img February 1990 img

A symmetry is achieved. A story continues.

 

FeBlueberry 1, 1990

Dear Jenny,

 

I’m starting this letter a day early. It is my 30th letter of the month, after 160 last month. What happened was that yesterday 39 letters arrived in the mail, 31 of them in a package from DEL REY BOOKS, about a dozen of them dating back to Apull 1989. Right, not long after I started writing to you. Someone must have cleaned out the cobwebby recesses of his desk. If your mother had sent her letter through that publisher, and it had taken nine months for it to be forwarded—well, if I said what needs to be said about those bloatbottomed noodlebrained functionaries at publishing houses, my mouth would catch fire. You see enough of that with your mother already. I think her teeth had nuclear meltdowns. So anyway, I have now answered all those letters, doing them at the rate of up to seven letters per hour cold—that is, from first reading to proofreading—starting last night, and as long as I’m doing letters, it’s your turn. So if this arrives a day early, don’t worry; it won’t happen again. The Post Orifice would never allow it.

What’s that? You want to know how I answered letters so fast, when it takes me five minutes just to type the address and ten minutes to read the letter? Well, I made up an apologetic paragraph for the glossary, and invoked that at the beginning of each letter. That gave me about half the letter right off. Then I touched on personal points, answering questions and such. I have some other standard paragraphs in the glossary, such as for the question “What’s the next Xanth novel, when’s it due, and what’s it about?” which help.

Oh, you want to see one of those paragraphs? Why? To make sure it isn’t the same as the first paragraph of this letter? Jenny, have I mentioned your suspicious mind?! Okay, here it is; I just type the word “late” and then CTRL-F4, and it magically transforms it to this:

I received your letter on Jamboree 31, along with 30 others in a package from DEL REY BOOKS, some dating back nine months. I feel mixed pain and anger with this inordinate delay, and only hope at this point that you have not long since given up reading my books in disgust. It seems pointless to answer you in any great detail, since I can not even be sure your address remains valid. My apology for the long non-response, and if you write again directly to this address, you will receive a faster answer. Which is not to say that I’m trying to encourage more mail; far from it. But ordinarily you should have had a reply within a month or so.

Okay, satisfied? It isn’t quite the same as the lead-off for this letter. So now let’s get on to—what? I can’t quite make that out, Jenny; you know I can’t read those hand signals as fast as you can make them. In fact I can’t read them at all. Just the “Thank You” signal, and these definitely aren’t that. XANTH—you want the Xanth stamp? Ouch! No need to make a curse-face at me! Oh, you mean the next Xanth novel glossary paragraph? Sigh. Okay.

Xanth #14, Isle of View, should be published in OctOgre. It’s about Prince Dolph’s choice of which girl to marry, and also about Jenny Elf from the Elfquest graphic novel realm, who is visiting Xanth and finds it odd. There will be a graphic (comics) edition as well, from the Elfquest folk.

Now are you satisfied? You thought Jenny Elf would not be in there? O Ye of Little Faith!

I’m enclosing Curtis, with Calvin/Hobbes on the back—I’m rather pleased with the way I work that—and a special Hagar the Horrible sent me by another correspondent. She modified it a bit, see, to make it fit me. Yes, I thought you’d like it. I get the darndest things from my fans. I have a dancing flower, and an hourglass that has green bloblets in clear liquid instead of sand, and a letter opener in the form of a thirteen inch Samurai sword. Another thing a reader sent me just a few days ago was a thirty page History of Xanth with dates from the time man arrived there right up through the present, complete with charts and genealogies. It’s amazing, and just in time for the writing of Question Quest, about the long life of Good Magician Humfrey. Now I won’t have to guess about things; I’ll use that as my reference. I’ll try to get it published as an appendix, with due credit to the reader who made it. He seems to have worked independently of the Lexicon and Visual Guide, because he doesn’t have their errors. What a nice surprise!

What’s that? No, Jenny Elf isn’t in it, because he hasn’t seen that novel yet. But yes, I told him about her.

