September 1989 
September 1989 Chocolate pudding gets augmented by pureed pizza. A new wheelchair cushion appears. A blowhard passes through. A possibility is mentioned. And the world most likely does not end as predicted.
SapTimber 1, 1989
Dear Jenny,
Yes, Alan is typing research notes for me on the down-stairs system so I’m up here in color and laser printing. Did I mention that my background is chocolate and my print is vanilla? I’ve gotten to like having a color monitor.
Yesterday we had to take the dogs in to the vet for shots and such. Oh, they were satisfied to go; Lucky is a big dog—he weighed in at 73 pounds this time, and he’s old now; in his prime, who knows what he weighed. It’s just that they get too excited, and it’s hard keeping them under control. I managed to skin a shin—what do you mean, what am I complaining about? You’re thirteen; you’re supposed to skin your shins, but I’m too old for that—and today I have a sore back, so I must have pulled a muscle without knowing it. Then today I went on my run, and went full-face through a spider web. I was trying to claw it off without stopping my run when I hit a second one. Fortunately I saw it, and only clipped part of it. Then I encountered a third, and managed to duck most of it. They all had those big orb-weaver spiders. I have nothing against them, but I wouldn’t want one on my face. Then I stopped for the pump and the horse’s pasture water, and the small black biting flies swarmed around me. I swatted a dozen or so—I prefer to live and let live, but those flies don’t share that philosophy—and then pulled off the cap of spiderweb that remained on my hair. I discovered six black flies caught in it. They had buzzed my head and been caught! Served them right. I was sorry I couldn’t take them back to the spider. I don’t like spider web on my face, but I also don’t like ruining all those hours' work by the spider. We have webs around here with lines that extend up ten feet, to the branches of trees; they can go to phenomenal lengths to anchor their webs properly, and I admire the industry and architecture of it. The other day a mosquito came to bite me—there’s another thing I swat—so I swatted it and took it outside, but at the screen door I saw a little running spider—do you remember Jumper in Xanth #3?—so I put the mosquito down next to it, and blew on the mosquito so that it moved a bit, and that little spider pounced on it and took it away. There was my good deed for that day, maybe. So I like spiders, who are sort of the cats of the bug world. Except when they catch dragonflies. Last year I found a dragonfly caught by a bit of web, and I managed to free it. If you are ever down here, I’ll show you how to get a dragonfly to sit on your hand. I finished my run, stopping every so often to comb out the sandspurs clustered in my socks—sandspurs are the mundane version of curse burrs, and I’ve found that a hair-comb works as well as anything to get them out. Anyway, you can see I’ve been busy.
I just checked today’s incoming batch of mail. Now I dictate my answers into the cassette recorder and the secretary types from that. The trouble is, I tend to ramble and lose coherence when I’m speaking, and the secretary doesn’t know what a run-on sentence is, so I have a mess of correcting to do when the letters come back. Sigh. But today the last letter I read was in reaction to the Author’s Notes in the Incarnations series. She lives near the giant redwoods, and says the last of those lovely trees is being cut down for furniture. Ouch! Mankind is such a destructive slob, with so little sense of the art and significance of natural things. She said her world seemed to be coming to an end, because her husband deserted her after 8 years and two children, and then she was riding with a friend, and didn’t know the friend had been drinking, and drove the VW into a pole, and she—the letter-writer—was on the passenger side that hit. Ouch! I know about that sort of thing; ask your mother to tell you about Robert Kornwise, any week now when she recovers so she’s slightly more mobile than you are without your wheelchair. She’s so cheesed off about not getting in to see you that the cats are looking strangely at her, wondering whether she’s a mouse. Anyway, this woman was injured in the heart, and it stopped beating twice while she was on the operating table. She had a vision that she sat up and looked around, realizing that she was leaving her body, and a man said “You can go back, you know.” She thought about it, and didn’t want to leave her children without a mother, and the fact was that there was a new man she thought might be worth marrying, so she decided to go back. Four days later she woke in this world, and a year later she married the man. Now she’s reading my Incarnations books, which relate to things like this, and wanted to let me know. So you see, there’s no telling whom you might have met, back when you were 85% in the next realm.
Which brings me to the next subject: there’s a prediction that the world is coming to an end today: Friday Saptimber Oneth. So if you don’t get this letter, you’ll know why. Maybe if you hold your breath, it will happen sooner. Which reminds me deviously of an old song. I think it was titled “Brighten the Corner,” and its essence was that you should brighten the corner where you are— that is, don’t worry about going far away to have a good time, have it right here. But the version I learned was a parody: “When you gotta go, and the toilet’s too far—right in the corner where you are.” So what has this to do with the end of the world? Well, it was the idea of making things happen sooner, whether meeting God or something a bit lower.
Yesterday I had two letters from your mother. One was postmarked AwGhost 25, so it took only six days to get here, and the other was postmarked the 29th, so it took all of two days. She evidently sneaked a peek at one of my letters to you, and was snapping at “Tooth or Consequences.” She said they gave you some tests, and that you read well (those right-angle lenses must help!) but don’t spell well, and you still don’t like math. You sound just like my dyslexic daughter Penny! I didn’t learn to spell until I became an English teacher, and had to grade spelling tests. There is no relation between spelling ability and intelligence, because spelling in the English language doesn’t make any sense. But when you get set up with your computer, you can have a spelling checker program. They highlight the misspelled word, and offer several suggestions for the word you’re looking for. So it becomes a game of multiple choice, which should be easy enough for you. So make a note: SPELLEN CHEKKER. Anyway, she hopes she has a mouth with teeth in it soon. That was the letter where she announced your Pudding Triumph. What happens if anyone calls you Puddinghead? Right: splat in the face.
