Author’s Note

I am known for my light fantasy, such as the long (39 novels and counting) Xanth series, but I have also done sexy fantasy adventure (the ChroMagic series), science fiction (the Cluster series), martial arts (the collaborative Jason Striker series with Roberto Fuentes), historical (Tatham Mound and the GEODYSSEY series), erotic (such as my dirty novels Pornucopia and The Magic Fart), horror (The Sopaths), and biography (Alfred, the life of my father). I don’t like to be limited, and I try different things, with varying success.

I collaborated with best-selling J.R. Rain on several private eye fantasies (the Aladdin series and Dragon Assassin), and he suggested that I try a private eye novel of my own. I pondered; it’s out of my normal genres, but that never stopped me before. I have no private eye experience in my mundane life, but of course I don’t have any space-faring or magic experience either. They say a writer should write what he knows, but that’s laughable when he’s writing about the wildly speculative alien planet adventures or dragons, ogres, and sorcery. So forget that; I could do it if I had a sufficient character and situation. A decent mystery to solve.

And there was the rub: I didn’t. So I let the notion jell while I worked on other projects, notably Aliena, my short novel of alien contact (she looks human, and she’s a nice girl, but her brain has been replaced with that of a sapient alien starfish. Can she find love on Earth?) Then one day it came to me: suppose there was a WereWolf, only instead of changing into a wolf, or other man-sized animal, he became the most alien type of man of all, a woman? And I thought that could be a real advantage if he had to get information from a balky witness; the female side could charm it out of him. He could make a good private eye, as long as the interrogatee didn’t know he was talking to the same person. So I made notes on it, shaping it up, and in June 2013 I wrote it. I don’t usually write first person singular, but this seems to be the vogue for this genre, so okay. Not everything turned out the way I anticipated; in fact the woman aspect became less important than his ability to fathom key motives. I didn’t expect it to be sexy, but let’s face it: how do you show a Succuba (that’s the original spelling, later corrupted to Succubus despite the masculine ending; don’t look to the language for common sense) in action without sex? And everybody knows that Witches are seductive as hell, as are Demonesses. They are, to a fair extent, men’s dream fantasies. I’m not sure what women dream about; their fantasies must be relatively dull. So it is sexy. But that’s the kind of thing that happens when writing. It’s like approaching a range of mountains from a distance: they may look impassible, but when you get close you discover passes between them, and maybe a bridge or tunnel, and you get through in ways you maybe didn’t expect. I got through, with what success I can’t yet be sure. So if you just read this novel, and you think it reeks, don’t blame me; blame J.R. Rain for putting the notion in my noggin.

Will there be more about Phil Were and his PI business? I set this up as potentially the first novel of a series, but whether I write another depends on two things: the success of the first novel, and a genius idea. If WereWoman catches on, someone makes a movie of it, and millions (well, okay, thousands) of fans are clamoring for more, then yes, I will consider obliging them. A novelist is the Incubus/Succuba of his readers, ready to cater shamelessly to their naughty secret desires. But I would still need a notion. What would be worthy of Phil Were’s effort? Maybe in real life he would be eking out a living with penny-ante chores, snapping provocative pictures for a divorce settlement, getting the dirt on a politician’s competition, and similar dullness. But I’d want something bigger than that, more dramatic, world shaking, something to refurbish my fame as a writer and make the novel a household word. What would that be? I have no idea.

I normally have some passing comment on my life at the time I write a particular novel. This won’t take long this time, because it’s dull. About the only unusual thing was that as I was making notes for the novel, I had serious dental surgery, and I wrote the whole of it during my recovery from that. I take good care of my teeth, but they disintegrate anyway. So this time I got two tooth implants (I have an imaginary trio of full-bosomed young women who find my reference to implants hilarious, just as they find my long hair and ponytail amusing) and a bone graft setting up for a third implant. I have had four implants before, and they have served me well; they don’t decay or crack or shatter the way my natural teeth do. They’re hideously expensive, and I wince at the cost as well as the infernal Soft Diet I’m on while my mouth slowly heals. I have to fight to avoid losing weight, because I try to keep my weight at my college level, neither more nor less, and I exercise seriously to stay healthy (apart from my teeth). Once I have my new teeth I know I’ll have to fight to avoid gaining weight because of more efficient chewing. In addition, I’ll be most annoyed if I don’t get at least a decade’s use out of them; what’s the point in spending all that money if I’m just going to croak soon anyway? So it’s a nuisance. And, as I warned, dull. I don’t live any celebrity existence; my wife and I live on our small tree farm with the deer and the gopher tortoises and the mosquitoes. During this novel we celebrated our 57th wedding anniversary by having some cheesecake. That’s our idea of excitement. Maybe when you’re 78 years old, pushing 79, as I am, you’ll understand. Assuming you can even chew cheesecake when you’re senescent.

This novel was proofread by Scott M. Ryan, who caught about 23 errors I had missed. My standard comment is that typos grow on the pages after the editing.

Anyone interested in tracking me in more detail can do so by checking my web site, www.hipiers.com, where I have a monthly blog-type column to vent my opinionations, news of my publications, and an ongoing survey of electronic publishers and related services, complete with candid feedback from anonymous writers, there to help aspiring writers find publishers for their works of genius. Publishing is no longer a closed shop that excludes newcomers.