Meanwhile, how are things here? Our poor dead bushes remain dead; we hope they will sprout new growth from the stems, but so far those stems are shriveling. Maybe from the roots. We hope. The grass is sending up new shoots, at least. We now have a big yellow Gerber Daisy flowering in the last two days; it looks almost like a sunflower. And the azaleas—remember how I said they are supposed to flower only in early spring, but kept it up through summer and fall, until the DisMember Freeze? Well, they lost some leaves, but now are back flowering again, managing not to miss a month. So there is some joy in Florida.

What else? Well, no more visitors. Chapter 4 of Tappy (working title) arrived from Phil Farmer, and yesterday I was going to make a note for Chapter 5—and suddenly had a thousand words, summarizing the whole chapter. Just before every old letter in the world landed on me. So tomorrow I’ll start in writing that chapter. I had Jack and Tappy fleeing in a small aircraft, but others were pursuing and gaining. Farmer got them out of that, then they were headed into a strange glowing cloud that kills the minions of the Gaol empire, but Tappy blithely forges ahead while Jack is about to pass out—which is where Farmer turned it back to me. But he did tell me how to get into the phase-traveling ship in that cloud. I’m going to have them do futuristic medicine on Tappy and fix it so she can see and talk again—except that she doesn’t. It’s as if she doesn’t want to. So Jack has to work with her, and try to get her to—while the Empire forces are closing in. Because Tappy is the Imago, the one power that can stop the Empire, if only—what do you mean, you’ve read that before?

Meanwhile I’m progressing on Virtual Mode too, in which Colene and Seqiro, the telepathic horse, reach the region of the evil Ddwng of the DoOon—you’ve read that too? Jenny, you’re impossible!

Well, keep going, Jenny. I understand you’ll be going to school, too, with folk who know how to do it. Harpy learning!

FeBlueberry 9, 1990

Dear Jenny,

Let’s start with the Book Report—what’s that? The comics? You want to start with the comics? I really can’t understand why, Jenny.

Okay, this time I’m enclosing a whole week of Curtis. This is because I just couldn’t risk having you miss it. Your mother might be having an attack of the purple grue and not read it to you. You see this is about Curtis' vegetarian friend Gunk, the comic strip’s token white, who is running away with the action. It is frog dissection time at school, and I remember when we hit that at college. They were going to dissect a live worm. I made a cutting (uh, no pun) remark about how I hadn’t gone to college to participate in vivisection, and other students began to get uneasy, and finally the instructor backed down. “Well, if I had cut open this worm, you would have seen thus and so,” he said, and went on with the class. I’m sure you can picture the scene well enough. So now you know what to expect from Gunk. Did you notice what happens to the teacher’s skirt in the third comic? Then he puts the curse on her, and—say, Jenny, why don’t we go visit Flyspeck Island some time? I think we’d like it.

I’m also enclosing a picture of your mother eating an apple with her new false teeth. The local newspaper ran it. You probably didn’t realize how widely known she is.

Okay, now that Book Report. I’ll—what? Pictures? You want to talk about the pictures first? Well, okay. This week I received a big bunch of pictures from Toni-Kay Dye. She’s the lady who painted “Cats in a Window” for you, with the purple wrapping that matched your Cinderella Gown. Do you watch junk TV? She reminds me of the policewoman in Hunter. No, not in personality. She took pictures at Sci-Con 11, and you were in many of them, Jenny. These give me a solid evocative memory of the occasion. She’ll be sending pictures to you and your mother too, if she hasn’t already, so you can see what I mean. One of them I didn’t keep; instead I sent it on to Richard Pini. I told him it was coming, on the phone, and now he’s teasing his wife about this incriminating picture of him kissing another woman. Yes, that’s you, Jenny. Aren’t you ashamed? How come you don’t look ashamed?

There’s more on pictures, of another nature. When my wife’s father, my daughters' grandfather, died, about three months before you almost did, there was a big job of estate and house cleaning up to do. My wife handled it, and now the house has been sold and the estate liquidated and the money distributed to his three children. Assorted items came to us, and among them was a set of pictures of my wife Cam as she was at age two, with her father. She was the cutest little thing, much like our daughter Penny, when. Sometimes I just stop and look at those pictures of that bygone day when my wife was fifty years younger than she is now, feeling nostalgia for what I was never part of. Life, even in its ordinary course, can be cruel; it proceeds inevitably from cuteness and novelty to age and death. Then I resumed work, typing my novel about a cute girl who is obsessed with death, Colene in Virtual Mode, and the radio played “Scarlet Ribbons.” You know that song, Jenny? Surely you do! Cute little girls and scarlet ribbons—it just made me feel so sad for the moment. We can’t hold on to the precious aspects of life, we can only remember as we see them fading.

