Which reminds me: I have played with the typestyle modes on this mono-mode system, and find there are seven ways to show print on the screen: plain, underlined, HIGHLIGHTED, Blink, invisible, blink/underlined and blinkHIGHLIGHTED. You can’t see several of those in the printed version, of course. But let’s try the invisible, and see whether it does or does not print: Invisible. On the screen that word does not show; if it doesn’t show when printed out, it’s truly invisible. Yes, it’s really there; I can see it when I go into Codes Mode: Invisible. Yes, I know, here I am wasting time instead of getting on with the letter. It’s my way. Meanwhile right now my wife Cam is wasting her time trying to make our DEC printer print from her IBM-clone computer; it’s supposed to be possible, but a new cable and several codes later it still won’t do it. We bought new computers for both our daughters, which are fine except that they insist on stopping after every page. We’ll get that ironed out in due course. Maybe you can find the setting on your computer that makes you invisible, Jenny.
A year and a half after we moved here, we still can’t open and close our front gate from the house. The radio signal can’t get through the jungle. This one is guaranteed for five miles, but we said “prove it” and they couldn’t. So now they are setting up a tall tower by the gate, which will transmit to our TV antenna, and it finally should work. The thing is, if I ever get famous and crowds of fans are trying to get in, I’ll want that gate closed—but we need to be able to buzz it open for deliveries and such.
And we received four boxes of fresh fruits from HOUSE OF ONYX. Sixty fruits in all. Brother! We have made it through the pears and are working on the apples. No, ONYX is a gem dealer, not a fruit dealer; it’s just their way of saying thanks for doing business with them. But four boxes?!
Do you keep up with Calvin and Hobbes? This past week has been fun. Calvin kept getting larger until he stepped right off the world and found a door deep in the universe, leading back to his room, Calvin has my kind of imagination.
You know, Jenny, when I was your age I used to imagine that maybe my life was all a bad dream, and I would wake and find myself back in England where I was happy. I suspect you have similar dreams. But my life has improved so much that now when I think of waking I fear it; my real life might be as an unsuccessful writer, and all my best-selling novels might have been a wish-fulfillment dream. So I’d rather stay with it. But if one day you disappear, I’ll know that you woke up and everything since the accident was your bad dream. Then you’ll read Isle of View, and wonder.
I’ll wait to print this out tomorrow, in case your mother has a last moment phone call saying “Don’t send it; Jenny just woke up!”
December 1989
* * *
A holiday passes. Progress is made. A stay is extended. Three new words are spoken. And one new word is defined.
* * *
Dismember 8, 1989
Dear Jenny,
Well, while I was struggling through a letter to a British publisher, your mother was talking with my wife on the phone. So my report is secondhand, but I gather that they are extending your stay at Cumbersome, because you are improving. Isn’t it odd, when the better you do, the longer you have to stay, instead of the other way around! Maybe it’s because you went to the convention, and saw how many folk care about you, so it’s just natural to respond. So—what? The British publisher? No, you wouldn’t be interested in that. Oops, every time I tell you you aren’t interested, you say you are! Just to be ornery. Okay, then, briefly: this publisher was demanding four hardcover copies of my novels, to tear up and use for typesetting and promotion and such. Such as four hardcover copies of With a Tangled Skein to destroy. Poor Niobe, getting ripped apart and laid out in pieces! So I finally told them no, make your own copies from the original one. They agreed, but then in the next contract demanded six copies to destroy. So I said—well, never mind; just poke a finger in the air and you’ll have a notion. I don’t need that publisher. Well, now they have a new editor, who came there hoping to edit my books, and he discovered I wasn’t there any more. So he wrote to ask what the problem was. Okay, I’m telling him. Picture your mother receiving a letter from that doctor, saying: “I understand you are the one who sent that submarine to run over me. What seems to be the problem?” So she would respond: “The problem was that I couldn’t get my hands on a tank, you CENSORED BY ORDER OF THE ADULT CONSPIRACY!!” Then she would reconsider, and instead write him an oh-so-polite but nevertheless extremely-cutting missive telling him exactly how his blank would be blanked if he did it again. And if he had the sense God gave an idiot gnat, he would apologize and guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. So that’s the sort of polite but cutting missive I was writing, while your mother was telling my daughters' mother how you could now speak three (3) whole new words and were graduating from pudding to solider food like casseroles and overcooked green beans. Um, don’t overdo it on those beans, because—well, never mind.
