Parry scripted the wedding ceremony as carefully as he had the three visions; it was to be a splendid occasion. He set it up in Hell's most elegant chamber, very like a cathedral. There were arches and stained glass, and seats for the major Incarnations, all of whom were invited.
Having ascertained that Heaven had improved its operations somewhat in recent centuries, he orchestrated a mass release of souls: all those who had earned their salvation but had hesitated to depart the mock-Heaven annex. That should please Orb, and he wanted very much to please her. Those souls were organized into a massive choir; as they sang, they could come to him and be freed in glows of light.
There was to be an audience, too: all the relatives and friends of the bride, from all her walks of life. These included those who were dead; he had made arrangements with Gabriel for their temporary release from Heaven. The Angel had of course cooperated, knowing what was to occur. The same was true of the other Incarnations, who had caught on. Only Orb herself was innocent, as perhaps was fitting.
The key to the ceremony was to be two songs: Orb's and his own. The songs were to be the final keys to their love for each other. Orb did not realize how literally true that was to be.
She sang the Song of Evening, which was also the Completion of Love. It was perhaps the most evocative rendition of such a melody ever performed by a mortal, for not only was she the finest female singer, enhanced by magic; she was truly in love. The entire assembly responded to that feeling, and so did he, reveling in the delight of the free recognition of her love for him, and his love for her. All present knew that there was no way that he could match this presentation.
But he could. He was the finest male singer, and he had more than just love to express. He sang the one type of song that was forbidden to him: a hymn to God. Never mind that God was not listening, and perhaps was not worthy; the wedding party understood its significance. This was the supreme act of sacrifice: the one way Satan himself could prove himself worthy. As he sang, the choir of undamned souls joined him, and flocked to him, enhancing his music, and were released to Heaven.
Orb stared at him, gradually realizing that her belief in his falsity was in error; that he truly did love her. He sang directly to her as he concluded. Now all the souls were gone, and his own body was being destroyed by the power he had invoked. He went out, literally, in flame.
He had sung himself knowingly into his doom. He had given up his existence as an Incarnation, that she might know, at the end, that his love had been true. He would never possess her, and he had lost his challenge to God, but he had done what he had to do.
He found himself in a kind of Limbo. It was not the outer circle of Hell, but some special region evidently reserved for fallen Incarnations. There were flames, but he was hardly aware of them, for none carried the intensity of the flame of his lost love.
He was damned, of course; he would never be free of Hell. He had spent more than seven hundred years as the Incarnation of Evil. He had known at the outset that there would be no reprieve. Another person would assume the vacated Office, and perhaps in some future century would need assistance and would bring Parry out to serve. That was all he had to hope for. Yet he did not regret it.
He had loved twice: once in life, and once as an Incarnation. His demise abolished neither of these loves. His second love had not replaced his first; it had merely joined it. His feeling for Jolie now returned as strongly as it had been in life, without conflicting with his feeling for Orb. He hoped that Jolie could be at last released to Heaven, and that Orb would come to accept his necessary desertion of her at the altar. He hoped, too, that somehow the mortal suffering he had sought to abbreviate would be brought to an end despite his defection. He had been the Master of Evil, and by definition what he had done was wrong; but it had also been right, because of God's dereliction. He felt no shame in being damned for that.
He hovered indefinitely, alone. This was evidently to be the manner of his punishment: to be conscious and isolated, never to know how things progressed in the mortal and immortal realms. It was a terrible onus—but his love sustained him. No punishment could make him regret what he had done.
Then someone came. His nebulous prison assumed the form of a cell, and he became a man in chains. Some other mind was shaping his situation.
It was Orb. She came as the Incarnation of Nature, as Gaea, the Green Mother. Even Hell could not exclude her, when she chose. She was lovely in the fashion only she could be, and assured in a manner he had not observed when he courted her. Background melody surrounded her an aspect of the Llano he had not known of before, that evidently opened the way before her wherever she chose to go. She had come into the authority of her office.
He was powerless to move or even to speak. This, too, it seemed, was part of his punishment. All he could do was gaze at her. That was enough.
She approached him and took his hand, wordlessly. Her contact was like tender fire. She lifted his hand and touched the spot of blood on his wrist.
Now he cried in sudden alarm. But he could neither voice it nor resist.
Orb took the drop of blood from him and dropped his hand.
His wrist was bare.
She departed, and his cell dissolved into the formlessness of its natural state. Only one thing had changed: he no longer had Jolie.
Why had Orb done it? She could not have harbored any jealousy toward his first love; Jolie was long dead, and he, too, was dead now. Yet perhaps this, too, was right. Jolie could not reside in Hell. Perhaps Orb had freed her for Heaven.
Abruptly he was in a loud, bright chamber. He did not know how much time had passed; part of the Hell of Limbo was its timelessness. But he recognized this place: it was the main banquet hall, where occasional entertaining was performed. Hell had very little use for such facilities other than as a mechanism to tempt potential converts: mortals with evil inclinations but as yet insufficient evil actions. A little temptation could go a long way to evoke their latent evil and cause it to manifest in ways that clarified their status promptly. Evil had to be proven in a mortal; it could not simply be assumed. Parry had developed reasonably sophisticated routines to prove it.
He stood before a fat, middle-aged slob of a man, the refuse of whose repast lay strewn all around. But a subtle kind of grandeur suffused him, too, and Parry recognized it as the stigmatum of immortality. This was the new Incarnation of Evil.
"Say, now, it worked!" the man exclaimed, wiping a smear of gravy from his mouth. "You're the has-been Satan!"
Parry nodded. "I am he."
"Listen, I need to know the spell for controlling demons," the man said.
Parry did not answer.
"Look, schnook, I know you know it! Out with it."
"It is a thing you must discover for yourself," Parry said.
"You had it pretty easy these last three weeks. I can put you in some real fires, really toast your toes, know what I mean? But I'll let you off easy if you tell me that spell."
"No."
"Dammit, that turd Ozzy what's-his-name don't pay any attention to what I tell him. What do you want for that spell?"
"It is not for sale," Parry said.
The man gazed appraisingly at him. "Let me 'splain something', mac. When you bugged out, the office fell on the most evil mortal in the world. I got it. I was on death row for the one they caught me on, five-year-old nymphet whose head I had to bash in 'fore she'd be quiet and let me finish, and then she didn't die quite soon enough and she fingered me. My bad luck. But I'm not choosy; I can make a grown man hurt as bad as a child. It's a real thrill in the crotch, makin' some freak scream that way. I've been catching on to the ropes here, makin' the damned souls scream. They hurt as bad as live folk, would you believe, and they can scream a lot longer before poopin' out. I really like it here! But your Lucifer won't give me the time of day, and neither will Mephis-what's-his-name, and that creature Nefer-titties spat in my face. I need that spell! What's your price?"
Parry turned away.
"Then roast, bugbrain!" the man screamed.
Parry was abruptly in the flames. They hurt terribly, but did not actually burn him because he could not be physically damaged here. No one could; pain and humiliation were all that Hell offered. He bore it; he had no alternative.
