The Xanth novels #38-40, that's Board Stiff, Five Portraits, and Isis Orb, will be on sale for $2.99 on FeBlueberry 11, 2019 in BookBub, Kindle Daily Deal (KDD) and Early Bird Books all over the Internet. So if by some ill chance you are missing them, here's your chance to catch up cheap. As I have said before, characters are introduced in them that appear in later Xanth novels, such as the Goddess Isis, and Squid, the girl child who is actually an alien cuttlefish and the protagonist for the 44^th novel, Skeleton Key, not yet published. You'll like Squid when you get to know her.

Fake News: I started receiving congratulations from readers, and investigated. Someone using my name ran a Facebook announcement that there was to be Xanth movie and TV series. Alas, that's not true. I have no personal presence on Facebook, never did, and don't know who is pretending to be me. My only direct personal presence is here on my own HiPiers site. The movie notice turned out to be one that was run about a year and a half ago, that since expired unfulfilled. My agent is still looking for a movie, and there are prospects, but nothing has jelled yet.

Back when HiPiers was a source for my books, so that readers could find any or all of them before the Internet giants existed, we published a couple of Xanth calendars, as there was reader demand. We took a heavy loss, because the bookstores refused to carry them; it seems that they were locked in to their suppliers and anything outside was banned, even if the readers wanted it. If you wonder why I am cynical about the publishing process, this was one of the reasons. We were losing about fifty thousand dollars a year and finally shut down HiPiers except for this web site, which is now mainly a promotional and reader contact site, a place for general information about my books, and my monthly opinionations. But we discovered something: the Xanth 1991 calendar matches 2019 for dates. So it could be used this year, apart from the “wrong” year itself. The repeating calendar link is www.timeanddate.com/calendar/repeating.html?year=2013country=1

At the turn of the year I received a surprise: a 1977 DEL REY Challenge Coin. My history with this publisher has been mixed, to say the least. It started when I had two novels at Ballantiyne Books, and when they cheated me on royalties I protested and got a lawyer, and they never paid more than a fraction but blacklisted me for six years, spreading lies about me that I think still circulate in dusky corners of the publishing scene. They were trying to wash me out as a writer for my temerity in objecting to their violation of their own contract. It seems it is bad form to protest when a publisher does that, and they make sure to discipline those unruly serfs who violate that unwritten rule. It was the main reason I left SFWA (later SFFWA); they stalled when I tried to lodge a formal protest, I was rebuked in their bulletin, and some of their officers spread false stories about me. They knew where their bread was buttered. But not every publisher honored the blacklist, and I survived. I fought back in part by getting an agent: the one who represented Robert Heinlein, the leading genre writer of the day. Publishers knew that if they screwed with one his clients, they wouldn't get access to Heinlein's material. I was learning to play the game. Later that agency morphed into the one that handled Stephen King. You might think I would resent being in King's shadow. Nah, not much; that shadow helped protect me from the ghouls that still haunt publishing, and I did well. Besides his daughter was a fan of mine. Then the publisher, as I understand it, screwed one too many writers, and got sued (I had lacked the money to sue, then), and the proprietors had to depart in haste. Random House took it over, and put in a new administration, and to be best of my knowledge their accounts have been completely straight. I received an invitation to submit material to them. I wrote back don't you know you're blacklisting me?! They replied that things had changed. Indeed they had; Lester del Rey, the new Fantasy editor, had looked up the real figures on his own books there, and discovered that when they listed 69,000 sales, it was actually 169,000 sales. So he understood my situation. I think they were cheating most of their authors, abetted by a writer's organization that seemed to prefer siding with the errant publisher rather than with its own abused members. I wrestled for three days, making the hardest decision of my career, whether to give the blacklisting publisher another chance, and finally decided to submit a Fantasy genre novel, A Spell for Chameleon. That turned out to be also the best decision of my career. They then effectively promoted my works there and put me on the national bestseller lists. But later Lester made the mistake of growing old, and started doing meat-ax editing of the type he himself would not have tolerated as a writer, chopping out a whole chapter (because it had too many puns—from Xanth?!) and trying to chop out the Author's Notes, and I had to leave, I understand being one of four top authors departing for that reason. I have not been welcome there since, even after Lester died. Uppity writers, remember? So I was surprised when I received the Challenge Coin, given only to valued Del Rey authors. But I'll take it; it's a nice piece.

