty-seven of those eighty-six letters. (Apparently they were starting to reproduce in the package.) Then I got on the letters that had come in separately. As I type this paragraph, which is being inserted in the middle of this text, I have done 102 letters, as of the Ninth. This novel has been delayed that week. I think the pace is about to slack off, maybe, I hope. But this feels very like a war!

Again, I hear someone muttering: why do I bother? Why not call it quits and stick to my paying work? Or perhaps answer only the most serious ones and let the others go. Ah, yes, I hear the siren song of expediency. I understand that only two writers in the genre answer large volumes of mail personally; the other is Isaac Asimov. But again, I know of only two who never suffer Writer’s Block, and the other is Isaac Asimov. My Antiblock Theory gains credence.

But let’s consider some of these letters individually. Perhaps some are dispensable. Two from this last bunch were from people who are confined long-term by accident or illness and use my books to ease their solitude and pain. It seems that mine have better effect in this respect than those of most other writers. In the past I had letters from a young man who used my books to divert his mind from the unpleasantness of chemotherapy for cancer. Another in the present group is from an oncology (cancer) nurse who thanks me for taking death seriously in
On a Pale Horse
. Ignore these letters? I just can not; they must be answered.

Well, some of the others, then. Yet they evoke startling bits of individual personality. There is the lady who announces that I have stolen her
heart
. The righteously indignant teenager who isn’t sending me any PUNS. (You see, most of these are in response to
Crewel Lye
, just published, whose brief Note explains that Xanth is no
longer in the market for puns. That didn’t stop a number of fans from sending me full pages of them.) The mother who thanks Xanth for doing what nothing else did—hooking her learning-disabled son on reading. (I raised an LD daughter; I understand about this sort of thing.) The coed who was hooked on Xanth by her boyfriend; she gave up the boyfriend but remained addicted to Anthony and, when my novels ran out, she had to get into Donaldson, Eddings, Moorcock, and McCaffrey. (Those other writers may not realize how much of their success is thus owed to me …) The man who brings up seeming inconsistencies in my novels, then proffers intelligent explanations for these that I can use to fend off other critics. The one who wishes to covert me to Jesus. (I am apt to refer these well-meaning people to my three-part novel
Tarot
, which is perhaps cruel. The point is, I am not agnostic from ignorance, but from preference; I suspect I have done more research on religion than most.) The young woman who begins: “I’m 19 yrs. old + I don’t want to be a writer. I want to be an editor.” (That one popped my eyes open! But why not? Editing is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.) The man who met a college professor of mine and relays that professor’s regards to me—along with the news that the professor is dead. (I hadn’t realized, so this was a jolt. That prof had been my counselor; I remember him with preternatural clarity.) The woman who relates somewhat graphically her experience in being assaulted by a masked male who put a gun to her head, and her thoughts on death and
On a Pale Horse
. And from the interim mail: a “fan” letter in the form of a fan, that opens out to reveal the writing. And an invitation to a convention, that I turned down, as usual. Which of these do I file without answering?

Well, why not cut off the repeats? Answer each fan once, and not again? Two considerations, there. First, I have found that a kind of universal inverse ratio applies, so that only about half of the first-timers respond again, and only half of the second-timers, and so on, so that the correspondence tends to damp out. That enables me to keep it down without actually having to cut people off, and I prefer that method. Second, some of those fans have
excellent continuing input, and an arbitrary limit would be unfortunate. Third, (my difficulty in keeping count has been noted before) there are special cases.