Certainly he was not going to give that child-torturing slob the secret! Such a monster might be evil, but he was no good for the running of Hell. He was evidently spending all his time gorging and torturing, not even trying to organize Hell or see to any larger purpose.
Yet despite his current agony. Parry had some satisfaction. Ozymandias and Lucifer and Mephistopheles refused to cooperate with the new Incarnation, and Nefertiti had spit in his face! Of course their attitude was routine; every new Incarnation had to earn his place. Still, it had been good to hear.
But still his major strength was in his love. He had given up his office for love of Orb, and he would do it again, though he burn in the flames forever! While his mind was on her, he did not feel the flames. He only hoped that the other Incarnations would be able to prevent his replacement from doing too much harm.
Another figure came. This time the flames did not abate. Parry took this as a signal that this was not an official visit.
It turned out to be a spider, swinging on an invisible thread. The flames did not seem to affect it.
Only one spider could penetrate here: Fate. Parry tried to speak, but could not. Neither could he move. It seemed that only when he was brought out by the current Incarnation of Evil could he talk or act.
The spider formed into Niobe. "Found you at last, son-in-law," she whispered. "He hid you well, but you have friends among the damned souls, and they told me."
What was she doing here? Why should she have searched him out? He could not ask.
"As you may know, your successor is not a nice person," Niobe said. "We have learned something about you. The demoness is one of ours now, and she explained some things, and JHVH volunteered some things, and our recent experience confirmed them."
So he was to be stripped of his remaining secrets, too! Yet Niobe was not the type to gloat. This excursion had to be risky for her. What was her purpose?
"My daughter loves you, and she is your wife," Niobe continued. "So there does seem to be a certain familial obligation. There can never be a true union between the Incarnations of Evil and of Nature, but mere may be another way. The others of us have concluded that we would prefer to deal with the old, familiar Evil, rather than the new and ugly one. Of course none of us would care to state such a thing openly."
What was she saying? Parry hardly dared to believe!
"And I would not care to have this repeated, but there is a question in some of our minds whether the one we serve is, well, paying attention. We have operated on the assumption that He who is Good remained disengaged because He was honoring the Covenant, while He who is Evil violated the Covenant freely. Therefore we redressed that inequity by siding with the honorable one. But now we are uncertain. There is a certain interpretation that would reverse some implications."
She shrugged. "At any rate, the trial period for your successor is drawing to a close, and he has not found the spell he needs. He is apt to be replaced by another just as bad, unless...
Unless Parry resumed the Office! He alone of the former Incarnations of Evil could do that, because he had not yet yielded his life and become a damned soul.
Niobe left her thought unfinished, knowing that he understood. But she had a qualification. "Yet a person needs to be in an appropriate situation to assume an office. If he were, for example, lost or mute, he would be unable to step in before the office sought the greatest evil it could find. It seems that the Office of Evil may be either grasped by the one who seeks it or will drift to the most evil. The applicant who is closest to the one who releases the Office has the first chance. Therefore it is important that an aspirant not be incapacitated at the key moment."
She was right. The Office had to be grasped at the moment it became available, or it would be lost. He had Lilah's guidance the first time, so had seized it without quite knowing the significance. He could not do so from the incommunicado confines of this dungeon.
"So I have brought a thread to lead you out," Niobe said after a pause, to let him think it through. She stretched out an invisible line. "Follow it, and—"
"Ha! Caught you, old bag!" the Incarnation cried, appearing between them. "I may be finished, but he'll never profit by it!" He struck at her with a flaming pitchfork.
Niobe became the spider, and the spider vanished. She was an Incarnation, but this was Hell, and she could not oppose the Incarnation of this domain.
"And now you, pinhead!" the Incarnation cried, turning on Parry. "You'll never get out!"
Magic flared, and Parry was carried away, helpless. The Incarnation had not learned the demon-banishing spell, but he had evidently picked up some of the lesser magic. Parry drifted through swirling smoke for what seemed like an eternity before coming to rest in a stifling environment.
He seemed to be in an aspect of chaos. Apparently the Incarnation had discovered how to incorporate a bit of the Void in Hell, and buried him in it. He knew Parry could not escape it. The Incarnation was evil and ugly, but he had a certain cunning about his own survival.
The thread had been lost. The Incarnation had struck at the key moment, allowing Parry the torture of dawning hope irredeemably destroyed. He would never find his way out in time now!
Yet it was not a total loss. Though he would not resume his office, he had the comfort of the knowledge that the other Incarnations had a change of heart about him, and that Niobe herself accepted his status as husband to Orb. It was a meaningless marriage, destined never to be consummated, yet that acceptance buoyed him immeasurably. Perhaps he had, in his downfall, accomplished part of what he sought: to gain some improvement in the processing of good and evil from souls, minimizing the suffering of the mortals involved.
It could have been a second or a century, but it seemed closer to the former. Another visitor came to him. This one was neither woman nor spider, but rather a nebulous form reminiscent of the nature of the Void. It overlapped him, and then he recognized it.
Nox! The Incarnation of Night, she who knew all secrets and preserved most of them. Parry had not known she could navigate chaos, but it made a certain sense in retrospect. She was closest of all the Incarnations to that state herself.
"Here is what you lost."
Something touched his hand. Then the ineffable presence departed.
Parry considered what she had brought him. It was an almost invisibly thin line of a web, the kind a spider might spin. What had caused Nox to take the trouble to bring such a thing to him? What could be her purpose? She was aloof from most mortal and immortal concerns, and her business with him, by her own assessment, remained unfinished. Yet she had not chosen to complete it now.
Then he understood:
It was the thread!
He followed it. The thing was silken, perceptible only because he was attuned to it, hardly more than a thought. But it led through the swirling randomness, even as Fate's thread had guided Niobe through the Void. It was the single aspect of diminished entropy in his vicinity. He followed its essentially uphill guidance.
As he made progress through chaos, some anomalous formulations occurred. There were shapes of objects in no particular order of classification. The outline of a rock drawn in pastel, a squashed beer can, the curve of a naked woman's hip, the stem of a rose, a crooked ray of starlight, the left eye of a harpy, a sprouting grain of wheat, one drop of rain, a purpling bruise on the shoulder of a rabbit, a torn page of a calendar marking Friday the thirteenth. He passed it all, diverted by none of it, following the thread.
Then land appeared, a shore, and he was swimming in a disgustingly polluted stream. It was the River Acheron, the waters of woe that coursed around much of Hell proper, having no true egress. But it was familiar; now he knew approximately where he was.
He landed near the station of the three Judges, and there they were, dispensing the justice of the infernal region to arriving souls, classifying the difficult cases. Minos, formerly King of Crete, who had the Minotaur, the terrible offspring of his wife's passion for a bull. Rhadamanthus, his brother, noted for his fairness. Aeacus, formerly the King of Pydlia, noted for his piety. They were good judges, and Parry had left them in place, extending their authority.
