Piers Anthony: Outspoken Ogre

Crescent Blues Quiz: What author:
1) published 113 books (so far);
2) co-authored 26 books; and
3) is more punny than a barrelful of Ogres?
If you answered Piers Anthony, congratulations! You just won a cyber-cigar.

The author of nine series in addition to the much-beloved Xanth, Anthony qualifies as one of the brightest, most enduring stars of science fiction and fantasy. His prolific originality continues to amaze his legions of dedicated fans — as does his outspokenness on issues close to his heart. Since even mundane reporters know outspokenness and great interviews often travel together, Crescent Blues recently approached the Head Ogre for his views on Xanth, the traditional publishing establishment (a.k.a. Parnassus), electronic publishing and, inevitably, book reviewers.

Crescent Blues: Your latest Xanth novel, Xone of Contention, provides a Xanthian view of the Internet and the Demon X(A/N)th’s (a.k.a. Nimby’s) exploration of Mundania. You’ve written in your newsletters to your fans about your trips into the outer world. Were Nimby’s travails based on some you’ve experienced first hand?

Piers Anthony: Are Nimby’s Mundane adventures in Xone of Contention based on my own experience? No, merely on my general familiarity with Mundania.

What about Pia and Edsel’s O-zone experiences?

Again, only upon general familiarity, with considerable help from reader advisers who participate more fully than I do. At the time I wrote Xone I had never been on the Internet.

According to your official Web site, the next book in the Xanth series, The Dastard, will be released later this year. Would you mind telling our readers something about it?

Here is my canned paragraph on The Dastard: The Dastard is the 24^th novel in the Xanth series. The main character does really dastardly deeds, and because he can travel in time, he is very hard to stop. When he encounters someone who is really successful or happy, he goes back in time to eliminate the thing that made that happiness or success possible. For example, when a little Mundane girl finds her way into Xanth and is thrilled, the Dastard goes back and blocks the way, so the girl never finds Xanth. When a man finds his ideal woman, the Dastard goes back and diverts him so he never meets her.

Well, the three little princesses, Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm, catch on, and decide to do something about this. But they’re only four years old, so they exchange places with their 21 year old selves on Ida’s moon Ptero, and the three big princesses tackle the Dastard. But then the awful Sea Hag escapes the Brain Coral’s pool, and comes to join the Dastard, and together they are really tough to beat. Especially when the Sea Hag takes over the body of Princess Melody. Oh, no! This should be published in hardcover around OctOgre 2000. Be there. Melody really needs your help.

You just finished your 25^thXanth book, Swell Foop, too. Are you taking your readers towards a specific destination or do you simply write the Xanth adventures as ideas occur to you?

Am I taking Xanth in a specific direction? Only very generally. It gradually gets more mature as it goes, addressing more adult concerns and thus aggravating those who believe that there should be no social awareness in fantasy. Thus in Zombie Lover, the matter of racism was broached and continued in Xone, and in the latter also the matter of biased intelligence testing. The hypocrisies of cultural sexual attitudes are always grist for parody via the Adult Conspiracy to Keep Interesting Things from Children.

But Xanth makes fun of anything that offers, as it occurs to me, or as readers suggest it. Apart from that, Xanth does just occur as ideas come to me. That does not mean it is slipshod. I do my best to make an interesting story and to develop meaningful characters throughout.

The Dastard explores the meaning of soulessness, showing both the freedom and futility of it. The soul is equated with conscience, and there are indeed folk in Xanth and Mundania who act as if they lack this essential human quality.

Swell Foop is a grander adventure, exploring the significance of emotions for good or ill, as the major Demons get into this unfamiliar mortal aspect. There has always been more to Xanth than puns. The critics who claim there is nothing there but egregious puns are revealing their own inability to pick up on the more sophisticated levels of humor therein. I think of it as being like a fruitcake, with the puns as nuts. There is more than nuts to fruitcake.