Her second letter contained her penciled picture of you, drawn from memory. And here I thought you were the one in the family who was interested in art! She says her jawbone surgery is doing much better than they thought. I can explain that: when everyone and sundry got into mischief, she let fire with such heated words that any remaining infection was burned right out of her jaw. Fire-breathing dragons don’t have much trouble with infection either, for the same reason. So maybe she’ll have teeth again on schedule. She says you went on to eat more real food, not merely pudding. She says that if you can manage to eat again, that should help you to talk too, because the same tongue you eat with is used in speech. Well, keep eating, then!
She also tells me that I have the “Serendipity” explanation in my big novel Tarot just the way I gave it to you. Oh? I don’t remember, and now can’t find the place. Tarot is the kind of novel your mother shouldn’t be reading. Anyone who reads it without being affronted at some point doesn’t understand it. I regard it as my best work, but it’s way beyond the competence of my average Xanth reader. So don’t you try to read it, even with your right-angle lenses. I note, on rechecking the one-volume edition, that it says “the classic fantasy adventure trilogy,” though it is science fiction rather than fantasy, and it’s a single novel. My contract even says it shall never be referred to as a trilogy. So much for contracts. So don’t become a writer, Jenny; there’s too much aggravation. And she says Ray tried to order Bio of an Ogre at Waldenbooks, and first they tried to make it Ogre Ogre, then the Bio of a Space Tyrant series. But for all that, at least Waldenbooks carried it; Dalton did not. Tell Ray that in about two weeks it will appear in paperback; he should have saved his money, I really didn’t mean to bring so much aggravation to your friends.
She also says you have one of those special effect sounds devices like the one I described, only with different sounds. Well, have fun! I remember when I was in high school, and someone played a joke on an instructor. When the man started his car, it went WHEEEEEE-BOOM, and then thick black smoke poured out from under the hood. I really shouldn’t laugh….
And she says you already know about dog-done-it and plastic vomit. Ah, well. I believe in education, and I made sure to educate my daughters. That meant that they learned early what a whoopee cushion was, and bouncy imitation snakes and the like. What schools think is education is something else.
So you see, your mother had a mouthful to say. Actually she said even more than that, but rather than boring you with it I’ll write her a separate note. Your mother says a lot! Oh, you already knew?
How is Cathy, your roommate, doing these days? I remember when she moved in with you, but I haven’t heard since. You girls didn’t quarrel, did you?
I have some enclosures. Curtis and Alligator Express are back, and a couple of Far Side cartoon reruns I thought you might like if you didn’t see them before. Also a picture for a computer ad, with RAM being rendered as male sheep.
Keep going, Jenny; life may get more interesting soon.
SapTimber 8, 1989
Dear Jenny,
I wash my hair each Friday, because that’s when I take my weekly shower whether I need it or not (stop sniggering; I do wash up every morning and after every run; I just don’t take a full shower), and noticed that I was running low on shampoo. I need to keep changing brands, because any one brand stops working and in three days I’m all over dandruff. So my wife bought what looks like a bottle of bleach called Selsun Blue. Next week I’ll try that, but I’m afraid this stuff is really laundry bluing and I’ll turn bleached or bright blue. What do you use? Oh, you don’t get dandruff? Well I didn’t either, when I was your age. But one of the disgusting things about growing up is that you get dandruff. Just wait; you’ll see. So there. Anyway, I had my fastest run in two months, and yes I stopped at the little magnolia tree. The sandspurs stuck in my socks, and when I stopped to take them out (ouch!) the flies swarmed in to bite me. Par for the course.
I have to get on with this letter, because I have a couple of others to follow. A fan in Texas says the folk in his class have to choose an author to study, so that next month they can be that author before the class. He chose me, so he wants to learn something about me. I’ll tell him to get the paperback Bio of an Ogre which will appear in paperback soon after he gets my letter; that will tell him more about me than he cares to know. Why he should want to be 55 years old with a receding hairline I don’t know. I also have to write a note to Richard Pini (what do you mean, Richard Who? Richard Elfquest Pini, that’s who) because he sent me three copies of The Blood of Ten Chiefs and one of its sequel, Wolfsong, out of the blue. You know, in Isle of View (What do you mean, is that part of a series?!) I have Jenny Elf mention part of the past history of the elves of her land, which is not Xanth (oh, you’d caught on to that?), and the part she mentioned related to the story I did about Prey-Pacer, who was mostly known as Prunepit. I wonder what Jenny Elf will be doing in the future? Even the Muses can’t say for sure, because she’s not really part of their frame.