I read Beyond Mere Threads by M A Hickinbotham. That is, the threads of a magic tapestry. This is a 160,000 word fantasy. Fifteen year old Graham is restless. His beloved grandfather died recently, and Graham suffers nightmares and inability to properly focus on life. Then his friendly librarian gives him a private place to read, where a tapestry hangs. Somehow when he sees that cloth in a reflection, it animates. He finally backs into it, and finds himself in another realm, a fantasy land. Thus the main adventure begins. There seem to be friends and enemies here, the two not necessarily easy to tell apart, and magic. Graham himself learns he can do some magic, growing plants. He can grow anything in seconds, including dangerous thorny vines that mess up his pursuers. He has to flee the castle he finds himself in, because an evil figure wants him for some nefarious purpose. His original librarian friend turns out to be using him, and he finds another friend, and the chase continues as he discovers more about this dangerous world. A pretty girl approaches him, but she turns out to be the nymph of a tree who wants to incorporate him into the tree, not exactly what he had in mind. In contrast a fearsome wyvern becomes his friend and helps him return to his own realm. Adventure galore, and there is surely more to come, because the fantasy world hardly seems to be through with him.

I read Tamar and PJ—One Giant Adventure by Mark F Geatches. Young PJ hears a faint voice singing and goes into the wilderness to find it. He shouldn't have. A monster is stalking him. Then Tamar, the last surviving giant, steps in to save him, and the adventure starts. In much simplified summary, the two become friends, but the monsters are the Vorteh, whose prince gets slain, and they are out for revenge. PJ gets scratched by their deadly poison, and Tamar struggles valiantly to save him, but it's an awful struggle, because Tamar can't risk contacting the humans. So this is a tale about an unlikely friendship surviving formidable threats. It's not really a children's story despite the age of the protagonist; the Vorteh are too vicious, and the details too hard-hitting. But it's quite a story.

I read Dragon Flute, by Jordan Zlotolow. This is the sequel to Dragon Blade, which I reviewed three years ago. In that novel Jim, an office worker, and co-worker Summer are starting a romance when a supernatural enemy from another realm stalks them. It turns out that Jim was in that other world the fantasy hero Jalen, taking a break here on Earth. But when the lord of evil sends a minion to take over Summer's nice body so she can be his cohort, Jim/Jalen has to act. They manage to defeat the evil for a generation. Well, now it is a generation later, and their fifteen year old son Ralius is coming up on manhood when the evil strikes again. Ralius must find and win the Dragon Flute, which is a phenomenal weapon when correctly played, but there are constraints: it is in several pieces kept well apart, and each playing reduces its store of energy, so it has to be saved for the most vital occasions. What follows is a continuous action struggle, with numerous friends battling endless ugly enemies of every type. The narrative is marred by what are called saidisms, which is the well meaning effort to break up the monotony of he said, she said. But that leads to the distraction of endless alternates, such as he confirmed, he revealed, he whispered, he wondered, he clarified, he corrected, he explained, and so on. The best advice for writers is simply to use “said" and let it disappear into anonymity after serving its purpose, the way words like “the” “a” or “and” do. Regardless, if you like fighting monsters, this novel has them galore.

I may have gotten suckered. My wife smoked for fifty years, and it was a stone age form of vaping that got her off it, Nicotrol, that provided the nicotine without the other pollutants. So she has been clean for fifteen years, though same damage remains and I expect to outlive her, as I never smoked after trying it once as a child and puking out my guts thereafter. I do learn from experience. I approve vaping as a way to quit smoking, and agreed to add a link to our links page. But it seems that this is not an anti smoking site so much as a pro vaping site, hooking nonsmokers. I am not for that. A recent study shows that vaping is about twice as effective in getting people to quit smoking as are other remedies. Still, that's only 18 percent, and it seems that teens are abusing it. Ever thus.