Well, on to the Book Report; I know you’ve had enough of nostalgia. You say you haven’t? Sigh; okay, I’ll tell about another song. Back a couple of weeks ago when my mother visited—you remember that, when I put my mother on the phone with your mother? You don’t? Ha—I saw that bit of a smile! You do remember! Well, we had to get up at 5 A.M. to be sure of catching her train, so Monday morning our house intercoms came on with the radio blaring out news, commercials, and then a song, “Eternal Flame.” I had heard that song before, but only in the background of my mind. This time in the hassle of getting dressed and all, that song in its sudden beauty was like a bit of Heaven being heard in Hell. “Does he feel her heart beating … ?” There’s an evocative half-note in there that does something to me. Then it was cut off; Cam had to turn off the intercom so she could phone the train station and learn that the train was 38 minutes late, so we could have slept another half hour. Sigh. Well, we got my mother to the train in time, and now she’s back in Pencil-vania. She’s pushing 80, so we like to be sure things are okay. Then this past week I heard that song again, and this time I got to listen to the whole of it. It’s not the most elegant song, but instead seems sort of wistful and amateur, as if this young woman is just awakening to love and this is her song of expression. I made a note of the FM stations on which I heard that song, and now I have them zeroed in on my instant-station keys, so they’ll be there to play the song again. Have you heard that one? Well, make your mother set up an FM radio so you can listen to such songs. I’m sure you’ll like it when you hear it.

Now that Book Report. (Pause) What, no objection? You’ve finally given up changing the subject? Okay, onward. This is the third of those three books I was telling you about. This is The End of Nature, and I hope to read it when I read the other two. Its thesis is that man has just about destroyed nature, so we no longer live in a natural environment. We are cutting down the last of the forests, we are polluting the land, sea and air, we are killing the wildlife, and we have made of the world the equivalent of an enormous heated room. If we don’t change our ways in one hell of a hurry, we shall pay one hell of a consequence. And, the author fears and I fear, we are not going to change. So life as we know it now is doomed. Unless the warning signals become so strong that even the ignorant, self-interested man on the street realizes that it is time to act, because it’s his own ox being gored to death. Let’s hope!

On to something less significant. Last Sunday I went out to pump up the bathtub full of water for the horses in the pasture, and the water was way down, and the pump just wasn’t pumping right and finally pooped out entirely. It was coming apart, so that air was leaking in. So Tuesday I went out with a vice-grip wrench—and couldn’t fix it. So Wednesday I went out again, with three vice-grips, and this time I managed to tighten the almost inaccessible nuts and make the pump tight so it could pump again. Victory at last, I think. Such is my life.

So I hope you are doing well, Jenny, and wowing them at school, and I hope your mother is getting some sleep. Till next week—

FeBlueberry 16, 1990

Dear Jenny,

This time I’ll start with the enclosures again, because there’s one that shouldn’t be here. That’s because it’s a Valentine cardlet sent to me, but I thought you’d find it cute, so I’m sending it along. This person always includes little cutouts he makes, and this is a man on a horse, sort of. Now admit it: isn’t this your sort of cutout? I’m also sending a picture of manatees, the ugliest and gentlest of sea creatures; they like to have swimmers rub their tummies, as dogs do. And a cartoon showing the Gettysburg Address copy-edited; maybe that isn’t painful and hilarious to you, but it is to me, because it is exactly the sort of editing I receive. If it doesn’t amuse you, give it to your mother. And “Curtis” of course, and “The Far Side” because I love that notion of the La Brea Carpets. And “Calvin”—don’t show that one to your mother, because then she won’t let you do that for school. And a cutout quote: “Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans.” That can be painfully true, as you know. And a little graph showing a formula for P/E Plus Inflation. Now you may wonder what P/E stands for. Well, at school it’s Physical Education. In some circles it’s Penis Envy. Here I think it means Price/Earnings ratio. Take your pick; I think the graph will work for any of them.

