Esrever Doom (Xanth) (40 page)

How did this affect my writing? Not as much as you might think. I found that if I rested the heel of my left hand on the base of the computer keyboard, I could reach the keys with my fingers. I was severely slowed by the time spent at the hospital, and taking daytime naps, and my typing was not speedy, but I did do it. The main limitation is imagination rather than typing speed, and my mind was fine. (Pause here for the sardonic laughter of my cri-tics to fade. As you surely know, a cri-tic is an obnoxious bug that hates everything.) The day before the fall I typed twenty-one hundred words of text; the day after, one hundred. It remained low for a week, one hundred to three hundred words a day. But on the eighth day following the fall, it was twenty-one hundred again, and it continued at one to two thousand words a day. So I was still in business.

One other complication was my computer: I had shifted to a new distribution of Linux, Fedora, and liked it. But it did not have Courier, the fixed-character font that has been the standard for writers for decades, and I had to shift to a proportional character font. The thing about a fixed font is that you can calculate exactly how much space a manuscript will take when published. Publishers need to know that, so they can judge how many pages they’ll need. It would be unfortunate if they allotted 300 pages for the book, and it ran 305 pages and the ending was chopped off. No, they don’t actually operate that way, usually, but you can appreciate my point. The computer wordage count doesn’t do that; each word is equal, and “a” is equal to “antidisestablishmentarianism” in that reckoning. I’m not sure what kind of a headache this manuscript will be for my publisher, but I couldn’t help it. It’s a nuisance for me too, because I write to a certain wordage, and computer count simply does not match calculated count. I wish there could be computer programmers who are also writers, so that they would understand such things. But it has long since been evident that if I want the perfect computer system for a writer, I will have to design it myself. Maybe someday, if I live long enough and don’t fall and hit my head too hard.

Apart from such concerns, my mundane life is nothing special. I’m a reasonably ordinary guy living on my little tree farm with one exploitable talent: writing. I don’t go flying to all parts of the world to research for my books, I stay quietly home. I don’t have a luscious woman in every city, I stay with my wife of fifty-five years. I tease her that she was nineteen when I married her, but she didn’t stay that age. Sigh. Between novels I may spend a few days pigging out on videos I lacked the time to watch while writing, and catching up on accumulated science and news magazines. I’m a writaholic; when I’m in a project, other things tend to slide. In short, I’m dull. Now you know. If you still doubt, then visit my www.hipiers.com Web site, where I do a monthly blog-type column, provide information about my other novels (I do write more than Xanth), let readers know when there are movie or TV prospects for my books (so far there have been many prospects but nothing has actually made it to the big or little screen), and maintain an ongoing survey of electronic publishers that aspiring writers may want to check. Just trying to do my bit for the world, while I last and it lasts.

As usual, I had more ideas from readers than I could accommodate. I hate using an excellent notion as a throwaway scenelet, but sometimes have to. Some I have marked for the next Xanth novel, so as to try to do justice to them there. Suggestions kept coming in while I was writing the novel; I noted them down, but couldn’t keep feeding them into ongoing scenes, so they must wait for the next. It’s like bailing out your boat in a thunderstorm; catching up completely is impossible without magic. Some ideas relate to characters who didn’t fit into this novel; they’ll get their turns in due course, I trust. Readers are great for suggesting super-phenomenal magician-class talents for great protagonists, but the sneaky truth is that ordinary folk with ordinary talents make for better stories. You may have noticed that the central cast of characters this time are way beneath Magician-level magic. Thus they can never be quite certain they will surmount ordinary challenges, and they may mess up the attempt, just the way any of us would. Kody doesn’t know until the very end whether he will win or lose, and then it’s clear he won’t be a king or billionaire or famous celebrity. He will just disappear into the nonentity from which he came, and few in Mundania will ever know or care about his dream life. That’s the fate most of us face. Welcome to dreary reality.

Here, at any rate, are the credits for this novel, and I hope I didn’t foul any up this time. They are in approximate order of appearance, except for being grouped when more than one is from one person. Sometimes I don’t have a complete name, so I use what I have; e-mails can be obscure about identities. Leading off with one about me: Chris Ceranskiy sent an anagram based on my name: Horny Panties. Now we know why in Xanth girls freak out boys with naughty panty flashes. I couldn’t help it; it was in my name.

Kody—Joshua Harrelson; catbird, barrel of crackers, robots with corrosion, path paved with Good Intentions, Primrose Path, re-seeding hairline—Robert; the Time Being—Jessi Rha; Griff the Hipporoc—Shauneci Switzer; vices—Cal Humrich; Sniper Harpy—ippikiokami; melon-collie gourd dog—Robert Lecrone (there was a straight melon collie in
Pet Peeve
); Frank ‘n Stein—Eileen DuClos; crab grass, storm front, cashews, something that goes bump in the night—Darrel Jones; Novel-tea—Nathan Theriault; ass-et—Tina Yu; gravi-tree—Gavin; Demon Ceased—Kevin Swearengin; D Mension gives other demons length, width, depth; Talent of Ida’s child: converting lies to truths; mining in the nymph lodes; Eye Pod as hypno-gourd seedling—Misty Zaebst; talent of persuasion—Brant; sidehill hoofer—Dean Howell; Hadi the Alicenagon, boot rear float—Harli; egg plant, chains, tee party—Tim Bruening; gin rummy, Annie Mal—Jeff Stephens; tough cookies—Ben; Senior Citizen Ship—Thomas Pharrer; Mother Ship, Father Ship, etc., reality check—William Roper.

