My business at the Con was with editors and publishers, Including Susan Allison of Berkley, who will be surprised to see her name here, and to promote HI PIERS. We were trying to sell my publishers on the notion of cooperative cable TV ads for my books: we would make the ads and the publisher would pay the better part of the cost of running them. We had them in for meals. It is an ironclad rule that the publisher always pays for the author’s meal, but I never was much for rules, and it was my treat. Which meant they had to watch our sample commercials, including my “bleeping” one. The publishers were noncommittal; I can’t think why.
There was also a cute young woman taking pictures of middle-aged old men like me, which strikes me as a reversal of the natural order. She had us scheduled every twenty minutes throughout the convention. When my turn came, and she was setting up her photographic paraphernalia, I demonstrated the joke we played as children: smile angelically, and just as the camera clicks, make a horrible face. As I spoke, I turned to face the camera, stuck out my tongue, and wiggled my fingers at my ears. FLASH! Perfect messed-up shot. No, she did take others—these folk never leave such things to chance—but I wonder whether that will be the one she publishes?
Meanwhile Jenny was attending Sci-Con, where I had met her the year before. The convention was down to a third of its normal size, because so many of its attendees had been shipped to the Persian Gulf for the crisis. That’s one way to stamp out fandom! But I understand that Jenny had a ball. For one thing, our Jenny Elf T-shirts were just coming out, with her face on them.
So I returned from the convention, and set up for the two-hour job of plugging in a few items I had overlooked when writing the novel. That took three days. Then the formal editing, normally done in a week. I started on the 10th—and completed it Thanksgiving Day, the 22nd. Because everything in the world came in to take my time, so that I was operating at about 50% efficiency. I mean that’s when my wife bought a new car and I had to go into town to sign papers and drive it home. The second issue of the Hi Piers newsletter was getting ready for publication, requiring almost daily long technical calls. There was motion picture interest in my Xanth series, but naturally the purchaser wanted more rights than I could afford to give, leading to Florida/California phone calls going nowhere fast. Assorted relatives visited. My bicycle tire went flat; the first time I fixed it the way Colene did, with gunk, but the second time it was too far gone for that and I’m going to have to get a new tire. I ride my bike a mile and a half each morning, fetching in the newspapers, you see. So I had to use my wife’s bike, my knees just about banging the handlebars. Sigh. As you can see, my home life is distressingly typical.
And in this period of the writing and editing of this novel, I had six other novels published: Hard Sell, Firefly, Isle of View, Dead Morn, Orc’s Opal, and Balook. They should all be in paperback reprint by the time you read this. I’m trying to keep up with the demands of my readers, really I am, inadequate as my effort may seem.
NoREMEMBER 22, 1990
Copyright © 1992 by Piers Anthony
Cover art by Daniel R. Horne
ISBN: 0-441-25126-9