Parry could not return to Hell proper with out passing by the Judges; he himself had organized Hell this way, so that no damned souls escaped proper classification. Some who came to Hell were actually destined for Heaven, and the Judges had unerringly identified these and assigned them to mock Heaven until they were willing to travel on. Most of them had done so, at the time of Parry's wedding ceremony, but more souls arrived constantly, and the business of the Judges was never finished.
They could not fail to recognize him, no matter what form he assumed, for the Judges read not the physical appearance but the soul. If they turned him in...
He joined the line of souls, and followed it gradually to its head.
Minos glanced at him. His gaze paused momentarily, then moved on, as if there were nothing out of the ordinary. "Pass to Limbo," he said tersely.
They were not giving him away! Parry passed on, as if he were one of the regular damned souls.
He came next to Cerberus, the three-headed dog he had assigned to be the guardian of the main gate. It had been some centuries since he had contact with the huge beast, and since the Judges passed him, he should be able to walk by without challenge, unrecognized.
"Ha!"
It was the Incarnation again. The cunning slob had been watching the main entrance, just in case.
"After him, dawg—destroy him!" the Incarnation cried.
Cerberus, not knowing any better, obeyed the voice of authority. He launched himself at Parry.
Now Parry wished the dog had remembered him! He had to escape—and that was no easy thing to do. Cerberus could not kill him, of course, but he could tear Parry's apparent body to bits, and it would be a day before those bits reformed. That could be too long; the Incarnation was near the end of his trial period, and could be ousted at any point. If Parry wasn't ready—
Parry dived back into the River Acheron. Cerberus followed, intent on his prey. One head watched above the surface, another looked back, and the third plunged under the surface to watch there, too. He was a good strong swimmer; in a moment he would overhaul Parry and chomp him.
Parry changed into a dirty brown fish. Now he had camouflage to match his environment, and was able to outswim the dog.
"Ob, no, you don't!" the Incarnation screamed from the bank. "I'll take you out if it's the last thing I do, you wait!"
He leaped into the water himself, and became a great while shark.
This was bad news! Parry had not realized that the Incarnation had learned shape-changing. It was not difficult, in Hell, for one in authority; he just had trusted that the Incarnation would have spent too much time in gorging himself and raping child souls to master it. Perhaps someone had provided the Incarnation with good advice, just as Lilah had for Parry in the early days. There were always damned souls eager to gain preferred treatment by pleasing the Master. Hell was hardly the place for honor or principle.
The shark was gaining on him, and its teeth were ready. He could not escape it by diving low, and it would be useless to remain on the surface. He would have to change form.
But there was a problem here, because it took proper concentration to change form, and his body would stop swimming for a moment while he did it. The shark was now so close that it would snap him up at the first pause. Also, he would have to change to some form that could handle the water, or else launch into the air as a bug—and the Incarnation would simply change, too, and continue the pursuit. Because Parry now had the effective status of a damned soul, he could not match the Incarnation in direct combat; his strength, agility and speed would be less even if the forms were identical.
But he could change to some similar type and size of fish with little pause, and the water was as good a way to travel through Hell as any. If he could just slip away into some bypath, so that the Incarnation would lose him...
No, suddenly he had a better idea! He could lead the Incarnation into a special trap, and settle the matter immediately. He surely had a better notion of the river channels than the Incarnation did, for Parry had dictated their courses. He had inherited a Hell that was archaically and inconsistently organized, and seen to its improvement; even though he had not paid much attention to such details in centuries, he knew as much as he needed to.
He shifted to a slimmer, faster form of fish, and began to gain. Here in the polluted water that was enchanted to prevent damned souls from fleeing Hell, conjuring magic did not work well; that was why Parry could not escape that way, and why the Incarnation could not banish him back to the Void. They had to settle matters right here.
The Incarnation saw this, and modified his own form. He became a slimmer, faster shark. He began to gain again. He was probably enjoying the chase, believing that the end was inevitable. After all, there was nowhere within the confines of Hell that any soul could escape the Incarnation of Evil.
But Parry knew where he was going. He dodged and turned, staying just ahead of the shark's jaws, then abruptly swerved into a tributary stream.
This was the Phlegethon, the River of Fire. Flames hovered over its surface, and its waters were boiling hot. But even as he entered. Parry modified to the form of a firefish, which thrived in such heat. The Incarnation, caught by surprise, paused, then did likewise, simply copying Parry's form.
That strategy would enable the Incarnation to follow him anywhere, and the Incarnation's greater strength would ensure a closing of the gap between them. But Parry had gained a critical bit of time. Perhaps more important, he had established that he had to be closely followed, and by a like form, or he would escape. That would gain him a reprieve, but not victory; the Incarnation would simply reorient on his soul and chase him down again, like a cat playing with a mouse. Assuming the Incarnation had mastered the soul-tracing magic. If by chance he had not—
He looped swiftly back, swimming downstream and giving the Incarnation the temporary slip. But in a moment the other fish was back on his trail. Obviously the Incarnation had a lock on his identity, and could sniff him out anywhere. So much for that faint hope.
He reentered the Acheron, modifying his fish form again. The Incarnation followed, matching both course and detail.
Then Parry dodged into the Kokytus, the frozen river. He modified his form to handle the cold, becoming a small ice fish. The Incarnation did likewise, hardly losing time.
This time Parry did not double back. He forged upstream, under the ice, dodging boulders in the water, trying to hide in the tricky nether currents. But the Incarnation was not to be deceived. He followed every bypath, coming steadily closer. There could be no escape into the headwaters, for Parry would be slowed, or he would have to change form and leave the river, and would be caught when he tried.
As he swam, he made a spell. It was a quiet one that did not affect his form or his nature, and he hoped it went unnoticed. This was the critical stage; if the Incarnation caught on to where Parry was leading, or what the effect would be, or how to nullify it as Parry had just done, then all would be lost. But the Incarnation lacked experience in Hell; Parry was counting on that.
Abruptly he swam into a new tributary, one whose waters were not frozen. He intensified his spell, though the effort slowed him.
The Incarnation followed, his jaws opening. Once he caught hold. Parry would not be able to escape. They both knew that. This was the finale.
Then the Incarnation slowed, seeming dazed. He began to swim aimlessly. He moved to the side to nibble at a succulent bit of vegetation.
Was it a ruse? Or was it the finish? It would soon enough be evident.
Parry reversed, and swam downriver. There was no pursuit. He came to the River Kokytus needing no further modification for the cold. He swam all the way back down to the River Acheron before venturing to the shore and changing back to his human form.
He climbed to the bank. "I, Satan, reclaim My office," he proclaimed. He felt the power returning to him. He had been in time. He was once more the Incarnation of Evil.
He conjured himself to the center of Hell. Ozymandias looked up from his desk. "My Lord, You have returned," he said respectfully, as if it were a routine occurrence. "But if I may inquire—?"
"I led him into the River Lethe," Parry explained. "I used a spell to protect myself from its property of forgetfulness. It may be that he did not know that spell, or realize where he was."