So meanwhile, back here at the tree farm, we—what? How did I actually politely cut up that British publisher? That’s really pretty dull, out of context. So let’s—sigh, you want to know anyway? Have I told you in the last five minutes how difficult you are when your beady little mind locks on to something irrelevant? I have? Sigh. Really, it’s just highfalutin' language you wouldn’t—oh, all right, here’s a quote: “It was obvious that [this publisher] placed no great value on my novels. My response is similarly obvious: I must go where my work is valued.” That translates to that finger I mentioned above. So as I said, it’s dull material for you. The editor will no doubt express dismay that such a misunderstanding could have arisen, and will see to it that things improve, and I’ll sell him some novels, as a favor. You see, there’s this series of collaborative fantasy novels that hasn’t yet found a British publisher, and this editor is even interested in Pornucopia, which gives a hint just how far he will go. I can do business with a publisher, once it is established just who is the master. Your mother understands perfectly; she gets along with people the same way. Too bad her dentist hasn’t caught on yet; he thinks she’s just another patient.
Now may I get back to my regular letter? I may? Oh, thank you Jenny! We had one more loose cow turn up; a neighbor told us (who happened to be the girl who delivers flowers; we invited her in so she could see how well the four poinsettias she delivered last Christmas—a gift from Putnam Books—were doing; we transplanted them outside and now they are big bushes. No, we didn’t tell her about my secret nitrogen fertilizer), and we called the sheriff, and he came out, spied the cow, and the cow saw him and took off for the forest and he couldn’t catch her. I think her name is Delia, as in the song “Delia’s Gone.” And we had a cold front come through. Yes, I know, it’s not supposed to happen in Florida, but sometimes things slip up. So there it was, just under 30°F, with five beautiful red flowers on our azalea (remember, the one that didn’t get the word that it was supposed to limit its blooming to spring); those flowers survived nicely, but we suffered frost damage to our poinsettias. They are just turning their top leaves bright red, too, having taken it on good faith that freezing wouldn’t happen here.
Do they keep you up properly with the comics? I have this nagging suspicion that they get careless on some of these important details. For instance, in “Curtis,” Gunk, the vegetarian and token white in a black comic strip, has a chameleon from Flyspeck Island; it adapts to any background and becomes completely invisible. Now it has escaped, and they are having a terrible time finding it. It just gulped down Curtis' sandwich, invisibly.
Meanwhile, here’s a news item that should make you squirm. You have an affinity for the Navy, right? And you’re an environmentalist, right? Well Greenpeace is a militant environmentalist organization; I belong to it, along with a number of other environmental groups. It focuses mainly on the sea, and sends folk out to interfere with whaling ships and such so they can’t kill the whales. This time the Navy was running a submarine missile-launch test, and Greenpeace doesn’t li
ke nuclear weapons in the sea, so got in the way, and a Navy ship stove a hole in the Greenpeace ship and shoved it out of the way so the test could be run. So here is the $64 question: which side are you on? Isn’t that mean of me, to get you into an argument with your daddy!
On public radio they had another fund-raising week. We sent in our money, but they keep going until they make their target, and it’s dull as anything, listening to their constant guilt-inducing appeals for money. But in the middle of it this time they had something clever: young, bright, idealistic woman applies for work, because she really believes in what public radio is doing. Then this vampire-voice says “You are young and beautiful; you will make an excellent Fund Raiser!” Which is the one thing she can’t stand. So there she is, reading in a dull monotone “We know you will want to help this effort and contribute generously” etc., obviously hating it, while the vampire watches her throat as she talks. I think I’ve asked before: do you listen to the radio? There are some good programs there, such as All Things Considered, and you can get songs to your taste. I listen all day. My taste runs to the softer songs of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. There’s this one I heard in 1957, “Dark Moon” and never since, and they never play it now, but maybe some day they will. So if you have a radio, you can practice coordination on the dial or digital buttons.
