Piers Anthony (photo courtesy of Piers Anthony)

Piers Anthony: 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. 

Crescent Blues: What do you like the most about collaborating? The least? 

Piers Anthony: 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. 

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

Piers Anthony: 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. 

Crescent Blues: 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.] 

Piers Anthony: 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. 

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

Piers Anthony: 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. 

Crescent Blues: 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? 

Piers Anthony: 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. 

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

Piers Anthony: 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. 

Crescent Blues: 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?  

Piers Anthony: 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. 

Crescent Blues: 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? 

Piers Anthony: 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. 

Crescent Blues: 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?  

Piers Anthony - Continued