So how did it go, otherwise? That question reminds me of the sick joke: “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?” A novel doesn’t just go, any more than a marriage does; it’s a life experience. It is struggle and frustration and wonder and pain and joy. (Note to Ye Copy Editor: Leave my “ands” alone!) And yes, sometimes I find my fiction becoming reality, in devious ways. At the time I was writing the scene in Chapter 3 in which Darius condemns Colene for her deceit, and she blasts back at him with her statement of desperation, something similar happened to me. It had to be coincidence, because I saw that scene coming before I finished Virtual Mode. There are ways in which Darius is like me. Not in appearance—he is young and handsome—or in ability—he can do magic—but in his judgment of people. He has a relatively inflexible standard of honor, as I do, and many folk do not understand this. Those who cross me in a matter of honor might as well travel to some other world, as far as I’m concerned, for they will not be in mine. This applies to individuals and to corporations, to friends and to publishers both amateur and professional, and I have left a fair trail of ex-associates behind me. This does not mean that there is animosity, though there can be, or that I will not do business with them; sometimes I have to. Just that they will never again have my respect. Many do not understand my objection to their ways—and that is the point. Honor is not a thing swine can grasp. But there are different codes of honor, some of which can be respected by those who do not share them, and here is where the interactions can get tricky. Colene is not a bad girl; her code differs from Darius’ code, but is consistent to itself. He judged her by his code, and he did not have the right. When he saw that, he apologized, and thereafter did not mention it again. It is to Colene’s credit that she did not hold a grudge. Similarly I judged a woman by my code, and hurt her thereby, and then saw that I had erred. Such error is no light matter to me. I apologized, and the matter is at rest. We are in intermittent touch, not close; that’s not the point. It is a question not of closeness but of mutual respect. It was eerie, seeing it happen in the novel and my life at the same time.
There was also solid research in this novel. Fractals are simple in theory but can be mind-bendingly complex in practice. The Mandelbrot set exists, not precisely as described in this novel, but it is indeed called the most complicated object in mathematics. I encountered it inadvertently. I saw an article on it years ago and was intrigued, but did not follow up. Then later a correspondent, Dave Alway, introduced me to Ed Pegg, who founded Centaurs Gatherum, a magazine for centaurs. Ed introduced me to the artist Kurt Cagle, who founded Sea Tails, a magazine for merfolk. You’d be amazed at the varieties of centaurs and merfolk there are! Kurt sent me a copy of Chaos, by James Gleick, a fascinating book—and there within it were the pictures of the Mandelbrot set. I had bought a copy of this book on my own, several months before, and hadn’t yet gotten to it; it was Kurt’s copy that got my attention. So it seemed fated that I would get into fractals; when I didn’t follow up, other sources brought them to me again.
It turned out that Ed Pegg, too, was a fractals fan. He offered to get me more information. I accepted. Before I was done, I had amassed a small collection of books on fractals, gotten a computer program to generate them, gotten in touch with Benoit Mandelbrot himself, and subscribed to Amygdala, a newsletter of fractals. It was from the last that I got the system of nomenclature Colene encountered. I had also spent many hours entranced by the devious and marvelous underlying order of the Mandelbrot set. I just had to do something with this, and so I made it the setting for this novel. I did my best to simplify its ramifications, because even professional mathematicians can have trouble fathoming aspects of the set, and it can be bewildering for average folk. If you found part of Chapter 15 confusing, that’s why. I took significant license adapting it; this is a novel of fantasy with respect to some of the concepts as well as the garden-variety magic. But for those who want to see how convoluted and beautiful the Mandelbrot set is in full color and detail, watch the video tape Nothing But Zooms or its longer sequel, Mandelbrot Sets and Julia Sets, both put out by Art Matrix. This is where mathematics merges with art.
Now back to what I am doing to achieve my independence from typecasting by publishers. Publishers, like women, are not all alike, but in certain respects they seem so. In fact, sometimes they seem like flocks of chickens, all spooking together at something inconsequential. Sometimes they seem like sheep of Orwell’s Animal Farm persuasion, defining things irrelevantly: FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAA-AA-AAD! Sometimes they merely seem like idiots. One publisher, advised that I want my box number used for regular mail so that stray fans won’t be able to find my house and drop in on me unannounced, now sends all my regular mail to the house address except for an occasional one to the box with the name Piers Anthony deleted and the words “Don’t Use Number” substituted. So much for that. (So how come this comment is seeing print? Well, the present publisher, like my wife when I remark on women drivers, knows that I wouldn’t dare say anything bad about it. ) Good books do get denied, and bad ones do get published, and foul-ups are chronic. So I am going to see what I can do for myself. I can foul up readily enough on my own, and I might as well publish my own bad books.
So I am setting up my own marketing facility, HI PIERS, and if your local bookstore won’t sell you an Anthony book, calendar, or whatever, call my “troll free” number 1-800 HI PIERS and we’ll sell it to you. If no publisher takes what I write, I will publish it myself, and HI PIERS will sell it. That’s how this got started: I couldn’t get a publisher for the 1991 Xanth Calendar, despite the fact that it may be the most beautiful calendar extant, so I published it myself. It’s easy enough to do; all it takes is time and suicidal nerve about risking money. So maybe I’m a little like Colene too. At this writing we are running TV ads and building up our mailing list, hoping to make this work. (e-book note: this phone number is no longer valid. For similar information try the official web site at http://www.hipiers.com instead.)
So it was in this period that I had to take time off from writing to go to the TV Channel 6 studio in Orlando, Florida, and speak my amateurish lines under the lights. You would think I would be able to do a professional job of being Piers Anthony, but I found I was capable of fluffing even that. Something about reading from the monitor that makes me lose any naturalness to which I might aspire. Something about speaking for a microphone that turns my voice into duck talk. So I struggled through, constantly being assured that this disaster was great.
But I did get one fun commercial in, in which I pretended (pretended?) to foul up, and concluded, “Oh, just buy the bleeping book!” And would you believe it: the cable TV outfits wouldn’t run it, for reasons which changed each time we inquired: because of the dirty word “bleeping,” because it was facetious, because they were afraid they’d get blamed for running a reject. Publishers’ syndrome, again. So we added that to the videotaped Interview With an Ogre. That’s what I mean: I now have the means to get my stuff to my readers despite whimsical editorial censoring. What a feeling of power!
At any rate, at this writing it remains to be seen whether HI PIERS will turn out to be genius or idiocy. That is, whether it succeeds or fails. But its object is to make my titles readily available to my readers, help promote my works, and make me better known as a writer. The addresses of those mentioned in this Note may have changed by the time you read this, so I haven’t run them, but if you call HI PIERS they’ll give you current information. If you are curious whether HI PIERS is succeeding or failing, call the number, and if you get a no-such-number intercept you’ll know it failed. If you get a response of “Hi Piers” you’re stuck; you will be locked onto our mailing list forever.