"That may be," Ozymandias agreed. "Have You new orders, Satan?"
"Revert to My standing ones," Parry said. "Whatever damage the usurper has done, reverse it."
"As You wish." Then, slowly, Ozymandias smiled. He was glad to have the old order back.
Thanks to the help of Niobe and Nox, Parry was back in office. That was a considerable gratification—yet there was emptiness, too, for he knew that his change in circumstance could not restore to him his love. He had lost both Jolie and Orb; that had been understood when the other Incarnations helped him to recover. He had a mission to accomplish, and he would try his best, knowing the others would give no further quarter and expected none. But he would have traded it all for the other. Indeed, had traded it all for the other, one month ago.
After a busy day of reorganizing and reestablishing. Parry retired alone. He did not need sleep, but he hoped to obtain some anyway. Perhaps it would help dull the emptiness.
Then someone came to him. He realized immediately that it was an undamned soul, for it shone in a manner no damned soul could. How had it been admitted to Hell? The guardians should not have permitted it, and Ozymandias would never have authorized it. Only another Incarnation could—
The figure came close. It was a woman of shapely proportion. "Parry," she said.
What? He recognized that voice! Yet it was impossible.
She drew off her hood, showing her honey hair, and then her face. Her eyes were gray-green.
Parry stared, for a moment too amazed to speak.
"Yes, it is I," Jolie said. "I have returned to you, my love."
"But—I married another—I thought—"
Her expression changed. "Parry, you know that Gaea can never have a relationship with Satan, though she be technically married to him. That marriage must remain unconsummated, so that there is no question of undue influence. But there is no need for my marriage to you to be so. I love you as she does. Will you accept me back?"
He got up and enfolded her. "Oh, Jolie, yes! I thought you were forever lost. I do still love you—but I love her, too. If you can accept that—"
"I can accept that," she said, and kissed him.
For a moment his mind wandered, piecing out what had happened. Things fell abruptly together. Orb had taken the drop of blood containing Jolie's soul. Jolie could animate a living body, if given leave by the host of the body. There was only one person who would know that, and who would give that leave. One who loved him as Jolie did, and could not come to him. One whom he could never possess, because they were forever on opposite sides.
"But I can stay only the night," Jolie said. "And not every night. And it must be secret. A tryst others do not know about."
"A tryst," he agreed. "And—when you leave Me—if you would convey My thanks to the one whose body you borrow for what she—"
"She knows." For that time only the voice was that of an Incarnation. But the love in it was unchanged.
He kissed her once more, knowing that he had been doubly blessed. He would never be lonely again.
I expect to address three types of readers in this novel. One is the person who has not read the prior five novels in this series, and perhaps has not heard of me before. For that one I need to have a story that stands pretty much by itself and is not confusing. Since this novel refers back to many episodes covered in the prior novels, shown from other viewpoints, this means I must cover those scenes adequately so that there are not gaps. I have tried to do that. Another type of reader is the one who has read some of the prior volumes but not recently; that one needs refreshment of key elements without undue repetition. I have tried to do that too. The third reader is the one who saved up all the prior volumes and has just read them rapidly in order, hitting this one fully primed with all the details fresh. For that one I should avoid repetition, because it would be wasting his time. That proved to be impossible to do. So I did what I deem to be the next best thing: I show those scenes from a fresh viewpoint, and evoke new interpretations of their significance. I realize that critics, who seem to exist on wormwood, will castigate me for supposedly running out of inspiration and copying from myself, but I hope that my real readers will bear with me on the necessary and often difficult compromises I have made. The mortal realm is rife with compromise.
This is the sixth and penultimate Incarnations of Immortality novel. The subject of the final one, And Eternity, may be surmised, but its approach will differ. I had originally planned on just five, but realized as I worked through them that the story was not going to be complete, so extended it. I have already been accused of doing it just for the money. Well, it is true there is money involved, and a pretty penny too; it is also true that I earn my living by my writing, and would go broke if I did not get paid for it. I am not sure why a writer should be condemned for making money when others are not. The question should be whether the money is made in a licit and socially positive manner. I remind readers of Samuel Johnson's remark on the subject: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."
As I have mentioned in prior Notes, I have no belief in the supernatural. These novels are unabashed fantasy. Some of you have written to object to my atheism. I do not treat such letters kindly, because I am not an atheist. I am an agnostic: one who has not come to a conclusion about the validity of the existing theories of Deity and Afterlife. I regard them as unproven, and I feel free to represent them in my fiction in whatever manner is condusive to the narration of an entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking story. In short, I am having fun, and I hope that my readers are too.
But as I have also mentioned, there seems to be suspicious coincidence occurring as I write these novels. #1 concerned Death, and death impinged on my life. #2 related to Time, and I had my worst time-squeeze of recent years. #3 was about Fate, and I described the devious route that brought me to this series. #4 was War, and warlike matters intruded, even threatening the publication of the novel. #5 was Nature, and I felt that impact too. This one is Evil, and hang on, because the curse is still viable.
You might assume that Satan would not be pleased by an expose of his nature, since he uses deceit to forward his cause. Therefore Satan would do his best to interfere with the writing of a novel like this. This seems to have been the case, because I encountered a horrendous sequence of interferences. Some were funny; some were tragic. Let me see if I can cover this without becoming tedious.
Circumstances of a unique nature caused me to sign contracts for eight new fantasy novels at a time when I had intended to be working in science fiction, horror and a major historical project. The SF and horror had to be postponed, to my regret, but I refused to do that with the historical effort. So I undertook to catch up on the fantasy, and the historical, and certain other projects (a collaborative novel, a rework of an old unpublished novel, and some stories) in the course of three years. With the computer it is feasible, but I knew I would have to step right along.
Step along I did. This is actually the fifth novel I'm completing in this calendar year, which, along with the stories, mean about 600,000 words aggregate. That's as much as I've ever done in a single year, and more than I hope to do in any future year, because I am jammed up against the limit of what I can do without compromising the standards I maintain. There are those who assume that a prolific writer must be a hack: that is, one who churns out anything he can sell, just to keep the pot boiling. Perhaps some writers are; I am not. I care about every project I'm in, and I have changed publishers more than once when their editors interfered unduly with my text. I do not claim to be the best writer extant, merely one who is doing the best he can with his talent, situation and creative/ethical needs. I don't like to be crowded in my writing.
I allowed three months for Evil: OctOgre, NoRemember and DisMember, 1986. I started on schedule. But as it happened, I had gotten crowded in my computer, so was expanding my system's capacity. I doubled its memory to 512 K, and its storage to 20 MB. Don't worry about the figures if you are not into computers; just accept that they are solid ones in the middle range of such things. But we discovered that my operating system could not address either of these new totals. I could not use much more than I had before—unless I changed operating systems.