Elsewhere you mentioned that you used over a hundred reader notions in Swell Foop. That’s a lot of fan interaction. How do you deal with the sheer amount of email you receive every day?

My mail has been a problem since Xanth started. Originally I typed answers to every letter, but as the total rose to more than 100 a month it cut seriously into my working time. I tried using a secretary, and that speeded it up, but made it less responsive. When I computerized I gradually worked out a system to facilitate letters, and handled as many as 200 in a month, averaging 150 for several years. Only in the past year have I gotten online and learned to handle email.

At present I answer about 100 letters a month, and read 300 emails. HiPiers acknowledges them all with form responses, but I read them all, and often add personal notes, which I write in pencil on the printouts, and HiPiers transcribes those. So it works well enough, though the emails seem to be increasing from 10 a day, and there could be a problem in the future if this continues.

HiPiers averages 4,000 hits a day, so readers could really swamp me if they tried. I appreciate their restraint. The thing is, my attention is personal, even if a form response goes out. I save the suggestions I can use, and there are a hundred or so in each Xanth novel.

It would be easier to write a novel without reader input, but I feel the fiction is richer for it. I don’t want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements. My readers ensure originality, in spot elements, and often in significant ones too. So it’s like the problem of the opposite gender: you can’t live with it or without it, whichever side you’re on. I wish my readers took less of my time — about a third of my working time goes to them — but I love and need them all.

In an off-hand sort of way, Xanth will be coming to television. Your novel, Letters to Jenny, inspired a movie, Princess Rose. Even though you wrote the book that will accompany the movie, how do you feel about Princess Rose being so different from Jenny Elf’s original story?

Princess Rose should indeed be a TV movie, assuming something doesn’t go wrong. I don’t know how good a movie it will be, because the way movie folk think is different from the way writers think, and I distrust what isn’t done my way. This is what I call a healthy paranoia.

It soon became evident that the movie folk had little or no awareness of the kind of writing I actually do, so I had to try to adapt to the kind of derivative writing they thought I did, and that will seem like perfect vindication to my critics. However, my literary agent wants to save Xanth for some later movie deal, so the fact that this isn’t Xanth is good.

As for Jenny Elf, she and her family and my wife are taking it with good humor. The implication is that I go to see the paralyzed girl and fall in love with her mother. It’s a good enough story in its own right, and does address the problems of coma and paralysis, as well as personal doubt and redemption. Just don’t expect anything close to the real situation.

In recent years, epic sword and sorcery dominated the fantasy market. Do you see the popularity of the Harry Potter books as a sign that readers (and viewers) are ripe for a lighter approach?

I hope to read a Harry Potter novel soon, to see what it’s all about. I admit to being annoyed that many good light fantasy writers have had trouble getting published, in England and elsewhere, when it is obvious the readers were waiting for us all along. But between us and those readers are publishers with tunnel vision. I doubt that this will change soon, so I am working for another option to bypass the whole system via the Internet. More on that anon.

Douglas Adams is a notorious punster like yourself. Have you ever read any of his books? Would you like to collaborate with him? If so what do you think the finished product would look like?

Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker series also shows the potential of lighter fantastic fiction. I read the first, and listened to a tape of a later one, and it’s fun. But I don’t read or listen for pleasure. I have too much else to do. As for collaboration — I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It’s not that the books are bad; editors won’t even read them. (I did speak of tunnel vision…) I have had to take legal action just to enforce a deal for collaborations my agent made when the publisher tried to renege. So I’m not looking for more collaborations at present.

Nevertheless, over the years you’ve collaborated with several other writers — Mercedes Lackey, Roberto Fuentes, Richard Gilliam and now, most recently, Julie Brady with Dream a Little Dream. Next year will also see The Secret of Spring with Jo Anne Tausch and The Gutbucket Quest with Ron Leming. What prompted these collaborations?

Each [collaboration] is unique unto itself, but in general it was to enable a decent novel to get into print. Most of my collaborators have been less established than I, and had little chance to get published without my help. You mention Dream a Little Dream: that’s an example. But I have also collaborated with those who need no help, such as Philip José Farmer and Mercedes Lackey.