I read the weekly Ask Marilyn column, being interested in smart things and considering myself an original thinker. Theoretically Marilyn has an IQ of around 230, the smartest woman ever, and on occasion she has confounded the experts by being right when they are wrong, as with the quiz show opening doors question, but sometimes she does something stupid. I remember when she calculated the total mass of the Great Wall of China, all three thousand miles of it. But that wall never existed. It is a line of some walls interspersed by guarded spaces, a much smaller thing. I wrote to her, citing my source, but never received a response, and as far as I know she never ran a correction. Okay, she's not interested in corrections. So this time I am making my correction here. Her column published January 13, 2019, addresses the question of whether it is possible to put 50 coins into 10 envelopes such that each contains a different number of coins. She says no, it is impossible, because by the time you get to the tenth envelope, having put one coin, two coins, etc in the others, you have five coins left, which will duplicate your fifth envelope. Okay, I say it is possible, and here is my solution. You have to use 0 as a number, a breakthrough the Romans lacked but the Arabs had, enabling much more sophisticated math. Imagine trying to do modern math with no zeroes! You also don't have to limit any envelope to under ten coins. Think outside the conventional box. So here are my ten envelopes; 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 14 = 50. If you have a refutation, I will run it next month, as I do honor corrections.

The January/February 2019 issue of THE HUMANIST (remember, I am a humanist; I subscribe) has an article “Why the Catholic Church Is So Conflicted About Sex.” It asks, in the wake of the latest sex abuse scandals involving Catholic clergy, what is their problem with human sexuality? Why is the church so fixated on controlling people's sexual behavior, often to traumatic ends? Why is celibacy (by that I think they mean no sex) the ideal state? Why should folk get married if there is no sex in Heaven? If every viable sperm cell has to become a new baby, should wet dreams be classified as involuntary manslaughter? Why do they object to contraception, other than abstinence? The article has excellent questions, but I have more. The fact is that with overpopulation being one of the major threats to the continuing viability of the world, I ask isn't the Catholic attitude a kind a treason against the world? Regardless, this article does not address a reason I read elsewhere some time back. And have commentced on before: the peoples bordering the ancient Israelites featured goddesses who celebrated worship via sex with lovely priestesses. Unable to compete against that allure, the Israelite hierarchy decided to make sex itself a sin, unless sanctioned by them in limited cases, such as purely for procreation. It is that anti-sex attitude that carries through into Christianity and leads to much mischief.

AUTHORS GUILD has been coming alive recently. It is not perfect, as I have remarked before, but overall it does good work. This time they address the issue of the need for society to provide free access to books, and the right of authors to be remunerated for their work. These principles should not be in conflict. But the income of writers is declining, and more of them have to subsidize their books with secondary sources of income. It's the don't quit your day job syndrome. I had the fortune to escape from it when my bad luck almost magically became good luck, as mentioned earlier in the column, and made me a best seller. I am no longer a best seller, but I didn't waste the money when it came in, so I am financially secure. But I represent maybe one percent of one percent of writers. So what about the outfits that claim that information should be free, including copyrighted work of authors? Who think that the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker should be paid, but not the writer? Libraries are eager to circulate ebooks as widely and freely as possible, and are resentful when publishers object. But what about the creator's right to earn a living from his creations? To a writer this unpaid circulation smells of theft. In other countries there exists a Public Lending Right, or PLR, where authors receive payments on their books in the system. So Author's Guild is entering the fray, and I support their effort to find a reasonable compromise. The arts do need support. What do we remember or care about the ancient Greeks, other than their arts, such as architecture, philosophy, literature? They are not memorable for their butchery, baking, or candles. Neither are we.

An obit of interest appeared in the newspaper. Michael S. Edenfield wrote: “If you are reading this, I am dead. I died on January 5, 2019. I was not 'called home', I did not 'go to be with the Lord'. I died. Get over it, I have. I never believed in life after death. I hope that I was right. But if not, then remember what Mark Twain said, 'Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.' I was born March 7, 1951, in Dade City, FL. I was preceded in death by my loving parents, Cleon 'Ed' and Margaret Agnes 'Marge' Edenfield. They were very loving parents. They had to have been loving, otherwise they surely would have either drowned my brother, Mark and myself, given us up for adoption, or sold us to the CIA for lab experiments. … To quote the rock band Blood, Sweat and Tears: 'I swear there ain't no heaven and I pray there ain't no hell. I'll never know by living, only my dying will tell.' As one of my law professors used to say, 'This world is a risky place, and very few of us get out of it alive.' I didn't. You won't. Enjoy life a little each day. I liked to live by the theory: 'I would rather regret the things that I did rather than the things that I did not do'. I think I accomplished that. Sometimes to the chagrin or embarrassment of my friends. If my wishes are followed, I have been cremated and my ashes tossed off the dock at my home on Cindy Lane. Personally I do not believe in burial. Cremation makes much more sense. My only true regret in having my body cremated is that there are a certain few people whom I would like to have be able to invite to apply Chap Stick to their lips before kissing my you know what. But it's the thought that counts. … Remember: life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather, it should be a wild ride skidding in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, loudly proclaiming: 'Wow! What a ride'.” I understand he was a good man, a lawyer taking pro bono cases, helping to deliver tens of thousands of teddy bears to sick and abused women and children. Every Father's Day he would take orphaned children out to dinner. I did not know him in life, but he certainly wins my respect in death.