Back in the fourth novel of this series I discussed the two major operating systems this computer can use. One I likened to an old retired seaman, Captain Manager, known colloquially as CP/M, who maintained a sixteen-storey (as he spells it) apartment building, each floor of which could house a nice apartment complex. He called the occupants "users" and provided well for their individual tastes, as long as they paid their rentals. The other I likened to a somewhat prim lady, Ms Dos, also called MS-DOS, who distrusted apartment buildings and preferred to maintain an intricate garden through which passed many paths. People could reside along these paths, each having his own personal access and directory of his flowers. I happened to be with the Captain, and did not try Ms Dos because she lacked a feature I liked, called MAINT, that made file housekeeping easy.
But now it was tune to make the change, because while the Captain had not renovated his building in years and refused to cater to my need for greater memory and storage, Ms Dos promised to be more accommodating. So, not without trepidation, I moved out of my comfortable apartments on the lower floors and went to the Garden. My wife and daughters, satisfied with the building, remained on their upper storeys; they had no large files to process. Thus I left my family behind, though my wife did keep a certain eye on me from the window. Ms Dos, though prim by day, seems young and healthy; you never can tell.
But you don't just step from one operating system to another. Ms Dos and the Captain hardly recognized each other's programs. I had to get new software to function in the Garden. That proved to be more complicated than anticipated, and it was one of the things that slowed progress on this novel. For this is my first novel on DOS, and all the tribulations of learning occurred here.
Remember how I had to go to Finland for my keyboard, because I use a modified Dvorak that could not be generated on my American keyboard? I moved to the Finnish keyboard and reconfigured that, thanks to my wife's expertise. Well, I got Smartkey for DOS, but when I invoked the Finnish keyboard it glitched. I had to strike each key twice to make it register. My wife had no such problem. It turned out, after trial and error, that this is a phenomenon that occurs only in DOS, with the Finnish keyboard, with Smartkey. Eliminate any one of those three, and things are normal. I don't know why this effect exists, and doubt that anyone else does; I'm the only one ornery enough to go to Finland just to get my capital V's and W's. "You know," I told my wife, "the Swedish keyboard is identical to the Finnish keyboard, except for some markings on the surfaces of the physical keys that would have no bearing on this. But, just in case—'' And would you believe, the interference was gone on the Swedish keyboard. Everything worked perfectly. Thus I moved from Finland to Sweden, as well as from CP/M to MS-DOS.
I still needed a word-processing program for DOS. I liked the one I had in CP/M, Edward, that enabled me to call up as many as fourteen different files at once, and allowed me to put my functions wherever I wished. I refused to give up those features. So I hired the proprietor to customize Edward for me in MS-DOS. It cost about a thousand dollars, and there were a number of glitches to debug, but I got it. I was on my way in DOS!
Now a diversion; don't worry, it does, deviously, connect.
At the end of OctOgre I attended the local science fiction convention, NECRONOMICON, as a Guest of Honor. I had been there three years before, and this time their other GOH was Fred Pohl, a leading figure in the genre. So I arranged to interview him for an audience, and really looked forward to it, because I had some most provocative questions to which I knew he had excellent answers. But Satan struck: Fred's wife had a heart attack, and Fred had to cancel just one week before the convention. Thus the disappointed fans had to settle for just me. Oh, they were nice enough about it, but it was too bad.
At that convention my daughter Penny and I had the pleasure of taking Andre Norton and her associate Ingrid Zeirhut to lunch. Penny and I and Ingrid are vegetarians; Andre loves cats and I hate cats (but cats love me), so it was interesting, especially when we shared a panel later.
I was on several panels, and on one of them was Lois Wickstrom, co-editor of a small press magazine, PANDORA. I thought nothing of it until in casual conversation I learned that she was the other local writer who uses the Dvorak keyboard. Immediately we were comparing notes. I'm on the DEC Rainbow computer; she is on an IBM compatible. I had a program that enabled me to call up fourteen files; hers called up twenty-four files, with windows between them. I could move my functions around; so could she, and also modify their operations. Well, now! I had just paid a thousand dollars to adapt mine to DOS, and it seemed hers was better at four hundred dollars. True, hers had a feature I didn't like, batch formatting, that requires you to plug in many codes that change the text about before printing, but it was also one of the most powerful and versatile word-processing programs extant. Satan had timed it with infernal cunning, waiting until just after I had gotten what I wanted before dangling a new program before me.
Her program was Final Word II, put out by Mark of the Unicorn. In my letter ordering it, I said, "It is the wrong reason to make a purchase, I know, but I am intrigued by the name of your company. You see, I am a fantasy novelist with whole herds of unicorns in my fiction..." Their response was to bounce back our check, because they were changing their name to eradicate the Unicorn. What a slap in the face! Satan just couldn't resist that fillip. (And here I thought that unicorns were a protected species.)
So this may be my first novel in MS-DOS and my last with Edward. But I shall remain with Ms Dos, because she has succeeded in seducing me away from the Captain. Ms Dos comes on like a cranky old bat; she even has files suffixed ".bat" to run her errands. Every time you start her up, you have to check in with the exact date and time, a nuisance the Captain did not require. You have to type in a "Path" or she refuses to provide service to your distant sites. When you want to print something she always asks whether you mean it, the first time, and you have to agree that yes, it is the printer you want to use. She's like an old-fashioned schoolmarm: everything has to be exactly her way. But if you are willing to abide by her rules, she will do a lot for you. More than the Captain will, if you want the scandalous truth.
I see my wife is getting suspicious, so I'd better give a for-instance or two. One is that most of the software outfits have gravitated to Ms Dos. The Captain changes his clothing seldom if ever, while Ms Dos is very attentive to software. Thus the companies just naturally do more business with her. This means that if you want something like, for instance, a sophisticated interactive spelling program, you will find maybe two or three old ones moldering on the Captain's shelf, but dozens of fancy new ones on Ms Dos's shelves. I had to go to customizing to get the kind of word-processing program I wanted in CP/M, and realized just too late that that wasn't necessary in MS-DOS. Another is those .bat files: these are little programs you type up yourself, saying do this, do that, and then do the other. Then when you summon a bat (it is actually short for "batch"), it flies in on its leathery wings and does the job for you. There is even a vampire bat that invokes itself when you start up, and it takes care of the nuisance about the date and time and path, and anything else you want, right through setting you up with your daily program and files. In short, you can automate, and no longer be bothered with the mundane details.
But learning all the nuances, and adapting to the new ways—that does take time. My work was correspondingly slowed. It was fun learning Ms Dos's intimate little secrets, but I really would have been moving faster with the old familiar Captain. Satan knew that, and kept feeding me new distractions when I threatened to start getting ahead on the novel. For example, I obtained some freeware programs in DOS. Freeware or shareware are programs that you don't have to buy, except sometimes to pay the cost of the disk on which they come, but if you find them useful you may send money anyway; it's the decent thing to do. One was a MAINT program for DOS, so that I could handle my files as readily as I could in CP/M. Another was a Squeeze program that—no, don't get ahead of me, Ms Dos isn't that friendly—enables you to squish files down to about half size for more efficient storage, and to unsqueeze at need. Another was a program to translate files back and forth between MS-DOS and CP/M; that could be handy in our divided family. Nice enough stuff—but my novel was dragging.