I am now in the last chapter of Tatham Mound. It’s depressing. I do get depressed sometimes when a novel ends, because for months I have been in the thick of it, living and breathing with my characters (yes, they do breathe, especially the buxom young women) and it is finally over, and that part of my life is done. Normally I get right on into the next novel, to ease the unease. But this one is worse, because it’s a bigger novel than most—it should be about 180,000 words when finished—and sadder. All the characters die. I knew that before I started, of course, because we found their bones in the Mound. Still, now I know those folk, and I hate the way they died of smallpox. Tale Teller’s daughter Wren had just married and had a baby when the plague killed them both, for example, and her beautiful bones (even the archaeologists marveled) and those of her baby are there together. I made up the story, but a beautiful young woman and her baby really did die then, and who is to say it wasn’t Wren? This morning I got the bodies buried—what a job that was, covering over 77 bodies using baskets of sand hauled by hand!—but there’s still the ceremony of the Black Drink to go, to be sure the spirits of the dead are satisfied and don’t get mad at the living. It is bad business when the spirits get angry! Then I’ll have to do the Author’s Note, with all the dry discussion about population statistics and plagues and excavation of mounds. So this letter is a kind of relief, because we aren’t going to bury you in a mound and dig you out over 400 years later to look at your bones. We’re not going to bury you at all; we’re going to get you up and about and out of Cumbersome hospital.
What’s that? No, don’t tell me you didn’t mutter anything; I heard it. What was it? Something about getting out—you mean to say you’re nervous about going out, after all this time there? Well, sure, that’s understandable, but Jenny, you surely don’t want to stay there forever! There are things to do outside, like school and homework and chores—let’s start this sentence over; I don’t like the way you’re nodding agreement. There are things to do outside, like petting cats and shopping for pretty things and watching VCR movies and using your computer to paint pictures and staying up late and sleeping late and all that. Besides, your mother’s getting lonely; she says there are too many stupid males and not enough smart females at home.
You don’t want to leave your friends there? You don’t have to. You can come back to visit them. You’ll probably be seeing some of them anyway, because you’ll have to report for therapy sessions and such. You can go to the Five and Ten Cent Store (yes, I know, now they are five and ten dollar stores, but in my day they were priced right) and buy them little presents. Or just go out to the garden, where your flowers are languishing for lack of your presence; they feel so inadequate when you aren’t there to smell them. Pick a pretty flower for someone, or a pretty seed. No, don’t laugh; seeds can be pretty. Here, I’ll prove it: I stopped by the big magnolia tree that had three flowers on the one little branch that extends onto our property, and none anywhere else—I tell you, the magnolias like me!— and took some of the seeds from its seed-ball. They are bright red, some with two sides or three sides, like grapefruit seeds. Here are two of them: one for you and one for Cathy. Hi, Cathy! (I discovered this past week that one of my earlier letters told you to say “hit” to Cathy for me; that was a typo. It should have been “hi.” I hope you didn’t hit her!) Maybe if you get little pots you can plant them and they’ll grow. Then you can return fifty years later and see this giant magnolia tree growing out of the hospital window, providing pretty white flowers and pretty red seeds for all the patients.
Meanwhile, how are things here? It has been a dull week, except for a couple of things. One was a power failure last Saturday: lightning hit our line and blew out our transformer and our pump. It took them five hours to replace the transformer. I read John Dollar by candlelight. That’s a novel by the wife of Salmon Rushdie, the man the Ayatollah threatened to kill. It’s the kind of book the critics like, which means that real people don’t like it. It’s about girls your age, but don’t you read it; it is truly ugly and shocking in places. But what could I do? It was night without power, so I read. Now I’m reading Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. You don’t want to read that one either. Anyway, it was Sunday afternoon by the time we got the pump replaced; it actually worked on Saturday, so we didn’t know, but then it started glitching. The lightning had glitched it up at several places. Because it was Sunday—and the following day a holiday—that’s always when these things happen, as your mother well knows—we had to pay double time. It came to $761. All because the lightning arrester didn’t work. I would make a pithy comment, but your delicate shell-pink ears would turn an indelicate color.
Then on Tuesday I started out by cleaning the algae from the pool, then putting Dvorak letters on my downstairs computer keyboard so I wouldn’t have to keep carrying my upstairs keyboard down and maybe dropping it. See, the big letters are all red now, with the old QWERTY letters in small black. Do you notice the difference in this letter? (You’re supposed to say yes, you do, in a very calm voice.) Then I wrote to my current Ligeia girl, who I think is gradually becoming less suicidal. And I had a visit by two English girls. One was the daughter of my British agent, visiting this country. She remarked how odd it was to be driving on roads where all the cars are on the wrong side. Right. I don’t normally entertain visitors, but there are some few exceptions, and the daughters of my agents are one of them. That agent just sold my novelization for the movie Total Recall in Japan. Of course it wasn’t my name that did it; it was that it’s a Schwarzenegger movie, and the Japanese are big on such movies. And I’ll only get some of the money, eventually; the publisher and the movie company get most of it. Still, I’d better stay on that agent’s good side. She stays on my good side too, because the reason she is handling the foreign rights for this book is that I asked for my own agents, American and Foreign, on it, and the motion picture company agreed. The company didn’t have to, because it owns the rights, but it humored me. It’s a sixty million dollar movie, probably next year’s big block-buster. Yes, I’m sure your daddy will take you to it, humoring you, though there isn’t anything in it that would interest him apart from unremitting action and violence and a slew of luscious bare girls. Unless he likes science fiction; then he can enjoy the planet Mars scenes, and the phenomenal alien nuclear plant there. Remember, I didn’t write the movie, I just adapted the script to make it a novel. But I did add some significant material, if they care to use it. So I talked with my agent’s daughter, who is an environmentalist, and her friend, and they had lunch with us, and I showed them our deep forest and horses and lake with the water lilies on it. If you ever want to visit, Jenny, I’ll do the same for you. So it was three and a half hours in all. Then in the afternoon your mother called. What? How many pages did she talk this time? I lost count. A dozen, at least. She told me that they measured you this way and that, and that you’ve grown two inches, and that, uh (blush), you’re giving up childhood and trying young ladyhood. Next thing we know, you’ll be joining the Adult Conspiracy. Ah, well. At any rate, you are much on your mother’s mind, Jenny. I suspect you already knew that. My daughter Penny also visited from college, bringing her latest papers for me to copy-edit. That took me half a day, most of it Wednesday. Anyway, that was my Tuesday; as you can see, it was duller than yours.