What’s that? I violated the Adult Conspiracy? Sigh; it’s hard to avoid it, if I don’t want a hopelessly dull letter. Which is the point of the Adult Conspiracy: it is to see that folk never get to see or do anything interesting. Especially young folk like you.

And a fax of a page from a news fanzine that evidently picked up the Jenny story from the Sci-Con report published in that other fanzine I keep telling you about. Just so you know the news about you. That was the last thing I sent to them; I have dropped them. Yes, they are now printing comments about my supposed attack on another person and my name-calling, while the other person is accusing me of all the crimes he can think of without regard to accuracy: he says I suffer from PMS (your mother will define that for you), that I don’t know what a logarithm is (I taught logarithms when in the Army), that I have amazing arrogance, and so on. This is because I criticized him for squishing spiders just because they were there, and when he attacked me in a barrage, I said that needless cruelty to animals is an early sign of sociopathic behavior. I think he is pretty well proving my case. Anyway, that’s what’s being published about me now that I can’t respond because I stopped writing because of their censorship. Par for the course, apparently.

But you’re not interested in my aggravations. Oops, you mean you are? But Jenny, these are supposed to be nice sweet positive uplifting letters to cheer you up. You mean you’re sick of that stuff, and want something nasty to chew on? You’re getting more like your mother every day! Okay, I’ll tell you my latest aggravation. Do you remember the Xanth Calendar? The one with the Siren on the cover, in her bare skin? No? How about the picture of Miss Mayhem, the ogress? Ha! I caught you remembering! Well, because I wanted it done right, I financed that calendar myself. I paid for everything, and every artist was paid immediately when the picture came in, instead of having to wait months the way publishers do it. Then I signed a contract with Ballantine to print and distribute it. The deal was that they would pay 6% royalties on each calendar sold, which means that I get about 59⊘, and if they sell more than 25,000 of them, I start getting repaid for my expenses in making up the Calendar. The idea was that if they printed 100,000 copies or so and sold most of them, we’d all be well ahead. Well, Ballantine kept being out of the office when we called to inquire how the calendar was selling. Meanwhile I got letters from fans complaining that they couldn’t find it on sale. One even suggested that I do a Xanth Calendar; not only had he not seen it on sale, he didn’t know it existed. So much for their publicity and distribution. So I put the matter in the hands of my agent, and he got the information: they only printed 33,000 copies. That guarantees that I lose half my money, and unless they sell almost all of those, which isn’t to be expected—there are always some returns—they won’t have to repay any of my initial costs. Apparently they deliberately printed too few, so as to stick me with the loss. It doesn’t hurt them; they had no initial costs, because I paid the artists. So they make extra money by avoiding what should have been their costs. It’s a great deal for them, but for some reason I find that annoying. So don’t be surprised if you see someone else publishing the next Xanth Calendar. As the saying goes, “If my friend cheat me once, shame on him; if he cheat me twice, shame on me.” No, I can afford the loss—but if they ever want to deal with me again, they are apt to discover it more expensive than they expected, because I don’t forget.

So let’s get to something more positive. I got a new file handling program called XTreeProGold, and it turns out to be everything I ever wanted in computer housekeeping. Yes, I realize this interests your mother more than you, so I’ll keep it brief. With it I can set up two windows, one showing the directory I’m in, the other showing the directory I want to copy files to. So I can see exactly what needs copying, and I can see it happening. That stops those disastrous errors right there; in fact I’ve already caught some out-of-date versions of files. When you get into word processing, and have dozens of files to watch, then you’ll appreciate the delight of a program like this.

This is my 112th letter so far this month, and yes, I have dozens more waiting. So what? you inquire? Well, this does concern you, because one of the letters I answered this morning was from a young man of about 18 who was hit about a year ago by a drunk driver and smashed up something awful. They are now taking some of the pins out of his bones so that he can start bending a knee again. He’s had a bad year, but is recovering. He would like to be a writer. So I gave him advice on marketing his novel, and I gave him your address, the Box # c/o Jenny Elf. So if you hear from him, listen politely; he has a notion what it is like.