Still, I managed to complete the first four chapters in OctOgre, which wasn't too far behind schedule. After all, I had research to do, which is always fascinating but slow. Then I hit a run of distractions, so that Chapter 5 took me three weeks, putting me a couple of weeks behind. What happened? Well, there was that convention I mentioned; I only go to one a year, and that was the one this year. Right after that I had to proofread the galleys for one of my novels, and that always takes time because I'm a slow reader and I do it carefully. We also had a morning with the state forester, because we own property we'd like to get classified as a tree farm, but first it has to be surveyed and approved for that. And a day to go to Tampa to meet my new British agent, Pamela Buckmaster. My old agent Leslie Flood, was retiring, and she was taking over his practice, and had flown to Florida just to meet me. Virtually all of my non-American sales will be passing through her, and there was at least one six-figure deal in the offing, so this was a necessary thing. Then another slew of mail struck, taking days to answer; I answered about 385 letters while working on this novel, and though I cram most down to cards, I figure the average letter takes half an hour. There was also my big historical project, Tatham Mound; my sweet-sixteen daughter Cheryl was helping excavate the Mound on which the novel was to be based, and I would go out Sunday afternoons to learn new developments. It's a good and significant project, but those are afternoons that I don't make progress on this current novel. My printer glitched, printing increasingly worse, and we had to have the repairman in to fix it; yet more time expended. By the end of NoRemember I was exactly halfway through the novel, way behind schedule. Ouch; why so slow?
I made notes on a single day near the end of that three-week slowdown, just to get it straight: NoRemember 19, 1986. I was ready to start on Chapter 6, but was annoyed by a few little glitches in DOS, such as the BACKUP program that puts all your directories and files on a disk to be saved, but whose RESTORE function simply did not work. Apparently Ms Dos has a RESTORE program, but it had not been implemented on our version of DOS, unbeknownst to the writers of the instructions. That's a cute little oversight that can have decidedly uncute complications; it's like putting all your savings in the bank, then discovering that the bank will not let you take any out when you need it. My wife, after a straggle, finally figured out an alternate way to get the material back, and I wanted to make a note of the exact sequence, so that we would not have to go through this mess again. So I started my own sheet of instructions that included this and all the other deviances and omissions the engineers never bothered to fix. But this took time, because I had to test and double-check everything to be sure there was no error, because in an emergency I had to know exactly what worked. This took an hour and a half. But at least it was done, and I set up to start the chapter—
And the UPS track chose that moment to deliver the Elite font we had ordered. There went another two and a half hours, getting it ironed out. The thing worked well on letter-quality but not on draft-quality printing. Since I use both for my cards, we had to research in the manuals for a special, obscure code to fix that. Any session with a manual is time-consuming, because manuals are scripted by demons in Hell to torment mortals. Then I discovered that the font had no ¢ symbol. Now I use that on some of my cards: I have a macro that prints out a XANTH 2¢ stamp on those cards that don't require mundane postage. What was I to do with no ¢? I finally decided, with bad grace, to substitute the letter c, hoping no one would notice the difference between 2¢ and 2c. Meanwhile I did my three-mile exercise ran, and then took an hour to read the mail, because another pile of letters was in; then I went ahead and used the new font to answer ten of them, washing out the rest of the day. I had never quite gotten down to paying work; Satan had, with magnificent timing, stepped in to introduce some new distraction every time I got close.
But my day did not end there. In the evening it rained, and when it rained it poured—and there was a leak in our roof. I remembered the day that had been made, because we had heard a thunk, and I had gone up to check where a falling branch had punctured the roofing, but we hoped it might still be watertight. It was the same day that a dead cat turned up in our yard, and I had to bury it. Our dogs don't like cats, but the neighbors' cats choose not to believe that; we heard a horrendous commotion in the night, and this was the result. So now we had the verification: the roof was no longer tight. Sigh. I went down to check our rain gauge—two inches—and on the way saw a gourd I had overlooked. You see, this year a seed sprouted from some buried garbage and it turned out to be a hypnogourd, a species seldom seen outside the Land of Xanth. Its vines grew at the rate of ten inches a day—yes, I measured—and it produced about twenty handsome gourds scattered across our yard. They look and taste rather like butternut squash. No, of course we did not look into any peepholes! But this shows how I can't even go to check rain without evoking all manner of oddities.
I turned in, reading myself to sleep on The Blood of Ten Chiefs, in which a story of mine appears. Then, at 1:50 A.M., the phone rang: a fan calling from Minnesota to talk with me. My wife put him off, for I was dead to the world; I keep regular hours, and am up before 6:00 A.M. regardless. Next year we plan to build on our tree farm and move there; we shall, with regret, also move to a post-office box so fans can't locate me and drop in uninvited and we shall get an unlisted phone, so that we can sleep at night.
That is the story of how I failed to do any paying work that day, completing three weeks of much the same. It was obvious that Satan had no intention of allowing me to work on this novel in peace. Nevertheless, I buckled down to it, and wrapped up the novel Christmas Eve: eight more chapters in twenty-four days. Late Christmas Day I started this Author's Note.
But there were longer-range things to handle, too, all surely the mischief of Satan. One was my shoulder. During the last novel in this series I developed tenonitis (also spelled tendinitis), an inflammation of the tendon that causes pain when I move my arm beyond a certain range. I finally got a shot that reversed it, and it retreated grudgingly for about six months, then transferred from my right shoulder to my left shoulder. So now I am in the same condition, other side; the things I had to learn to do left-handed I now am relearning right-handed. After two visits to the doctor, I am now on pills that may be having some effect. Pain is a fact of my life now; I get a surge of it when I change my T-shirt or put on or off my jacket or reach for the salt. But I have discovered this about that: pain is not to be feared or loathed. I know when I will incur it, and its approximate degree, and it is under control; if it hurts too much to remove my jacket one way, I try another way, and eventually I discover a compromise that enables me to get through. When it wakes me at night, I change position until it subsides, and go back to sleep until the next time. I am used to it and can live with it. I don't like using drugs if I can avoid them, so I don't take any for this apart from the doctor's prescription. My arm exercises have been wiped out, but I discover that I feel more relaxed without those strenuous exertions; I lost my tension along with my muscle. I have always driven hard, and increasingly my body has been reacting against it; perhaps it is time to ease off somewhat. Thus the end of much of my physical program does not after all signal the end of my health, merely the onset of a different stage of it. So there, Satan!
We still have horses, but things have been changing. Penny's horse Blue, the model for a unicorn and a night mare in my fantasies, is now coming into age twenty-nine, which is old for a horse. She's still spry, though her head is turning gray. But her companion, Misty, suffered a leg ailment, and walking or standing became hard for her. Finally I had to bring water, hay and feed to her where she lay, and for six months she survived that way. We had to fence Blue away from her, to prevent Blue from taking the food and allowing none to Misty. But horses need equine company; Blue would stand all day at the nearest part of the pasture to Misty, just watching, not grazing. This was no good for her. Misty continued to worsen, and the veterinarian said that her lung was collapsing because of her position; a horse needs to be afoot. So, with reluctance we had him give her the shot that put her away; it was our judgment that death would at this stage be a mercy for her. We buried her there in the pasture.