One, with Robert Coulson, was a fake. The publisher told me he was just going to retype the manuscript to include spot corrections, then ran it in degraded form as a full collaboration. So that is not one of the 26. That was what could have been a legal case, had I not been satisfied with an apology, immediate reversion of the rights, firing of the editor, and shutdown of the line of books. (The latter two were happening anyway, but I could have made them happen, had that not been the case.)

Would you like to provide our readers with a teaser for Secret of Spring or The Gutbucket Quest?

The Secret of Spring relates in large part to plant folk, with many vegetable puns, and is a nice romantic story. The Gutbucket Quest is a blues music alternate-Earth novel. I am ignorant there, but my collaborator is conversant. (I refuse to be limited by my own limitations.) The Gutbucket is a very special musical instrument, and the blues culture makes the ambiance of this story. Both of these novels can be read as simple romantic adventures but have other elements that should appeal to readers.

What do you like the most about collaborating? The least?

What I like the most about collaborating is the ease of it. In early days collaborations were difficult as two heads lurched in different directions, until I worked out my formula for doing them. Normally now I start with the other writer’s manuscript and revise it to meet the standards of publishability, thus making a good story presentable and helping the writer to make it into print. What I like least is dealing with publishers who simply don’t want collaborations regardless of their merit.

The one with Farmer, The Caterpillar’s Question, was different. We alternated writing segments. It was what we made of the remnant of a project that originally was to have had ten authors doing different chapters; that got too wild, and the editor rejected it, so I bought it out and two of us completed it. I have always admired the work of Phil Farmer and was glad for the chance to work with him. Readers today may be too young to remember his classics like The Lovers.

Besides Jenny Elf, have you ever used family, friends, enemies or perhaps a celebrity you admired as a character in your books?

I seldom use real people as significant characters in my fiction. I did have my college writing mentor Will Hamlin in Tarot, and the daughter of a correspondent, Jaylin, is a character in Swell Foop. That just sort of happened. She had suggested an idea for a character, and I needed a name, so borrowed hers.

I have done that on occasion for incidental characters, puns and such. But this one then happened to walk into a major adventure. I checked with her mother, offering to change the name, but she didn’t object, so it stayed. I told her that this gave her a chance to see what her teen daughter was going to get into, two years before it happened: a trip to Xanth, and thence to the galaxy of Fornax and the company of an alien Demon.

In Shade of the Tree I adapted myself and my daughters as characters, converting one to a boy, with the wife/mother dead. My wife says she gave up her life for that novel. In the earlier novel Rings of Ice I did [something] similar, and the editor said he liked the story but hated the characters, so I ripped them out and put in others. The editor never knew.

In any event, once a person becomes a character, that character assumes his/her own identity, and the parallel fades. Sometimes it has gone the other way, with characters becoming people. The main example is how Good Magician Humfrey became my editor, Lester Del Rey, and his wife, the Gorgon, became Judy-Lynne del Rey. She used to send in puns for the Gorgon, like Gorgon-zola cheese. When Judy-Lynne died and I left Del Rey Books, I deleted Humfrey and the Gorgon from Xanth for a time, unable to handle the loss. That’s why they weren’t there in Vale of the Vole. Damn, I miss Judy-Lynne. I call her a giant, and only those who knew her personally understand that humor.

Regarding DoOon, the fourth Mode novel, at one time you said that you didn’t think it would ever be published because of the chapter dealing with a major character’s rape. According to the news, TOR Books will publish DoOon sometime in 2001. What made Parnassus change its mind? [Editor’s note: Spoilers for DoOon follow.]

I admit I was surprised about DoOon Mode. I expected to publish it via the Internet. That final chapter is savage. TOR has not been prudish about sex in my fiction, though my quarter million word fantasy Key To Havoc did go beyond its limits and may have to go the Internet route. The sequence in DoOon is certainly relevant to the main character Colene’s difficulty with sex, and, unfortunately, to the lives of too many real girls. It was adapted from the experience of one of my correspondents. So I conjecture that TOR felt the novel was worth publishing. It has been the most requested of all my prospective novels.