Say—I looked out the window, and there’s one of our big box turtles—actually a gopher tortoise—walking along our drive, past our house. We have a number of them here, and we like them. Elsewhere in Florida they are trying to protect them, but development keeps encroaching, and they have to catch them and move them to safer regions— which are in turn encroached on by development. Bad business. But our turtles will remain unencroached on.
Slew of enclosures this time, maybe a slew and a half. A page on kids and the news, with several kids who have pets; one has 14 cats and wants a white rabbit. I guess you know about that. Article on insect metamorphosis, surely old stuff to you, but pretty anyway. One on a man whose legs are paralyzed, but he hopes to walk with magic boots. Article on questions kids ask, such as whether cats really have nine lives. One on the other wildlife of Citrus County—that’s where I live—and how development is disturbing it. Alligator Express. Curtis Picture of butterfly with flowers. And one of a drum that sounds liquid; is that how you play the drum? And of course the two magnolia seeds. No, don’t eat them!
SapTimber 15, 1989
Dear Jenny,
Growl! Things have been aggravating me at the rate of about one a day, and just now another. No, it wasn’t having to write to you; this one was because last week—the same day I last wrote to you—I wrote to a fan in Texas who is supposed to be me for a day. I sent him my “Author” sheet and recommended Bio of an Ogre for more, as it is coming out in paperback momentarily. So today I get a letter from him saying he needs just a few more bits of information, and has a list of 17 questions, most of which can be answered by the references I already gave him. He’d rather waste my time than bother following my advice. Well, he is about to learn something about the way I respond to those who ignore what I tell them, and perhaps it will help him personify the Ogre.
What else has been aggravating me? Why do you want to know? Maybe you should tell me what’s been aggravating you. Come on, you can tell me! Oh—the wheelchair chafes what part of your body? Maybe you’re right; it’s not a fit subject to get to the bottom of.
Okay, what aggravates me is that last Sunday I had to take two hours to go out and sweat myself to death hacking out sandspurs from my running path. Sandspurs are the Mundane equivalent of curse burrs; they stick in my socks and ouch me with every step, so I have to stop and take them out, and then they stick in my thumb. Ouch! By the time I hacked them all out, swatting swarms of biting flies at the same time—the burrs and flies are in cahoots—I was so soaked in sweat that I had to change all my clothes. Next day my legs were tired and I had a slow run—and some more sandspurs reached in from just beyond where I’d hacked and still got me. Today it was worse, and I had to stop several times to dig the #$%&*!! things out, sticking my thumb several times. Then yesterday morning I was eating my breakfast, which consists of a bowl of cereal, rolled oats, brewer’s yeast, wheat germ, nuts and milk—the rolled oats swell up later and keep me from getting hungry before lunch, see—and reading the newspaper (which I tend to pronounce nudes-paper, but there aren’t any nudes in it), when my hand came down and just caught the edge when I wasn’t looking. Flip! The thing landed upside down in my lap. WHAT’S SO FUNNY!? I had to change my shorts. Another morning they were to have Arnold muscleman Schwarzenegger on the morning TV program, and I wanted to see that because he’d probably say something about Total Recall, which movie I novelized and is just now in print in hardcover, so a mention might help sales. But I forgot. I never turn on the TV myself, you see; I just don’t tune it in. My wife came down after an hour and turned it on, but wouldn’t you know, they must have run it in the first hour of the show, and we missed it and now will never know. Growr! And the publisher forwarded reviews of Man From Mundania with comments such as “junk-food fantasy” and “loose ends” (by that they mean it’s part of a series) and “another Xanth potboiler.” A literary potboiler is material a writer just grinds out because he needs the money. I never write that way. You don’t see why I’m so touchy? Well, just wait until they review Isle of View and say that Jenny Elf is the stupidest character ever and the Author’s Note is too boring to read. Then let’s see who is touchy! So you see, it’s been exactly the beastly kind of week your mother specializes in.
Speaking of whom, I got two entire letters from her this week, which I’ll have to answer. Don’t let me forget. So I’ll have to keep this letter reasonably short, so I can get everything done, because there’s also a collaborator to answer, and that fan, and another woman who wants my comment on a chapter of her novel and won’t be pleased when I tell her what’s wrong with it. Sigh.
Meanwhile I completed the first draft of Tatham Mound and now am adding in ceremonies and legends. This morning I did the one about how tobacco came to be and am part way through the one about how the world was made. Do you want to know about that? The world is a flat island suspended from the sky by four ropes anchored at the four directions—North, East, South and West—and if they ever break, it will sink into the ocean and everyone will drown. Aren’t you glad you found that out in time? Yesterday I did the one about the rolling heads. No, I can’t retell that here; it’s 4000 words long! Let’s just say that in Indian mythology, when someone’s head is cut off, it may roll back and tell off the one who did the foul deed.