We needed company for Blue, and the vet had a spare horse. He brought her when he came to see Misty. This was Fantasy, a brown Arabian with a perfect white shield on her forehead two and a half inches across. She was a beautiful animal with papers who would have been an expensive show horse, but for a serious illness in her youth that caused her hind end to be somewhat deformed and perhaps had damaged her lungs. So she could not be ridden or bred, and her value was reduced to zero dollars—but she was alert and friendly and excellent company. In short, the perfect replacement companion for Blue. We liked her immediately, and after a night and day of squealing to establish just who was to be boss of the pasture, Blue did too. Now at last our farthest and greenest pastures were being grazed, and the two were always together.
Until this novel. Then trouble struck in the most painful way yet: at lovely Fantasy. She abruptly developed a heart problem. We were amazed and chagrined; if ever a horse did not deserve this, it was Fantasy. Her body was swelling as her heart was unable to clear the blood loop to her lungs, and her appetite was failing. The prognosis was doubtful; medication was not effective and it was obvious that this could not continue long. The vet came and took her away, hoping to treat her with techniques that could not be done in the field; if they were effective, she might survive. Damn you, Satan.
We needed company again for Blue. This time the vet brought a pony who had been left with him to be boarded for a month. Five months passed, and the owner never returned to pick her up. Her name was unknown. So we took over the boarding, knowing that at any time the owner could come to claim her. But it was a calculated risk; after all that time, the chances were diminishing. She is white (I don't care what the supposed experts say about there being no white horses) and plump, trained for children to ride, and so short that her tail drags on the ground. We named her Snowflake, after a white foal in my novel Blue Adept, and she fitted right in. Blue gave her the word about just who was boss of the pasture, and that was that; when frightened, Snowflake would go hide behind Blue. At this writing Snowflake has been with us a month, and this novel is just about done. The farthest pastures are being grazed again, and the two run together—Blue loves to run—and it looks as if we're all right.
There has also been human development. During this novel I received unpleasant news about Cousin Dick. Let me clarify the background. Cousin Dick is actually my fifth cousin, about fifteen years my senior; we got in touch because of a mutual interest in genealogy, researching our Jacob lineage. We had the same great-great-great-great grandfather. Cousin Dick had aspired to be a writer, and had tried a year or so doing full time writing of fiction, with the understanding that if he did not make it, he would give up that ambition and concentrate instead on making money. He did not make it, and so he went into mundane work and provided for his family quite nicely. But there was always that regret: suppose he had made it? How would his career as a writer have gone? There may be myriads of folk with similar ambition and similar disappointment; failed writers are a dime a dozen, and no one seems to care about their stifled dreams. But then, independently, I tried the same thing—and succeeded. Thus, in a manner, I represented the answer, for I had similar lineage and ambition, and a roughly similar personal history. We compared notes in some detail. I believe, to a degree, he regarded me as the fulfilment of his dream, while I regarded him as my alternate course, the one I did not take, about fifteen years ahead. Thus our correspondence, always amicable, had a certain extra element; we understood each other on a deeper level than is usual. He visited, and met my daughters, and of course he knew other members of my branch of the family. I believe everyone liked him. He was always alert for the appearance of my novels, and sometimes sent reviews I had missed.
But now the news was grim. Cousin Dick had lung cancer, and brain tumors, and was having seizures. "It's a hell of a way to live," he wrote in NoRemember, "but after 66 years of comfortable health, it seems to be my turn." Then, the day before Christmas, as I completed Chapter 16, I had news from his daughter: Cousin Dick was dead. One of the last conversations he had had with her was about the third volume in this series, With a Tangled Skein, and its Author's Note, which covered my own tangled skein of life. Damn you, Satan!
Let's conclude on a lighter note: the tangled skein of lesser events and impressions occurring while I worked on this novel. Satan uses honey as much as vinegar to distract me. My life is filled to the brim with minutiae. Such as requests for visits and talks. I attended a teenage girl's birthday party: she had been in an automobile crash that affected her memory, so that she could not retain new experiences. She liked my fantasy, so they hoped that if I was there, it would give her something special to remember. If she returned to the hospital, and remembered, they would know she was mending. So I went, bringing her some of my books and a Xanth Calendar, and they had video cameras of the party, so as to refresh her memory. She did improve, and I hope I helped. I also addressed a college class about story writing, reading an excerpt from my story "Soft Like a Woman," which is a savage antisexism commentary, because I support education and oppose sexism. Yes, I do get mail calling me sexist; some readers take my parodies for endorsements. I addressed a local Kiwanis Club meeting; the contractor we are asking to build us a nice house on our tree farm asked me, and I want him in a positive mood as he tackles that house. There's a reason for everything, but everything takes time!
Then there's the mail. Some of it affects my life and writing in devious ways. Amidst this novel, I was concerned because of the blah period in Parry's life between Jolie's death and the arrival of Lilah. I didn't want four chapters of that. Thirty-four letters arrived in one day—they come in batches—taking me three and a half hours to read and a good deal longer to answer. One was from Pat Woods with thoughtful comment about the first four novels in this series. "You have an amazing affinity for your characters," she wrote, and I thought darkly, I wish that were true in this novel! And then something clicked, and I realized that Jolie, who really had not been fairly treated, could in a manner be restored. Not only would this redeem her, it would enliven the dull section of the novel. Thus was introduced the Drop of Blood and all it portended. I'm really glad that happened, because I did feel guilty about Jolie. Thank you, Pat.
Two novels back I corresponded with a fourteen-year-old suicidal girl I called Ligeia, after a character in the novel, and that novel came into print in hardcover in OctOgre. I received a number of letters expressing sympathy for Ligeia, several asking to be put in touch with her; one young man approached me directly about that at NECRONOMICON But I could not oblige, because of the necessary anonymity and the fact that, owing to circumstances beyond my control, I lost contact with Ligeia. No, I don't think she's dead, merely incommunicado. She would be sixteen by this time. Then came one more letter: from a fourteen-year-old girl who was slashing her wrists. She had read about Ligeia... I do what I can, but it is quite limited, because I am no expert and even my letters are liable to be intercepted by the wrong parties in such situations. How do you answer a reader who wants advice on what her parents do not know about, when the parents read her mail? I have had this kind of letter in other connections, too.