Speaking of unfinished series, will we ever see another Geodyssey novel?

I stopped writing the fifth Geodyssey novel, Climate of Change, at 112,000 words, or about two thirds through, when I lost my market for the series. Critics who blame me for writing light fantasy evidently haven’t tried the market for serious history. But I have to say that the novel was not shaping up to my expectation. So while there is material there I’m sorry to lose, such as a chapter set in Beringia, the land between Alaska and Sibera 20,000 years ago, I am not at all sure I’ll ever complete the book. Still, I don’t like to leave things unfinished, so if I live long enough and the market changes, I may yet return to it.

You once mentioned that you expect your estate to find another author to continue your writing after you die. If you could choose from today’s authors who would be the Ogres-in-Contention?

I don’t recall saying that I’m expecting my estate to find a writer to finish my projects. What I do recall is saying long ago that I’d be willing to complete someone else’s book if he/she died with it unfinished, so that it would not be lost. I think other writers dismissed that as arrogance, for me to think that I could ever match the style or quality of another writer. I did do it once, when I completed the novel of Robert Kornwise — as a collaboration — after he died. That was Through the Ice, and his family said I had succeeded in writing it his way.

You have, quite publicly, announced your interest and investment in electronic publishing. When did electronic publishing first catch your eye?

I think I first became aware of electronic publishing when Pulpless.com solicited me for Volk in 1996. I am generally amenable to new things, and that completed novel had lain fallow for five years, as can happen with my more ambitious projects, so I was willing to give it a try. Thereafter, I learned more about the Internet and Internet publishing. It seemed to be a way around the limitations of Parnassus, the hidebound conventional publishing establishment.

You’ve invested in Xlibris and Pulpless — the first a self-publishing venture and the other a more conventional electronic publisher, but one that only accepts established authors. Why did you choose these two out of all the electronic publishers on the Web? You’ve also said that you think Pulpless may be on the way out. Will you invest in someone else if that happens?

I didn’t choose Internet publishers; they chose me. Pulpless.com came to me, and later Xlibris sent me information about its project. I wrote back that I thought Xlibris didn’t know what it was getting into. It’s actually a publishing service, not limited to the Internet, enabling writers to publish their own books for nominal fees. I thought that was a minefield. But further dialogue by mail and phone satisfied me that John Feldcamp, president of Xlibris, did have a good notion, and I became a supporter and investor. Now I’m on its board of directors.

Pulpless.com later developed a notion I thought ought to be tried, providing books free, paid for by advertising in them. How many readers would take a good book for nothing? So in the end I invested in that too, to make it possible. Alas, it seems not to have happened, and I think I have lost my money. But I did what I could, from principle rather than avarice. I want to make the world a better place for the dreams of writers — all writers, not just those that editors or critics like. I don’t know whether I would invest elsewhere. Let’s see how Xlibris turns out first. My head is not entirely in the clouds. I like to say that after a time, I lose my taste for losing money.

One of the biggest complaints voiced by reviewers and readers of electronic novels is the lack of professional editing. Have you experienced this problem, either in your own electronically published novels or in reading an electronic novel?

Yes, I have experienced the problem of the lack of professional editing in electronic publishing. All the typos in Volk made it into electronic print, as I did not receive a copy to proofread. I think that’s why one reviewer savaged it as slipshod, assuming that the author must have been at fault and didn’t care about the book.

Reviewers can be ignorant — any serious look at that novel should show how dear it is to my heart. It’s one of my best. Later I did proofread it, and the version now at Xlibris should be correct. I see no reason that electronic books can’t be as well edited as paper books and I suspect that most electronic publishers are doing their best to match existing standards.

Do you ever read electronically published novels or short fiction for pleasure? If so, have you encountered any new writers you feel might be poised for wider recognition?