We got an ad for about an 18 volume series of field guides, starting with Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds. We’re not buying, partly because they are leather-bound and partly because we already have the volumes we want and don’t need to pay $35 for duplicate volumes. My experience with Peterson’s goes way back. When I was in high school I knew how to identify only one bird, the cardinal, because it was red. My roommate, a birdwatcher, taught me the slate colored junco, and I still know that one today. My great aunt gave me the field guide, and the summer after I graduated I used it to identify every bird I saw in the Vermont Green Mountains. It was about fifty birds. Today I know all those fifty, and almost no others. Fortunately some of those are here in Florida too, like the wrens and woodpeckers, though the species differ slightly.
When I took my shower today I sang “It’s a long time, girl, may never see you, come let me hold your hand.” That song has a long history for me, including serious trouble with a publisher. So if I ever see you, I’ll tell you all about it, and sing it to you, and maybe hold your hand. Don’t wrinkle your nose; how do you know you won’t like it until you hear it? Oh, you mean the hand business? Oh.
I saw some fashion items on TV. I know I said I don’t turn it on; my wife does. Fashion designers know nothing about decent dressing. These ones all thought that women’s hair should be boyishly short. Yes, I do wonder about the sexual preferences of that ilk. Meanwhile, you can just ignore them and concentrate on growing your hair back long.
I read an item about the poor way history is taught. Amen! I’m interested in history, but I nearly flunked the high school course in American history. I took the text home for the summer before, read it, and loved it. Then I took the course. It did not address the dynamics of what the white man did to the natives, or the significance of things as I saw them. I still remember the first question on the first test: “Name the man who made the maps that influenced Columbus.” Notice it doesn’t ask about the concept of the round world that motivated Columbus to try to find a shorter passage to India by sailing around the other side of the globe when others thought he would fall off the edge of the world; it wants a name, as if that’s what counts. Names and dates—that’s what they think history is. Gah!
My wife brought home rental video tapes the past two nights. The first was Rain Man, which is a quality story involving a partially autistic man, well worth seeing. The second was Her Alibi, which is straight entertainment about a writer and a beautiful girl. See it when you can; you’ll love it. But the critics rate it mediocre and call it “witless.” Well, “critic” is a six letter word for a four letter concept. Critics seem to think entertainment is sinful.
Here’s another magnolia seed or two; I hope they aren’t crushed by the thought of traveling.
The computer said my letter was 122 lines long, which fits on two pages, then later said 124 lines, which won’t. I deleted my address.
SapTimber 22, 1989
Dear Jenny,
Did I ever tell you how I set up for your letters? I have you on the glossary, so that I just type “jenny” and controlF4 and it puts your address on. Well, I was checking something for my daughter Penny, and it pretended there was no such. So I checked the list of glossary entries, and Penny was there. Don’t tell me these programs can’t get whimsical! Now it agrees that Penny is there, along with Jenny.
We’ve been getting rain. It’s a tag-end of the outflow from Hurricane Hugo. Let me tell you about hurricanes. Right, here comes one of those patented Anthony explanations; let go of your nose. It’s this way: every hurricane forms in the warm tropical ocean and takes aim at Florida. It’s like a pinball game: there are all these barriers in the way, like Haiti and the Antilles and Cuba, and the trick is to get by them unscathed and into the Gulf of Mexico, then curve back and catch my house. One hundred points if any succeed in blowing off our roof. We are hidden where it’s just about impossible for a storm to find us, but every summer season they just have to try. So here was Hugo, and he set out well, but then drifted off-target and saw he couldn’t make it to the Gulf. Also, he had lost some power. So he said “If I can’t huff and puff and blow Piers' house down, I’ll go for Jenny’s hospital instead.” So he veered north, which had the advantage of restoring some power over the open water, so he got back up to top winds of 135 miles per hour. That’s respectable. But again he misjudged it, and wound up crashing into land halfway between us, at Charlotte, South Carolina. That was a secondary target; I know an editor at TOR BOOKS who lives there, Harriet MacDougal, former senior editor. Her husband is Robert Jordan, author of several Tarzan novels, but don’t judge him by that; he’s about to get into major fantasy, and will be one of the leading figures in the genre. I know. What do you mean, how do I know? Can’t you take it on faith? I read his first huge fantasy epic in manuscript; it hasn’t been published yet. Now shut up and let me continue: she came down to see me here several years ago, and we discussed my novel Shade of the Tree, and I revised it and TOR published it and has done well enough with it, and your mother will no doubt read it in due course if she hasn’t already. So that’s why Charlotte was on the list. Hugo scored directly on it, and just about leveled it. Poor Harriet! Next hurricane begins with I, and then there will be J. Just wait until next year, or whenever, when Hurricane Jenny comes. I don’t know whether you ever quite understood my pun about Spinning Jenny; it’s an early form of sewing machine. But it may also be that hurricane, when. So remember.
Yesterday we went to our old house, because storms had brought branches down on the roof and punched a couple of holes. We went up and put big spoonfuls of tar on them—it looked like chocolate pudding—and of course it got on our hands. No we didn’t touch it; it just magically jumps from the can to your skin, and then won’t come off. We used pieces of roofing shingles over the tar, and that should do it; we’ve done it before. Just as well, because we’ve had over an inch of rain today. While we were there, I checked my old study in the pasture, looking for my notes on the sixth martial arts novel, because TOR is interested in republishing the first five if I do one more. No, they aren’t for you to read; it just explains why Hurricane Hugo marked the TOR editor down as a target. I was struck by the way the property was overgrown, and how the little cedar trees we planted by hand are bigger now. There’s just so much nostalgia; after all, about eleven years of our lives are in that property. When you go home—I have it on good authority that eventually that will happen—you’ll probably discover it is smaller than it was when you left it, and some of the cats don’t remember you, and there are rooms it has sprouted since you left, and it will be terribly reassuring and saddening at the same time. That’s just the way it is, Jenny.