There are also frustrations of a different nature: in this period I had about four of my cards returned "Addressee unknown" though I had them exactly as given. If these are jokes, they are costing me valuable time; there are others who would have been glad to receive that wasted attention. I don't answer every letter I receive, but even so this year, like last year, comes to over twelve hundred I wrote. Most letters are about Xanth; next main topic is the Notes, overwhelmingly approved; it seems that the readers prefer a personal author to an impersonal one. Well, I don't claim to be a great man, but I am personal, just as my readers are. Then the ones that ask for things: contributions, mementoes for auctioning, requests for me to speak—I have to turn the great majority down. Only when the circumstances are special do I accept. For example, I have had a number of letters from prisoners. Now, I am a liberal, but I am not soft on crime; I dislike the death penalty, but I also abhor the notion of murderers going free to repeat their crimes. I suspect that there are far more guilty folk going free than there are innocent ones in prison. In addition, it is evident that prisoners have a lot more time for correspondence than I do. I can no more solve their problems than I can those of the suicides. So I tend to answer briefly and noncomittally. But one letter, in this period, made a reasonable case: the prison encourages reading as being of a rehabilitative nature, and I am a favored writer, but their budget is limited. Prisoners cannot go out and buy their own. So—I sent a package of thirteen of my recent books, paperback and hardcover. Please, don't deluge me with requests for free books; this was a one-shot deal, about which I have mixed emotions.
As Christmas approached, I received many cards. As a rule I don't answer these, and don't send cards of my own, because if I did I would lose another critical chunk of time, but I do appreciate the sentiment. I even received a Chanuka card; I understand that occasion is becoming much like Christmas, in America. I had a letter and a painting from my youngest fan yet: six-year-old Carlitos Castillo. I did unbend enough to "wish a number of correspondents "Harpy Holiday"; I mean, what would life be without some grim humor? I received some gifts that surprised me: from a company with which I do business, and from publishers. Remember, it was only yesterday that I was beneath the notice of publishers, and I am a bit uncomfortable with first-class treatment, as any writer would be. Do leopards change their spots? But there is of course a price tag: now a publisher wants me to go on an Author tour to promote a novel. I hate to travel, but if it puts my novel on the hardcover best-seller lists... sigh.
Another problem is interviews. After four consecutive interviews from which I received no feedback—no copy, no news, except some secondhand remark that somebody had seen it somewhere—I decided that it was time to stop. If I never see a copy, I have no notion of the errors that may have been made. The main difference, as I see it, between fiction writers and journalists is that the fiction writers make sure of their facts. Then came news of a fifth: being published in a magazine with which I regard myself to be on bad terms, because of that same looseness with facts. I used to wonder why successful folk tended to isolate themselves from the public; now I am learning the answer. With interviews comes the nuisance of pictures. I had 128 little pictures of me I could send to readers who requested them; I ran out, and can't take the time to have more taken. But I have to make time to pose for photos whose rights do not belong to me, so cannot be used to replace my stock. So, after the session that occurred during this novel, I'll probably cut the line on that too. No, nothing wrong with the picture taker; it's just the time, and the fact that my dandruff reserved this occasion to come out in force. I am however conscious of the anomaly of having an attractive young woman taking pictures of a middle-aged man; sexist that I am supposed to be, I feel it should be the other way around.
While we're on the subject of evil, there is the matter of reviews. These seem to vary inversely with a writer's success, and I am getting the brunt of it now. Some of it is the arrogance of ignorance. One fan reviewer berated me for publishing a 27,000-word story as a novel. He was talking about Steppe, on sale in paperback at this time. That novel is actually 61,000 words long. He also commented on the Incarnations series: #1 was wonderful, #2 was "simply bad," #3 was awkward because "Anthony has always had trouble writing decent female characters." About the Notes he said: "Anthony's are getting longer and longer, and more and more boring and offensive." But the pro reviewers aren't much better. Publishers Weekly remarked on Incarnations #3: "...The novel comes alive only at its start (set in a charming, early 20th century America, where magic has equal footing with science) and in its afterword—Anthony's cranky, contentious and revealing author's note." The setting, of course, was Ireland; you will have to make your own judgment about the Author's Note. On #4 it said: "...In fact, most of this weak entry in the series is concerned with finding a proper mate for the hapless Mym. As before, though, the liveliest part of the book is the author's note, a 30 page open letter to his fans in which Anthony feels free to be cantankerous, boastful, whimsical and self-revealing." Well, PW, here's another! These are actually relatively mild; reviewers get savage about my Space Tyrant series, and I believe I got my first "killer review" on Ghost. At least it gives us a notion where Satan's mouthpieces are. I like Danielle Steel's comment: "A bad review is like baking a cake with all the best ingredients, and having someone sit on it." I have this mental picture of grouchy people walking around with squashed cake crumbling off their backsides. They might feel better if they tried appreciating the cake for what it was, rather than being asinine.
It goes on and on. We agreed to sell some small oak trees to a nursery, as those trees will have a hard time here as our pine trees crowd them out; they should be happier in individual lots. Then a second nurseryman asked. Then the first said the second was tearing up our property—and indeed, I found that he had destroyed twice as many young pines as he had taken oaks. Sigh; the simplest and most seemingly right things become complicated. I learned of the trouble a small press had with its special edition of the first novel in this series: it invested in printing and cover, then the distributor had a change in personnel and pulled the rug out. They sent me the beautiful color-separation version of the cover; the original had somehow been destroyed. Another small press, setting up for another of my novels, got illness in the family, and an IRS audit. My American literary agent came down with strep throat and was too hoarse to speak; he does most of his business by phone. My British agent sent a large check, and the bank that translated it from £ to $ deleted the information about the exchange rate used; when I looked it up, I found that they had apparently shorted me by $800. I can't even update my accounts until I get that straight; just figuring it out cost me about £500 worth of my time on a £1200 entry. I heard from a beginning writer whose story was in a volume that was squelched by the prospective publisher before publication; she was warned that she would be blacklisted if she talked about the circumstances. Satan was not only working me over, he was working over anyone who associated with me! But perhaps I can do something about that last; I was blacklisted myself, in earlier days, for challenging similar dealings, and I remain militant. I mean, if the wrongdoers can win by blacklisting the innocent parties, what kind of a genre do we have? I find it hard to believe that I am the only person who objects, though that did seem to be the case before. I do sometimes get the impression that God is sleeping at the helm. Speaking of which: this was also the period in which the scandal dubbed the Reagan Watergate broke. It seems that no level is immune.
And so another novel and another year draw to a close, each with its highs and lows and ironies. Though I complain (reviewers call it bragging) about the volume of mail I receive, because it costs me the time to write approximately one more novel a year, I do appreciate the tremendous affinity and support my readers give me. Each letter is a little window into another life, and I only regret that so many of those lives are desperate ones. As the second Ligeia says: "It's as if the whole world is moving to the key of C and I'm somewhere in B flat." I have news for you, honey: the whole world is in B flat, but thinks that all the rest is in C. It is an illusion Satan has fostered, and we lack the wit to dispel it. But do not give up hope; things are changing all the time, and this too may pass.
One correspondent expressed dismay because he could not tell when my Notes were written and asked me to date them. Very well; this one is complete DisMember 27, 1986. I still have perhaps a week of editing and printing to go, and it may be two years before the novel sees publication, but this is now. I wish all of you a harpy new year!
Copyright © 1988 by Piers Anthony Jacob
ISBN: 0-380-75285-9