I really don’t read for pleasure now. I’m a workaholic, and my pleasure is in getting done what I have to do. But I have read novels by hopeful writers, on and off-line. Generally they do need work, but do have worthwhile notions. Very few writers seem to be able to do it all: style, characterization, action, pacing, meaning. Style seems to be the main hurdle. But that can come with experience and feedback, and I think Internet publishing can provide that. So I think that the best future writers are likely to emerge from humble Internet first efforts.

Are there any on-line fiction collections (‘zines or publishers) you’d recommend to someone looking for the “Best on the Web?”

I don’t read enough to be able to recommend fiction collections. Remember, I’m the one who took three years to get through first grade, because of difficulty learning to read, and I still read slowly. As I put it, ogres are justifiably proud of their stupidity. So I hope there are others who are efficient readers who will call good material to the attention of the world. See my comment on reviewing, below.

Many writers’ organizations consider electronic novels, even those published under contract with publishers who pay royalties, as “also rans.” How do you feel about this, and what do you think can be done to establish parity for electronically published authors?

I think the attitude of old-line writers’ organizations toward electronic publishing resembles that of horsemen who sneered at the horseless carriage. They should be ashamed. I understand that an organization of electronic novelists is starting up. More power to it. I can’t wait to see the arrogant old order pass.

There’s also been talk of electronic publishers padding sales so that their authors can make the numbers some writers’ organizations have set as a minimum standard for legitimacy. Do you think this end justifies the means?

Padding electronic sales? I think the ends seldom if ever justify foul means. I never liked it when publishers advertised that millions of copies of my books were selling, while their royalty statements showed thousands. Let’s get free of that offal.

What was the best advice anyone ever gave you as a writer? If you could impart one piece of advice to every pre-published writer who visits your site what would it be?

The best advice anyone ever gave me as a writer? That’s difficult to answer, because my career has been more like a sand dune, compiled one grain of sand at a time, from many sources, and the key decisions have been my own. So let me reverse this, and give two answers: what was the worst advice I received, and what is the best advice I have given others?

The worst was from H. L. Gold, the arrogant editor of Galaxy SF magazine in 1957: don’t even try to compete with the big boys. I rejected it, as my subsequent career shows, and I think other writers should reject it also. Don’t be afraid to shoot for the moon. Certainly this leads to many disappointments, but sometimes it leads to remarkable success.

But my best advice for others is to have a working spouse, or some other source of income, because you are unlikely to make a living writing. For years my wife was the family breadwinner. Only a decade or so after my first sales did I happen to catch the moon and make it big, and I would never have made it without her support. I believe that only one writer in a hundred ever sells any fiction, and only one in a hundred published writers makes a decent living from it. So I became one of the hundred, and then one of the ten thousand. I doubt that the commercial odds will change soon, so no one should figure on writing income until it is actually in hand.

Reading your newsletters is almost like sitting down and having an afternoon chat over coffee with you. You put a great deal of your personal life into your newsletters. Does your family ever object to some of the things you’ve revealed?

Does my family ever object to my openness in print? Sometimes over the decades there have been objections. But Piers Anthony is a pseudonym, so few outside the fantasy genre are aware of those related to me, and that protects them from notoriety to the extent they want it. Also, I am now 65, a senior citizen, so the maiden aunts are gone and most of my relatives are junior to me in age. That mutes their objections. Nevertheless, I try not to blab anything really private. When in doubt, I ask my wife, who is not shy about answers, and I do heed her opinion. I married the smartest woman I could catch, and we remain together 43 years later. Death will us part, which perhaps offers a hint about my real values.

You’re refreshingly open about some of your reading and viewing preferences, openly stating that you enjoy “adult” movies and books. How have your fans received this? Has anyone ever objected, since your site is so young adult-friendly?

