Letters to Jenny (34 page)

I finally talked with the publisher about whether I should write two Xanth novels in one year so they could do a hardcover edition. We conclude that since I already have two hardcovers a year, this would just be crowding the field and maybe taking sales away from my other hardcovers, so it’s better to leave it alone. So I’ll just write one Xanth novel next year. Yes, I know; you already decided that; you told me. Maybe I’ll use the time to work out a Xanth computer game. My notion is to have the Player start by selecting a Companion: a character who knows his or her way around Xanth and the rules of the game. Then the Player won’t have to fumble around figuring out how to play it; he can get good advice from his Companion. The problem is, suppose a virile male Player chooses a sweet innocent nymph for Companion, and starts to get fresh? Maybe she’ll call her friend the ogre, who will stuff the Player through a knothole in the nearest beerbarrel tree. End of game. But maybe if he approached her with more respect, she would be more receptive. So this game could have aspects other than just winning through to the golden castle or whatever. Maybe the Player has to learn some courtesy along the way. You can see that this would be quite a job to program; your mother is already shaking her head. She likes the idea, but says it would be easier to program a balky printer to sing “Joy to the world.” But with the potential of the 386 computer …

I have to wrap this up. I had other books to comment on:
The End of Nature and A Forest Journey
, just as I commented on the one about the Burgess Shale last time, but they’ll have to wait another week. STOP SMIRKING! It won’t hurt you to get a bit of education along the way, you know. Not very much, anyway. Anyway, admit it: you got interested in the Burgess Shale despite yourself last time, didn’t you?

Yesterday I heard on the Paul Harvey News that the Rush Limbaugh (No, I’m just guessing about the spelling) radio show had been dropped because of bad words. Then Rush came on, talking about why women should not be farding while driving. Women were calling in and saying, “Well, I fard while driving, and it’s okay.” I finally looked up the word: FARD, meaning to apply makeup. Oh. That guy’s a conceited conservative, but it’s hard not to like him, sometimes. So remember, Jenny: no farding during therapy.

January 1990

A mother comes to visit. And a daughter goes home.

Jamboree 5, 1990

Dear Jenny
,

Yet once again I’m starting this letter late. I had nine other letters to buzz out, and those kept being interrupted by phone calls from my agent and a conference call with Morrow Books. They have read
Tatham Mound
and wanted to make a pre-emptive offer so we wouldn’t send copies of the novel out to half a dozen other publishers. You know what pre-emptive means? You do? Okay. So they told me how important I was to them, and how they would be making my work into a major hardcover bestseller. Then they made a lowball offer. No, get that finger down! We shall be more polite than that. We shall simply show the novel elsewhere. If we get a better bid, Morrow will have the chance to match it. We’re calling their bluff. It isn’t that I am greedy, but that publishers show how much they value an author, and how committed they are to a novel, by how much they pay for it. So, with reluctance, I have entered the big-advance arena. It’s like a story Colene will tell in
Virtual Mode
: there are two horses in a pasture. One is Maresy Doats, to whom Colene writes private letters in her Journal; Maresy is the only one who knows Colene is suicidal. Colene always wanted a horse, but lives in the suburbs. So Maresy is imaginary. But a good and sensible friend. But this particular problem is Maresy’s: she sees that they are grazing their pasture at such a rate that it will be exhausted before spring, and it is all they have. So she talks to the other horse, saying “We had better slow down, so our pasture will last, and we won’t starve in the winter.” But the other horse goes right on grazing at top speed. What should Maresy do? If she eats less, to conserve the pasture, she will grow lean and the other horse will get more, and the grass will still run out. Then Maresy will be in a worse position to survive than the other horse, who has eaten better. But if she eats more, the pasture will be exhausted even faster. It’s a real problem. If Maresy sacrifices herself, only the greedy and insensitive horse will survive. So in the end Maresy has to eat fast too, giving herself the best chance though she knows it is not a good way. Well, that’s how it is with me and the marketing of my books. If I settle for low advances, publishers, who are like the insensitive horse, will give my novels indifferent treatment, and I will be bypassed by other writers who go for big advances. It has been happening. So I have to compete, though I don’t need the money. I don’t want to lose the race to the greedy and/or insensitive writers.

Meanwhile, back at
Isle of View
: The copy-edited manuscript arrived here yesterday. I had not received your mother’s corrections, so I phoned her—did she tell you about that? No?—and got them directly. She also said you had sent me a bushel of peanuts.
A bushel?
!! They have not arrived either. Maybe God diverted them to Squeedunk, because I didn’t send you anything. Sigh; life does get complicated. Anyway, I have marked in her corrections, and added a three page Jenny-Con supplement to the Author’s note. Yes, you can have a copy; here it is. And don’t complain about the streaks down the margin; my laser printer is doing it, and won’t stop. I think it’s leaking toner. We’ll use up this batch of toner, and then if it continues with the next one, we’ll have to call in the repair man. One problem I anticipate is that readers will want to write to you, and some may even want to send some money to help with your treatment. I got two addresses from your mother, one for letters and one for money. I pondered, considered, cogitated, and thought about it, and the more I did that, the more it seemed to me that the address I should give is the one for letters. If someone wants to send money, and puts it in with a letter, your mother can forward that to the money account. But I think most will be girls about your age who send letters of sympathy and hope.