I remembered another one of those trick math-type riddles. Get your fingers out of your ears—I’ll give you the answer too. (How come you’re so ornery?) If a hen and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many eggs will three hens lay in five days? Now here’s how you tackle it: first you simplify it. If a hen and a half lays an egg and a half in a given period, then one hen would lay one egg in that time. Doesn’t that make sense? So it’s one hen, one egg, in that day and a half. That means two thirds of an egg in a day. Okay so far? Now it’s just a matter of multiplication. Three hens, each laying two thirds of an egg in a day, would lay six thirds, or two full eggs in a day. So we have a production of two eggs a day. In five days it would be ten eggs. That’s your answer. Now you can adapt it: if a girl and a half eats a chocolate pudding and a half in a day and a half, how many puddings will Jenny and Cathy and a therapist eat in five days?
Sigh. I don’t eat many puddings, because they have too much sugar, and I stay clear of extra sugar. This week I read an article in SCIENCE NEWS about a syndrome related to diabetes they have discovered, and it seems to be what I’ve got. You see, most diabetics are fat, but I’m not. Sure I watch what I eat, and I exercise, but I never did put on weight even when it was otherwise. Well, now they call it Syndrome X, which is obviously an abbreviation of Xanth: thin diabetics. It seems we have high blood sugar, but also high levels of insulin in the blood, because our body cells just don’t use insulin very well and it piles up. Now they think we are at risk for heart attacks, because that extra insulin causes trouble in the blood vessels. Then they clog, and blood pressure rises, leading to—Oops, I don’t like that! But don’t worry; not only am I thin, I have low blood pressure. I think my exercise keeps my blood vessels clear, so I shouldn’t have any problem. But it was a disturbing article, and I think I’ll continue to stay clear of sugar and to exercise vigorously, if it’s all the same to you.
Today when my wife came back from town she reported half a dozen baby water turtles trying to cross our drive. They hatch out, and are supposed to find their own way to water, but sometimes they do get lost, and of course evolution never prepared them for fences and asphalt roads. So we went out to help them, but found only two: one alive, one dead. Apparently the ones my wife helped across the road had gone on toward the lake. I took the one down to the lake, and it was plowing through the thick weeds toward the water when I left. It’s nice living in the wilderness, and we plan to keep it this way forever.
I received my first copy of Xanth #12, Man From Mundania. The next one is yours, Isle of View, in a year. Can you keep a secret? Okay, don’t tell anyone: Richard Pini of Elfquest is considering whether to make View into a graphic novel. You see, he has expertise exactly where it is needed: in the elf aspect. We hope to get together one of these months and work it out, and if it seems feasible, we’ll sign contracts and things and get the project rolling. What’s that? You want to be there when we work it out? Now look, Jenny, it isn’t that easy to—I mean, it’s really pretty dull stuff, deciding whether to do small black/white comics first, or jump immediately into a massive expensive color edition, and what artist to use, and what it will cost, and my agent Kirby McCauley, who by coincidence is also Richard Pini’s agent, would have to figure out what terms are appropriate, you know, who gets what when the thing goes on sale and the money starts coming in, so it’s all pretty technical, and—I mean, you want us all to pile into your hospital room and lay out charts and things across your bed? It would never work; your room’s too small. So—will you stop that? I just explained how impractical it is. Just because it’s Jenny Elf we’re talking about, you don’t have to—Sigh, okay, I’ll see what I can do. No promises, though. (You can be as bad as your mother, when you get set on something unreasonable, you know that?)
Remember when we had to replace our pump, after the lightning strike? The new one has more power, though it’s supposed to be the same one-horsepower. Now when I turn on the water full force to refill the horse water tub, it arcs right over the tub and splashes on the ground. Stop laughing! I have to choke it down and fill the tub slower. Yes, the big spider is still out there, and there’s a little brown toad, too. I found it in the barn a couple of times and thought it was lost, and guided it outside, but it kept reappearing inside. I don’t know how it got in, but if it finds flies there, okay.
I read a novel, She Who Remembers, that my wife picked up in town. It’s historical, set in southwest North America before its discovery by the white man. I read it for comparison with my Tatham Mound, which I have now completed in first draft, 180,000 words (that’s big) and am about to spend a month editing. She Who etc. turns out to be a romance, with men forever yearning for women and women yearning for men, but it does move along well and is more interesting to read than some historicals. My novel is quite different, though it is mostly pre-white American Indian and in the same general genre, and told from the Indians' point of view, as is She etc.
Oh—when we came home yesterday, and went to turn off our alarm system, it alarmed instead. It malfunctioned, which annoys us; we’ll have to have it checked. And one of the things we picked up at the other house was a small collection of candles, which are useful when there is a power failure. Two of them are scented: they smell of raspberry jam and apple butter. I like them; they have personality.