The ability to call fish, Nymph Ophelia Maniac, Intella-Giant—David D’Champ; prose and cons, oil wave ruining Xanth shore—Aaron Jackson; CAT scan—mb; Philip fills things up—Phil Giles; Nora Nosnoora, I M Bigbucks, Xanth running low on zombies, zombie sit-down strike, names of Woofer/Rachel’s pups, house cat, flying buttress—Mary Rashford; Onomatopoeia—Tia Adams; heir guitar/heir band—Olivia Davis; panty shield—Andrew and Amber Pilon; Burnice from Burnsville—Nathan Machelski; Aqua-fir, sandalwood tree—Thomas Pfarrer; curse of losing memories for lies, Micro-Wave, Mega-Wave, catch her, catch him, pitch her, pitch him—Athena-Lee Maynard; Barbar and Barbara—Kellie Madyda; Moonshine and Moonshadow—Nadia Edwards.

The Maiden Yukay—Andrew Fine; Zap Griffin—Noele Ashbarry; pan-pipe trees, crossed zzz’s—Nadia Edwards; floorist—Jessy Galletley; pop-up windows—Jacob Buehler; Bear Minimum—Jon Conyers; Ivan—Ian; Naomi, Nagahide—Naomi Blose; seal closing envelopes—Shyan Simpson; man-a-tease—Felicia Sible; dumb bell, smart asp, gownless evening straps, smoke and mirrors—Joanie Evans; shooting star—Shyan Simpson; sugar cane walking stick—Kerry Garrigan; dangerous talents sent to Mundania—Laura Kwon Anderson; jean pool—Kyle Bernelle; liquidator—John Cochrane; steal-toed boots—Emilio Valdovinos; rap scallions, mel odious—Lou Nelson; earrings—Mark A. Davis; Bogeyman—Clayton Overstreet; careworn clothes demoralize the wearer—Mark A. Davis.

And I hope you enjoyed the novel. There should be another next year.

TOR BOOKS by PIERS ANTHONY

THE XANTH SERIES

Vale of the Vole

Heaven Cent

Man from Mundania

Demons Don’t Dream

Harpy Thyme

Geis of the Gargoyle

Roc and a Hard Place

Yon Ill Wind

Faun & Games

Zombie Lover

Xone of Contention

The Dastard

Swell Foop

Up in a Heaval

Cube Route

Currant Events

Pet Peeve

Stork Naked

Air Apparent

Two to the Fifth

Jumper Cable

Knot Gneiss

Well-Tempered Clavicle

Luck of the Draw

Esrever Doom

THE
GEODYSSEY
SERIES

Isle of Woman

Shame of Man

Hope of Earth

Muse of Art

Climate of Change

ANTHOLOGIES

Alien Plot

Anthonology

NONFICTION

How Precious Was That While

Letters to Jenny

But What of Earth?

Ghost

Hasan

Prostho Plus

Race Against Time

Shade of the Tree

Steppe

Triple Détente

WITH
ROBERT
R.
MARGROFF

The
Dragon’s
Gold
Series

Dragon’s Gold

Serpent’s Silver

Chimaera’s Copper

Orc’s Opal

Mouvar’s Magic

The E.S.P. Worm

The Ring

WITH
FRANCES
HALL

Pretender

WITH
RICHARD
GILLIAM

Tales from the Great Turtle

(Anthology)

WITH
ALFRED
TELLA

The Willing Spirit

WITH
CLIFFORD
A.
PICKOVER

Spider Legs

WITH
JAMES
RICHEY
AND
ALAN
RIGGS

Quest for the Fallen Star

WITH
JULIE
BRADY

Dream a Little Dream

WITH
JO
ANNE
TAEUSCH

The Secret of Spring

WITH
RON
LEMING

The Gutbucket Quest

About the Author

PIERS ANTHONY is one of the world’s most popular fantasy authors. His thirty-six previous Xanth novels, including
Knot Gneiss, Well-Tempered Clavicle,
and
Luck of the Draw,
have been read and loved by millions of readers around the world. He daily receives hundreds of letters and e-mails from his devoted fans, whose ingenious ideas are often incorporated into Anthony’s tales. He lives in Inverness, Florida.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ESREVER DOOM

Copyright © 2013 by Piers Anthony Jacob

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Julie Dillon

Map by Jael

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-7653-3136-6 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4299-4661-2 (e-book)

e-ISBN 9781429946612

First Edition: October 2013