With a Tangled Skein (48 page)

The only thing worse than being with other people, who picked on me physically and emotionally, was being alone. I would imagine that it was all one interminable bad dream and that eventually I would wake up and be back in England, the land of happiness. But it never happened, and in time I accepted the fact that I was in America to stay. There is a direct adaptation of this in my three-volume novel Tarot: a day in the life of an eight-year-old boy. It is literal. I retain an interest in Hell, as is evident in this novel. Skein. When I was wet and shivering in my bed in New England, my feet so cold they felt hot, I decided that if Hell was hot, I had noTear of going there,

There is no need to detail all of it, though there is a great deal more. I have, I trust, presented enough to show that my early life was not perfect, and that the realm of imagination seemed to have more to offer me than did reality. In this, I believe, was the root of my later passion for writing. How much better to organize my worlds of imagination so as to make them meet my needs more completely! To come to terms with the monsters that first pursued me and discover the joys that lay beyond. A popular song played on the radio while I worked on this novel, one line going, "My dream is real; reality is wrong." Oh, yes.

I finally discovered reading, progressing in a bound from exclusion to complete inclusion in the world of print. Suddenly I was in The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade, a novel of the Middle Ages written in 1869, about three hundred thousand words long. It took me months to get through it, but I read every word faithfully, and I lived in that world, and was desolate when it ended. Later I got into reading fantasy and science fiction, and there were worlds galore for me to romp in. I read slowly but deeply-to this day I am a slow reader-and tuned out all the world around me in favor of the universe perceived through the window of the printed page, sometimes to the annoyance of others who thought I was being perverse. But I needed that other universe; in a certain respect I owe my sanity to it, for it helped me to survive the rigors of the real world. I had no solid emotional place to stand in reality; the fantastic genre provided me with my anchorage. And so it was perhaps inevitable that I become a creature of that genre, as I am today. Piers Anthony is my strength; it is a pseudonym, but more of my reality is associated with it now than with my mundane identity. I was always a nonentity in Mundania, and remain so, but in fantasy I am a figure of consequence.

Perhaps ironically, my mundane existence has improved steadily since my teenage years and is a good one today by any standard. I have been married more than a quarter-century, have two bright and healthy daughters, and a pleasant lifestyle. Of course, much of this is runoff from my success in fantasy, for it is mundane money I receive for my fantastic efforts. But even the course of an improving life does not necessarily flow smoothly. I have shown the foundation of my need to write; of course it also helps to have some reasonable intelligence and creativity and perseverance and luck, and these have helped me. But I feel in one major respect I came at my career via the monkey's paw.

"The Monkey's Paw" is a famous story by W. W. Jacobs in which a couple is granted three wishes on a monkey's paw, but each wish is granted in a manner that makes it horrible. They wish for money-and their son is killed, so that the benefit comes to them. They wish him alive again, and the corpse reanimates and approaches. At last they wish him dead again, and are left with nothing.

Well, the mundane world gave me a wife, but I wanted more; I wanted to be a successful writer. It was an unrealistic ambition; only one in a hundred who make the effort ever breaks into professional print. But for eight years I kept trying. Our first child miscarried at four months and was stillborn; that was not only a personal loss, it eliminated my exemption from the military draft, so that, before my first year of marriage was done, I was in the U.S. Army. Our second baby was stillborn at five months, at the time when I declined to sign up for the U.S. Savings Bond program. (As I recall, they then paid 2.5 percent interest), and was therefore removed as instructor and set to weed-pulling and similar duties, as well as being denied promotion beyond PFC. It was also the time when I was naturalized as an American citizen; in the final courtroom ceremony there were forty-nine Army wives and me. That event made the local TV news in Oklahoma; you don't see too many PPCs in uniform getting naturalized. I also had my first science fiction story accepted, by a magazine edited by Damon Knight-which folded before payment or publication, washing me out.

Back in civilian life, our third baby was born prematurely at six months, lived one hour, and died the day I lost my good job at an electronics company and had a doctor advise me that the mysterious fatigue I suffered was all in my head. One day in May 1962, and much of my mundane world was lost, again. It looked as if we would never be able to have a child of our own, my ability to earn a living was shot, and I was in serious doubt about my health, for I knew that my physical condition was not imaginary. It actually was ten years before it was diagnosed as diabetes; in the interim I was ridered on insurance for all mental diseases. No joke-and it wasn't funny at the time. One company tried to jack up my premium to almost double in addition to the rider; now I once sold insurance, so I know that was blatantly unethical, if not illegal.

So we lost three babies, and each loss was associated with dramatic and generally negative changes in our married life. But after that Day in May we gradually reorganized. My wife went to work, so as to earn our living while I made a more serious effort to become a writer- by putting my full time into it, instead of writing on the side. In that year I succeeded; I sold my first two stories. I was on my way at last-but I never would have had the chance, had any of those first three babies lived. There was the monkey's paw. My wife had to be free to work, and our expenses had to be low; a child would have nullified that. I would never have sacrificed my babies, had I known, had I had any way to save them-yet their loss enabled me to achieve my ambition. Thus it was that I became a writer, by the devious and often unkind machination of Fate. Motive had at last been joined by opportunity. That sort of thing, too, is reflected in this novel.

So I had become a writer. Even then, the devious route had problems and surprises. I couldn't earn a living on stories; the word-rates were too low and editors too fickle. So I moved into novels, and it was a struggle, because short fiction was my natural length. It wasn't until I sold my fifth novel, Macroscope-actually the ninth I had written, and it had been rejected by five publishers, for book editors are fickle too-that I felt comfortable in that length. Then I liked it well, and I gave up on stories; today I have had more novels published than stories, which is unusual for a story writer.