How have my fans received my remarks about enjoying adult movies and books? As I answer this question I have on a corner of my computer screen the video Embrace of the Vampire, sent to me by fans. It’s an erotic horror movie they thought I might like. Horror is not my genre, but I am enjoying it, focusing on this interview during the horror sequences and on the picture when luscious bodies show.

Another reader sends me Hawaiian pinup-girl calendars. I do get some objections from other readers, as though there is something wrong with a man liking to look at pretty women. But the hits on my site are increasing — last week the average was over 4,800 a day. So evidently folk are interested in something there. My standard answer to critics is that if they don’t like what I write, don’t read it, but don’t try to limit the world to their narrow horizons.

Since a brand new millennium is right around the corner, we’d like to ask what are your New Year’s resolutions for 2000?

My resolutions for the year 2,000? Merely a continuation of what I have been doing: trying to complete projects I don’t want to leave unfinished when I die, of whatever nature. These are not merely books. I am also trying to change the climate of Parnassus so as to open it up for all writers, rather than just one per cent of them. That’s why I have gotten involved in Internet publishing, and am doing my ongoing survey of Internet publishers. I believe the Internet represents the best present and future hope of writers to realize their dreams.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

Do I have anything else to say? Yes. (Are you surprised?) At the time of this interview the death of Joseph Heller made the news. He was the author of Catch 22, whose title entered the language. Folk may have different opinions whether his novel is a classic work of literature, but certainly it served a popular need — and that is a significant aspect of my definition of literature. Well, it seems that when that book was published, he got poor reviews from some of the most influential organs, and the novel got off to a slow start and well might have faded away, except for the strong recommendations of real readers.

There is my point: I feel that ideally reviewing is a good and necessary thing, and it should not be ruined by the private agendas of those who don’t relate to the material. The job of a reviewer should be to introduce readers to books they might like to read, and to warn them away from those that would waste their time. That is, to do an objective — to the extent possible — service for the readers. Reviewers who substitute malign or wrongheaded personal agendas should be abolished.

So Catch 22 should never have been disparaged. It should have been honestly represented so the readers could judge whether they were interested. That should be true in all cases, but unfortunately it isn’t.

Consider my comment on the vampire movie watched during this interview: “Vampires are not to my taste, but buxom bare girls are, so this is a mixed bag that horror fans and/or erotic fans should like. Not strong on plot, but consistent to itself, with a theme of erotic dreaming becoming real and some really nice bare breasts. Well enough done for its type.” I’d call that a fair, brief, review, establishing the bias of the reviewer and giving a notion of the nature of the movie. Those who hate nudity or vampires will know to avoid it. Others may want to watch it, for one reason or another.

An experienced reviewer could surely do a better job than this spot patch-up opinion, but that’s the essence. I have tried neither to praise it unduly nor to pretend that it’s awful. It’s an in-between movie for particular tastes. If I really thought it was awful, I would say so, and if I thought it was classic, I would say so. I’m trying to be objective and fair, without trying to disparage something because I don’t like the genre, or to praise it because I might have a personal friend associated with it.

Objective and fair: is that too much to ask of any review? And yes, I do have a personal ax to grind here: how many times have you seen my novels disparaged as repetitive junk? How many have you read that answer, that description? Are there magazines or reviewers who refuse to mention my work at all, pretending it doesn’t exist? That’s another dirty deal. How about the reviews of the novels of other writers? Are they fair? How many writers are still being treated the way Joseph Heller was? Do I have a case? If so, what can be done to clean up this act?

Teri Smith

Raising hell for fifty years from Alaska to the Azores and all points in between, Teri Smith (nee Dohmen) was an Air Force brat who never stopped traveling. She was also a mother, a grandmother (of ten!), a help desk wizard, a financial assistant, acquisitions editor for Samhain Publishing and, most importantly, the Queen Nag of the Known Universe. A multi-published short story writer, her first novel, With Nine You Get Vanyr, written with Jean Marie Ward, was published in 2007. Contrary to common belief, she never stopped living.

Piers Anthony: Outspoken Ogre

Selected Works