This week I’m proofreading my novel Phaze Doubt, and I discovered a typo that may amuse you: I have a reference to a mythological character Hermia. It came out Hernia. Now that intrigues me: a girl named Hernia. That suggests all kinds of Adult Conspiracy notions. This week I also got into revamping my computer setup. You see, we bought these hard plastic keyboard covers, and the cover flips up and becomes a paper holder, so I can type from a vertical sheet. I was doing just that, but had trouble finding my place, with no marker. So I tackled the problem head-on, as is my wont, and my wife got into it, and we finally fashioned a foam-plastic cutout in the shape of a fat L: vertically it reaches four fifths up, and horizontally three fifths, and the two inside sides of the L reach to two fifths and one fifth. So I can mark my place to within five lines of text, simply by turning over my L. It works perfectly; I wonder if I can patent the notion and make a fortune? We also added some macros on particular keys, such as my three dot ellipsis with hard spaces. That looks like this: … It’s on Alt-Period, and the thing about it is that those hard spaces prevent it from being broken up. I don’t like it when I have two dots at the end of the line, and the third at the beginning of the next line. But it takes me some coordinated fingerwork to do it with hard spaces, which is a nuisance, so now I can do it readily. Want another ellipsis? … There—see how it refused to split across lines?
So what else is happening here? Fun in court, would you believe it. There’s a judge here in Citrus County (Citrus County is a lot like Flyspeck Island, I think) who objects to strong language. When he overheard a lawyer say “B*lls**t!” he fined him and I think put him in jail. Now someone has written a song: “The Ballad of Gary Graham,” all about the silly things this judge is doing, and it’s being played on the local radio station and is very popular.
Your mother says—no, horrors, it can’t be!—that you lost your Magic Crystal. How could you? For shame! For sh—oh, you found it again? Well, okay this time, but don’t let it happen again. That magic is supposed to be helping you to get better. You know, you’ll get to speak one word per facet, and then you can start over.
So have a nice week, Jenny, and say “Hi” to Jenny for me.
Dismember 15, 1989
Dear Jenny,
The big news is that three days ago, Tuesday, I saw a two foot long coral snake. Do you know about them? They are just about the prettiest snakes, and they have the most deadly poison. But they aren’t dangerous. A coral snake’s teeth are small, and it can’t really bite a person unless he sticks his finger in its mouth. The snake is mild tempered and just wants to avoid trouble. So I called to Cam (my wife—remember the Xanth cushion?) and she brought out her camera and took pictures. Of course the snake just wanted to hide. It was right along the side of the swimming pool enclosure. She got a picture, we think. No, we didn’t hurt it; we just went back inside, and it must have wandered back into the forest. I’m glad to have it around.
Other news? Well today as I was typing letters—I did 13 before getting to this one. “What do you mean, why? Because you’re 13, why else? Oh, why before yours? Because I always wait until afternoon, in case your mother calls to tell me that you’re tired of my letters, and not to write another. Where was I, before getting into this interminable dash? Oh, yes, I was typing letters—I looked out the window and saw a phoebe. What do you mean, how did I know? If I tell you it was a phoebe, believe it. Because it’s a flycatcher that wags its tail; that distinguishes it instantly. No, I don’t know why they do, but they definitely do. I even named a character Phoebe, in the Adept series; she was a harpy with a sore tail, so she kept twitching it about.
What else? Nothing as significant, I’m afraid. Tomorrow I start writing Virtual Mode, which novel I conceived on OctOgre 14, 1987—yes, I have my computer printout notes with that date, and in 1988 I signed a contract to write it for PUTNAM/BERKLEY Books—and I have a problem. That wouldn’t interest you. What? You say you’ll decide what interests you? Sigh. Must we go through this every single letter? I have all these heavy significant things to say, and here you are demanding to hear about—oh, all right, all right!