Today I spent some time reading an eight page missive from a woman with a daughter named Jenny. No, it’s not your mother; this is Toni-Kay. She’s five feet tall and likes to paint—you saw a picture of one of her cat paintings—and every so often she sends me a nice original painting, and I can’t pay for a gift though I hate to have her use her money to buy the canvas when she has to scrimp just to survive. She wants to buy my novel Balook when it comes out, though it will probably cost $30 in hardcover. She saved the money, then saw a big book on cats for sale at that price and got that instead. You can see how foolish some folk would call her, but you know why I don’t see it that way. Well, when Balook is finally published, I’ll send her a gift copy; that much I can do. She tells how she had a strange dream-vision of a man stabbing a woman of her general description to death, and the next day there it was in the newspaper: a grisly stabbing murder of a woman that a girl of twelve discovered. It’s eerie, and it reminds me how desperate the lives of others can be. What joy of life she has is achieved through her painting. Jenny, do you happen to know where the wand is, that I can take and wave and fix everything that is wrong with the world? So you can just get up and walk out of the hospital, and Toni-Kay can walk away from her situation? I need that wand.
SapTimber 29, 1989
Dear Jenny,
You know, I hadn’t heard from your mother in a couple of weeks, and I was getting worried, so I called her. She had just arrived back from the torture chamber dentist, who had been ripping out working on her jaw, and she felt horrible. But I made her laugh, because she mentioned needing kneading dough, and I told how my sister used to form it into the shape of someone’s bare bottom and spank it. Who said it can’t be fun to make bread? Anyway, the dentist seems determined to keep your mother from visiting you or writing to me, but I think she will outlast him and finally tell him to get out of her face. It was a relief to learn she was only in physical pain; I was afraid she was mad at me.
So how’s my week been? Maybe like yours. Every time I run now, I get spiderwebs plastered across my face and sandspurs in my socks and biting flies all over; they bang into my face and even fly into my mouth as I run. I have to plow through dog fennel that reach across my path from either side, and avoid thorny blackberry vines. Sometimes it’s wet and I have to avoid puddles. Sometimes it’s dry and the sand skids under my feet. In short, running is getting to be a real challenge. Last Monday I went out again to chop out sandspurs—have you ever been stuck by one of them? They are little balls of hooked spikes, so they hurt when they stick you and hurt when you pull them out—and there were so many that I saw it was hopeless; I’d have to spend as much time keeping them out of the path as I do running on it. Now it galls me something awful to give up my running path and let the confounded sandspurs and biting flies be victorious, but I just can’t afford the time. So I came back and told Cam (my wife—she was Carol Ann Marble before she married me, so her initials were CAM) to order exercising machines, and I’d try exercising inside the house. She can’t exercise outside at all, because she’s allergic to those fly bites. So she ordered an exercycle and a treadmill.
Now you see what I’m getting at. I don’t know what those therapists make you do, but if they could they’d put you on machines like these, so it’s probably somewhat like your workouts. Naturally the treadmill was back-ordered until next month—someone at Sears always knows what you want, and takes it out of stock so you can’t have it soon—but we did get the cycle. It’s pretty good: you pedal, but it also has hand-bars that move with the pedals, so you can push-pull with your arms at the same time and exercise them too. You can do it all with the pedals or all with the hands, or anywhere in between. It keeps track of how many miles you go, and how long you do it, and your pulse rate and all. So I tried it for twenty five minutes and went six miles, which is twice what I’d do running, so now I know: divide the mileage by two to get a comparable level. My pulse rate varied from 140 to 160, which is slower than when I run, but I don’t have all the muscles for this type of exercise yet. So if you ever get so you can pedal and pull, you’ll probably be on a device like this, traveling miles without getting anywhere. Maybe we’ll buy some of those video tapes that show you riding through the Yellowstone Park or somewhere while you exercise. In a year or two I’ll be writing a novel, Killobyte, about a man who is paralyzed and depends on a computer for his life-support, and watches a program, and discovers too late that it’s a suicide program, intended to kill him when he loses the game. I signed the contract for that earlier this year, but haven’t had time to write it yet. No, don’t worry; it can’t happen to you; you’re not on life support. The travel-programs business reminded me of that, is all. So if your therapists ask you whether you get bored during therapy, tell them you’d like to watch one of those programs, but don’t ask for Killobyte!
Speaking of cycling: this week I got on my bicycle to ride out to pick up the newspapers—it’s a mile and a half round trip—and the rear tire was almost flat. Sigh. It was a sandspur. That’s right, they even make tires hurt! I went to patch it—and our full tube of rubber cement turned out to be empty. It had all evaporated away in the tube. Growr! We had to buy a whole new kit to get more cement, because of the conspiracy of the manufacturers. I normally have low blood-pressure, but that sort of thing surely raises it. Why can’t they make tubes that are tight, and why not sell you only what you need? Because they can make more money this way. Tell your mother to curse them for me.
But I did see something interesting out there. A pine tree. What do you mean, so what? I know we have thirty acres of pine trees here. I know it’s a tree farm. But this is one we hadn’t planted, and it’s different. It’s not a slash pine or a longleaf pine; it may be a sand pine, which means it seeded in naturally, on the other side of our drive. That makes it special. It’s a baby pine, about waist high. Yes, we’ll keep an eye on it. No, you can’t have a pine cone from it; it’s too young to make pine cones. Make them give you an ice cream cone instead. Do they have pine flavored ice cream? Ah, well; don’t pine.