Meanwhile our blooming dogwoods are—let me rephrase that; our dogwoods are blooming. Bunnies are showing up on the drive again, when I go out to fetch the newspapers on the bike and sneak a peak at the sunrise. So things are normal. Have a decent week, Jenny.

FeBlueberry 23, 1990

Dear Jenny,

Ouch! It’s after 7 P.M.! Where did the day go? Well, I typed 16 letters, and my wife’s brother and his family visited for five hours, and I had a call from my British agent. She called with the news that there is a Spanish offer for Pornucopia. They made the offer, then made a better one before the agent could respond. Apparently another publisher was getting interested. I told my agent not to read it; she sent it to the publisher still sealed in its plastic wrapping. You know how that book boiled your mother’s brain. She’s hardly had a good night’s sleep since. So yes, I suppose you could say that my letter to you was delayed by a dirty book. So maybe it does entitle you to give me a dirty look. If you feel that way. But if you do, I won’t tell you about the next paragraph.

You see, this is sort of an anniversary. My first letter to you was written FeBlueberry 27, 1989, and this is the 23rd. Maybe I should have waited four more days on this one, so—no? Ah, well. In that letter I told you how I had heard about you from your mother, and how we had just had our tree farm mowed between the rows of pine trees, and I went out there and regretted the cutting down of the blueberry bushes and thought of you, also cut down. I mentioned Robert Kornwise, who was killed by another reckless driver, whose novel I completed; your mother has a copy of that. I told you to pet the Monster under the Bed, who had gotten lonely without you and come to join you at the hospital. And I told you how I would put a Jenny character in Isle of View, an elf or an ogre girl, and you chose the ogre.

What’s that? Oh—I was just checking to make sure you were listening. You chose the elf, and after that one thing led to another, and in a few more months you’ll see Jenny Elf in person in the graphic edition. After that you won’t dare show your face on the street, because someone might recognize you. Then the regular novel will appear, with its Author’s Note, and you’ll start getting letters. I don’t know how many, but there could be a dozen or so at first, and then the pace would slow down. Do they have Show and Tell at your school? You can take a pile of letters in.

So a lot has happened in the intervening year. You went to a convention—what do you mean, what convention?! Sci-Con 11, where—ha! I heard that peep. You just couldn’t hold in that laugh any longer, could you! Then you came home, and now you’re going to school, and who knows what you’ll be up to tomorrow. Your mother phoned last night and reported that you were doing very well, and that you have a little signature stamp with a unicorn so you can answer letters. She said you got the Salad Bar Botanist of the Week Award. What were you doing—throwing salad around? And that you went to the circus. How come you get to do all these things when I can’t? But that you still get tummy pains in the night. Well, maybe if they stop feeding you beans—

So how come you’re glaring at me? How can I finish a paragraph when you act like that?

Meanwhile, how are things here? Well, yesterday we saw rain approaching on the radar: a big patch of it, all sparkling with color to show where it was most intense, looking like a double fried egg or an interior configuration of the Mandelbrot Set. Have you seen Nothing But Zooms yet? You haven’t? Well, get on it, girl! And I have finished the first draft of Virtual Mode, all but the Author’s Note. Yes, you get mentioned there, in a paragraph, but it’s mostly about the Ligeia girls, because of Colene, the suicidal protagonist. You’ll learn more about her when you’re her age, fourteen.

Meanwhile some enclosures. Remember when Penny was here with her adopted cat? Well, here’s a picture of him pretending he’s Sammy, snoozing on the VCR. And here’s Curtis, and Mother Goose & Grimm, because, well, see for yourself. And The Far Side, because I just don’t get it, and thought maybe you could figure it out. And a horse card drawn by another correspondent. Folk think that the pencil isn’t an artistic medium, but they’re wrong, as this card shows. And finally an article for your mother, from a British newsmagazine: they are learning how to make the nerves of the brain and spinal cord grow back. This may be a number of years away for human beings, but it could be very significant for you one day, if it works. And a current biblio for your mother.

So keep perking along, Jenny, and we’ll see what the next year has in store.