I have this vision of the very beginning of the novel. Fourteen year old Colene is coming home from school—will you stop interrupting, girl?! What do you mean, that’s misspelled? I just changed the spelling, is all. I looked it up to see whether it had two L’s or one, and discovered that either will do, but that there’s a third variant with “ene,” so I decided I liked that better. So it’s correct because I’m writing this novel and what I say goes. That’s just the way it is. And don’t bring up that business about my calling you Kathy again; I’ve been trying to forget that for a month. You’re acting just the way Cheryl does when I call her Penny. You girls are all alike. Any little inconsequential thing, and you—no, don’t you dare start calling me by the wrong name! Anyway, Colene is coming home from school with her armful of books, and she’s an absolutely typical ninth grade girl, sort of cute and popular and happy with many friends and an active imagination. Then something happens to change her life forever. No, there’s no reckless driver. Only in real life does it get that bad. She sees something, and investigates, and it’s a man in a ditch. He’s face down, in funny clothing, and just sort of groaning. Now she knows she should go on home and call the police or something; her house is the next one down. He’s probably a drunk. But instead she does something almost suicidally crazy: she puts down her books and hauls the man into her sort of dollhouse cabin in the back yard. You know, her place, where she can shut the world out and listen to records or read fantasy novels or whatever. It’s all she can do to get him there, because she weighs something like a hundred pounds, and the man is at least 150 pounds. But she drags him in and shuts the door, so he’s hidden. Then she gets water and some food and takes care of him.
So why did she do this? Is she really crazy or suicidal? Yes she is. The truth is, her happy normalcy is but a front; underneath she is a deeply unhappy girl, and when alone her favorite pursuit is to slice open her wrists. She would have committed suicide before this, but her nerve always fails when she sees the blood flowing. Both her wrists are bound in cloth; others think this is just an innocent style she affects, but it’s really to cover the scars. So it is entirely in character for her to haul this dangerous man in here. He may recover and rape her or kill her; she knows she is flirting with this. The edge of such danger fascinates her. She’s not like you. What? Did I say that? Where? Back at the foot of page one? Oops, I see it now: “You girls are all alike.” So how can she be not like you, if—okay, okay, I apologize. You girls are not all alike! Now are you satisfied? (Brother!)
Actually, this is no d
runken bum. He is Darius, Cyng of Hlahtar, from a far different realm where magic works and science doesn’t. No, this is not the Adept series; you haven’t read that, have you? This is a different setup. Anyway, he got separated from his native land, and here in this realm where magic doesn’t work he is pretty much helpless, because science is not something he understands. He normally conjures food, for example; the idea of buying it in a store for money is beyond his grasp. So he is starving. Colene fetches him food, and blankets to sleep under, and yes, she warms him by embracing him, because this place doesn’t have heat and he has the chills. She is taking a phenomenal risk. But look, I can’t do the whole novel here; that’s for tomorrow. I’ll just say that Colene nurses him back to health, and begins to learn his alien language, and he begins to learn hers, so they start to communicate. He is a good and decent man, just different. He tells her of his world, where he is the—loosely translated—King of Laughter, and though she hardly believes about the magic, he is good at making her laugh. He appreciates her help; she did after all save his life. She helps hira figure out how to get home. She’s smart with things like computers, and it is a computer analogy that accounts for the title. So in the course of maybe a couple of weeks, not only is he well enough to travel, but he knows how to get home.
Now here is the problem: From the time Colene meets Darius, she never slashes her wrists. He absorbs her whole attention. In fact, she falls in love with him; it’s very fast, but she was sort of in love with death already, and this is a much better alternative. By day she’s in school, unchanged to external appearances, but now her private moments are spent thinking of him rather than in slicing her wrists. But you see, I wanted to show her slicing her wrists. I wanted that stark contrast: happy girl, suicidal girl. How can I show that if she never slashes her wrists? Well, I could go back a few hours, before she finds Darius. But then I couldn’t begin with this typical ninth-grader (or so she seems) discovering the body in the ditch. It seems I can’t have it both ways. D*mn! I want it both ways! So how do I begin this novel, Jenny? Don’t answer that; by the time you get this letter, I’ll have begun the novel; in fact I’ll have begun it by the time this letter gets mailed out. I guess I’ll just have to go back those few hours, growr.