Another thing that depressed me this week, almost as much as the notion that your mother might be mad at me, was a fanzine. A fanzine is an amateur magazine about science fiction and fantasy. I write each month to one where I can interact with fans and other professional writers. No it’s not always polite; it can get mean at times. I am politically liberal, and most of the folk there are politically conservative, and I delight in making them look like asses when they try to argue their ridiculous views. But they really annoyed me this time. You see, I had that death-row prisoner write in to them, because I thought the interaction would do everyone good. He stated what he had done, and went on to other things that interest him, such as flying saucers. No, not the kind that fly when your mother gets mad! I mean the ones with little green men from Mars in them. But some folk approached the editors at the World Science Fiction Convention recently and asked them to cut him out, and the editors have now censored him out of the magazine, though the majority of the letter-writers said he should be allowed to have his say. He is a murderer, true, and his crime was detestable, but to censor him out because of anonymous complaints—that is just plain wrong, and it disturbs me so much that I may stop writing to them. Just so you know my attitude, so you can copy it if you like it: in a society of laws and decency, even murderers have certain rights. You don’t censor those you don’t like, you just avoid them. That’s not because of their standards, but because of yours.
Doctor Edell on the radio just now: a girl called in with a sore tongue, and he said “Hold the phone up to your face and say ‘Ah.’ “
I am now editing Tatham Mound, and it keeps nudging up longer as I keep adding in things. I wasted time trying to find out what the pattern was on Pasco Plain pottery, because the little girl named Wren was making her first clay pot. Know what I finally learned: there isn’t any design on it. That’s why it’s called “plain.” Yes, I realize that was obvious. I just wish I’d realized it before I wasted that research time. Now the novel is 185,000 words long, and by the time I finish it should be over 190,000 words. That will be about 500 pages in published form. It’s an emotional experience, because whenever I get done with a novel, I feel as if I am losing part of my life. Also, there is so much tragedy in this one. Remember, my protagonist marries two wives among the Cherokee—they called themselves the Principal People—who were later killed by smallpox. He returned home to Florida and married again—and smallpox wiped out his family again. It was one of the diseases the white man brought to America. I get all choked up when I read about it, even though I wrote it. So why didn’t I write a happier story? Because the bones of his second family are buried in Tatham Mound. That’s where the novel started; I knew it would be a tragedy at the outset, because I was animating those who were buried there. But it still hurts. Your mother is threatening to read that novel; fortunately it should be 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America, before it is published. Maybe by then she will have forgotten about it. I haven’t even sold it yet. Yes, I hope to make a lot of money from it. No, I didn’t write it for money; it was just something I had to do. You know, like therapy. But I’d like to make money from it too. What do you mean, how much? What business is it of yours? Oh, stop looking like that! Ask again after my agent has sold it, and maybe then I’ll tell you.
Today I received a package from Richard Pini: several comic books, ranging from small black and white to a 180 page full color amended edition of ELFQUEST 1. It has some pages the original didn’t; I compared it to my daughter Cheryl’s copy. Another is an elegant slick comic version of a BEAUTY AND THE BEAST episode. Stop drooling; these are mine, not yours! I have to go over these and come to a conclusion what type of treatment I would like for the Xanth comic version. Remember, we are pondering doing Jenny Elf, who will surely look a bit like you. It would be fast to do a small comic, and slow to do a big fancy one. But I like the big fancy one! Sigh. It can be hard to form a conclusion. I also received four martial arts novels from a writer named Steve Perry, who would like to collaborate with me on the reworking of my out-of-print martial arts novels and on a new one. The trouble is that my time is so valuable and my reading rate so slow that the value of the time it would take just to read them would be more than I would be paid for them. No joke. So how fast do you read, Jenny? That fast? Well, I don’t. So what do I do? I want those old novels back into print, as they are the only ones of mine out of print, but I don’t want to use that time. I mean, I could be writing another Xanth novel instead! Well, let me know if you have any advice, Jenny.
I have some different enclosures for you this time. One is a little page of stickers to put on credit cards; I thought you could stick them to plates, armrests, your wheelchair—are you in it yet?—books and whatever else amuses you. If it doesn’t amuse you, throw away the labels; they are just junk mail. No, don’t stick one to Cathy! There’s a clipping about a kid supposedly stolen at Disney World; that wasn’t you, was it? An article titled “How To Get Out Of Your Own Way” whose first statement is “My life seems to be out of my control.” Do you ever feel that way? One about dinosaur stamps; they claim a brontosaur isn’t a brontosaur. That’s like saying “There ain’t no such word as ain’t!” A plan for a private little garden; I think your mother is already setting that up for you. One about hand-feeding a pet praying-mantis named Claws. A Brain Boggler puzzle from DISCOVER magazine, along with the answer, so you don’t have to sweat it. I had another of those, but can’t find it now. Curtis. Alligator Express. I understand you use these enclosures to delay therapy; well, these should delay it right out of existence!
Well, keep skidding along, Jenny; I have confidence that your life will get more interesting soon, and I’m hardly ever wrong.
*AUTHOR’S NOTE:
WHEN THESE LETTERS WERE WRITTEN I WAS MAKING PLANS TO GO TO A CONVENTION NEAR JENKY, AND MEET HER THERE. BUT I COULDN’T SAY SO DIRECTLY, BECAUSE HER FAMILY WAS NOT SURE WHETHER THE HOSPITAL WOULD ALLOW HER TO ATTEND. SO I JUST HINTED.