The novel itself looks good. I haven’t told you a lot about it, because that would take 124,000 words or so, but Jenny Elf acquits herself well enough. Someone will surely read you the Jenny Elf sections when it is published. Maybe also about the way the Demoness Metria, whom you met in
Vole
, comes to tease young Prince Dolph. She even offers to assume the form of his fiancée Nada Naga, wearing only panties. He’s been trying to see Nada’s panties for years, without success. He has no shame. In the end, it is not Nada’s panties he sees, but Electra’s, which are not nearly as exciting for some reason, and—but I see I am boring you, so I’d better move on.

What? Well,
of course
Jenny Elf wears panties, and no, no one sees them. You have a suspicious mind!

And I was going to do that Book Report on
A Forest Journey
. No, I haven’t read it yet. I haven’t read the one about the Burgess Shale either; I’ve been too busy to read. I hate that; I want more time to read. Anyway, this one is about the role of wood in civilization. Stop getting bored—I tell you this is interesting, or else! It tells how wood is vital to civilization. For example, in 2000 BC the isle of Crete in the Mediterranean was a forested wilderness. Then it was colonized, and soon was a center of civilization, with a great fleet of ships made from that excellent wood. Then it exhausted the trees, and declined. I’m not sure whether this book mentions a small matter of a volcano named Thera which blew up and blasted the Cretan civilization to smithereens. But it’s probably right about the wood. I know from my research for
Tatham Mound
that some American Indians did similar—no, not setting off volcanoes, dummy!—using up all the wood and collapsing. Wood is important! When England used up its trees it shifted to coal, and that started pollution. So now you know why I’m into tree farms. Trees are wonderful things, and much better alive than dead. If you don’t like trees, you’re—oh, you
do
like trees? Well, I knew that.

I have to talk with someone about a Xanth computer game I may try to devise, with Companions the Player can choose to help him. I told you about that last time. You want to know whether Jenny Elf can be a Companion? Hm; I hadn’t thought of that. Does she know enough about Xanth yet?

Have a harpy week, Jenny! I understand the time is drawing nigh for you to come home. Then you can see that your mother gets some rest, instead of rushing madly after old monias and catching a new monia.

Jamboree 12, 1990

Dear Jenny
,

Sigh. Our poinsettias and hibiscus are dead on their stems. We knew the cold snap at Christmas killed them, but it took a while for it to show so clearly. They were getting so pretty, and—you say you don’t want to hear about it? Well, there’s also the local news. A man was starting out on a bicycle ride for the homeless, to publicize their plight, and he got mugged and his bicycle stolen before he had hardly gotten underway. A young woman was dragged into a nine foot deep pit, held captive for several hours, then taken out and, um, the Adult Conspiracy warning light is beeping at me. Let’s just say that something she didn’t like happened to her. Another woman was squished by the dump truck she drove. They renamed a Tampa street the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and the new signs keep getting vandalized, sprayed over, ripped out. Racism is rampant here. What do you mean, you don’t like that news any better than the business about the plants? I’m just telling you what life is like in sunny Florida. How come you’re so hard to satisfy?

What’s that finger-signing you’re making? I think it translates to BIRD. I don’t understand. Well, I do have some news about a bird. There’s this correspondent I call the Bird Maiden, because she used to rescue injured raptors—that is, birds of prey—and nurse them back to health and set them free again. When I got my novel
Hasan
republished, I mentioned the Bird Maiden in the Author’s Note. That novel is an adaptation of an Arabian Nights tale, “Hasan and the Bird Maiden.” You’d probably like it. The Bird Maiden in the story is one who could put on a bird suit and fly away. Sure enough, the mundane Bird Maiden took off for Germany after that, found a man there, and now she’s married and with an 18 month old daughter named Alessandra. That’s close enough to the story. Good things happen to my readers.

What? You mean that wasn’t what you were asking about? Let me see that finger again. Oh—
that
kind of bird! Very well, I’ll tell you the story about that. You see, about three months ago one of the also-ran FM radio stations decided to change its program and its image and go all-out for glory. It became the “Power Pig.” Its manager painted his car shocking pink with splotches and announced that the proper signal of respect was one middle finger thrust into the air. He called it “Flipping the Pig.” Now he drives around town and everybody gives him that signal of affinity. Meanwhile the radio station quadrupled its market share and became #1 in the area, overall. That Pig is really flying!

So now let’s get on to—what, you aren’t through with the Power Pig? Okay. The leading station had been Q-105. Power Pig said the Q stood for “queers.” No, I won’t tell you what that means. Then the local gay group got on the case, and the Pig had to apologize. Then the Pig put out T-shirts with the Q-105 logo, with a screw superimposed on it. That means—no, I’d better not explain about that. Q didn’t find that very funny. In fact, Q is now suing for trademark infringement.

Okay, enough of that, before you get bored. Oh? Not yet? Sometimes I’m not sure about your mind, Jenny. Well, all right, a bit more. The Pig urged women to send in nude pictures of themselves in another promotion. No, you can’t join that one! The Pig also said on the air that the only safe way to listen to it was “with a condom over your head.” No, I won’t tell you what that means; I’m already in trouble as it is. And the Pig went to the St. Petersburg high school and issued fake hall passes during a student protest.