But by then I had trouble in Parnassus: a publisher was taking in money for subsidiary rights but neither reporting them on the statements nor paying me my share. I protested in a private letter-and got summarily blacklisted. I protested privately to a writers' organization-which tunneled my letter on to the publisher and advised me that I had acted rashly and might be guilty of libel.

There were other complications, but the upshot was that I got a lawyer, got most of my money, lost several publishers because of blacklisting, and departed in deep disgust from that writers' organization, which was evidently operating under false pretenses. I damn well did have the right of the case and detest such dishonesty. After that, times were lean for me, as a writer; my success fell behind that of others who had come into the picture when I did, and I piled up a total of eight unpublished novels even as my name was deleted from contention for awards. Parnassus is no kinder than the U.S. Army to those who stand on their rights, and Satan smiles.

But I had not lost all my publishers. I survived, though my income from writing was not great. My wife continued to work. Another writer showed me how to sell novels from summaries, rather than writing them complete; that meant that instead of selling part of what I wrote, I wrote only what sold. That one change in marketing caused my income to triple. Meanwhile editors were shifting about, publishers were buying each other out, and most of those who blacklisted me went elsewhere. Markets reopened. I can't say this was because the establishment had any change of heart; Parnassus, like dictators, doesn't admit error. Mainly it was that I never gave up and I now had an agent to help fight the war. It's harder for a publisher to blacklist an agent, because he represents a number of writers, some of whom are important enough to have clout. My leverage had improved.

Two of the editors I had worked with on stories moved into books: Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey. They remained interested in my work. But there was a problem;

I was writing my science fiction for Avon, who had always treated me well, and Avon had the option. That is, in the vernacular, they had first dibs on my next novel in the genre. So-I expanded into a "new" genre, one I had had little success with before: fantasy. It was a purely tactical move, to take advantage of a new market. Avon was generous enough to agree to this, with the understanding that if Del Rey (technically that imprint didn't exist then, but let's not quibble) did not like my fantasy, Avon would have the next crack at it. But Lester did like it, and thus I came to write A Spell for Chameleon. It wasn't perfect, either in summary or in manuscript, but I had the fortune to encounter in Lester an editor who knew what he was doing. That, unfortunately, is rare in Parnassus. I revised the novel per his advice, and it was published.

I had the additional fortune to encounter in Judy-Lynn an executive who knew what she was doing; that, too, is rare, but it manifests in the type of presentation, promotion, and sales push novels get, and this can make an enormous difference. Spell took off like magic. It won the August Derleth Fantasy Award in England, where they evidently hadn't gotten word about my bad reputation. A leading American genre newspaper got sudden amnesia and failed to list the August Derleth awards that year, and of course Spell took no American awards. But it became one of my most commercial novels, and the Xanth series it commenced has about as many fans as any.

In this manner I discovered that I liked fantasy. Oh, I had always liked it as a reader; it just hadn't scored for me before as a writer. Now I found that it was easy and fun to write, and the readers liked it too. There was then developing a high tide in fantasy, fostered in significant part by Del Rey, and I just happened to get into it in time to surf my way to the top-through no initial effort of strategy or timing of my own. Chance put me into it-or, if you prefer. Fate. Once I was in, of course, I was quick enough to capitalize on my situation. Thus by this devious and seemingly coincidental route my serious career in fantasy proceeded. My income tripled again . . . and again. I now have a better career in fantasy than I had dreamed of as a writer; reality has surpassed imagination. One series led to another. And that, roughly, is how I came to write this present novel. Skein. It is not the path I would have chosen, but it got me here. For those who tell me they would like to be just like me and write fantasy the way I do, I pose this question: do you really? Then go fetch your monkey's paw.

Reality has a way of weaving itself into my fiction, whether I will or no. I had many notes for minor examples of this for this novel, but I fear they would become tedious in detail, so I'll go into detail on only one. There are several major themes that recur in my novels that critics seem to be unable to perceive, such as the value of integrity or my effort to merge the city (science fiction) with the country (fantasy). These themes have complex personal bases that I may unravel at another time; there is a good deal more on my mind than simple entertainment, though I do feel that clarity and entertainment are paramount in fiction. I normally write on more than one level. The top level is like the conscious mind, concerned with immediacies; the reader can buzz through and enjoy it without stretching his mind. The nether level gets into symbolism and feeling and meaning and theme; it puts on record my world view, for those who care to examine it. As far as I know, no critic has ever perceived this level in my fiction, but many of my readers seem to grasp it, and, of course, it is for them I write.

One of my major themes relates to music. I believe that man is most fundamentally distinguished from animal by his art, and an aspect of that art is music. I believe in the power of music, as I believe in the power of the word. At critical junctures in my novels you will find music, right back to the first one I had published, Chthon, which shows a quest for a broken song and the effort to make it whole again; and Macroscope, where music is the key to the mystery of the universe; and right on into my fantasy series, this one included. The heart of my feeling is in song. I try to name the particular song I have in mind, because I want the reader to hear the music too, and share my experience. You saw it in Pale Horse in the hymn scene, and the hint of it in Hourglass as Orlene commits suicide by her piano. (Did you note Orlene's honey-hair, the same as Niobe's? Do you really suppose that's coincidence?) You will see it in Red Sword, when a stutterer leams to sing, and emphatically in Green Mother, when Gaea sings with Satan-and falls in love.

And of course you see it here. The song that starts Skein is not identified in the text. It is The Bonnie Boy, and the recording I have of it is sung by the Irish lass Mary 0'Hara. It tells the story as I have it in the first three chapters, the romance of a young woman and a bonnie boy, and its tragic end. Of course I have embellished it somewhat-but if you like my story, perhaps you will also like the song. I don't know whether that record can still be purchased. It is Songs of Erin, on the London label; I bought it in New York in 1959.