News flash: Saturn was not always ringed. The rings may be only ten to a hundred million years old, compared to four and a half billion years for the planet. About five percent, or down to half of one percent of its time. Also, people don't realize that Jupiter has rings too, less visible, and Earth may once have had them, as detailed in my novel Rings of Ice.

As you know, I support substitutes for meat, as it is as bad for the environment as smoking is for us. Now the meaters are getting worried. They don't like to have plant or lab grown burgers called meat, as that cuts into their business. They want it called something else, or at least clearly labeled as fake. They say consumers have the right to know what they are buying. I agree; I would not want to buy slaughtered cow meat by accident. I am fine with labeling it Synthetic or Fake Meat.

Speaking of synthetics, here's another: synthetic pornography. The faces of real women put on the bodies of other women engaged in nefarious deeds. How would you like to see your girlfriend's face in a pornographic video? You know it's not really her, but do your friends? How about your mother's face? If you are female, about your face? This is a growing problem for celebrities. What does a porno scene do for a rising clean girl actress? It seems that for about twenty dollars you can get anyone's face grafted onto a porn actress in action. Now I don't object to pornography; I think it is a legitimate form of entertainment. But to fake it to embarrass individuals, or to ruin a career, is wrong. It may be called weaponized technology, yet some are defending it as free speech. New artistic creations, making images that did not exist before. I believe in free speech, but does it include the right to destroy the reputation of an innocent person? I think a person should have control of his or her own likeness, and have legal redress if that likeness is abused.

Item from THE WEEK suggests that physical exercise can make you happier, especially if you do it outside, in a green park or a forest. Makes sense to me. I exercise regularly for my health, and there are hints that exercise also makes you live longer. Another item is about loneliness, which is not determined by the number of friends or social contacts you have. It's the emotional state deriving from fewer meaningful relationships, the ones that make you feel known and understood. If you feel lonely, you are lonely. One of two Americans now falls into that category. It is reaching an epidemic state. It makes people sick. It can shorten life by 15 years, as bad as smoking or being obese. Why? Because loneliness is stressful, and chronic stress is a killer. This is not just for the old; young folk are more at risk. Generation Z, ages 18-22, and Millennials 23-37 (Generation Y?) score the highest for loneliness. Online social sites don't seem to help much; the top 25% of social media users are twice as likely to report feeling lonely as the people using it the least. Wow! I'm glad I'm not on the social media. But of course it may be that the loneliest people seek the media, seeking help. Maybe they do help, but not enough. Maybe that explains the anonymous bullying that occurs, because lonely folk are more likely to become radicalized. I don't know.

We may be largely unaware of the major life on Earth. Seventy percent of the microbes seem to live in the subsurface, that is, underground, and many of these organisms are unlike anything above ground. Some breathe uranium and expel the wastes as crystals. Others live in deep-sea hydro-thermal vents at 250 degrees Fahrenheit. That's hotter than boiling. Considering this, it seems reasonable that the subsurface of other planets and moons is habitable. These creatures do fine far away from sunlight. We think our form of life is all that counts, but we're more of a fringe effect, living in the water and air that real life forms avoid. Maybe they're waiting for us to pollute ourselves to death so they can live without the nuisance of our presence.

Incidental items: The New Horizons mission that put the landscape of Pluto on our map has now passed Ultima Thule, pronounced to rhyme with Julie. I think of the song, “I'm not Lisa; my name is Julie.” Only this variant is “I'm not Pluto, my name is Thule.” It looks like an unfinished snowman. Why we need universal medical insurance, with teeth to prevent gouging: the biggest hospital in San Francisco sends out bills of more than $24,000 for a broken arm and $113,000 for a broken ankle. So if you're going to have an accident and be ambulanced to a hospital, try to do it somewhere other than Sand Francisco. I comment the editor's letter by William Falk in THE WEEK for January 8, 2019, for remarking on the growing bipartisan conviction that virtually anything—lying, cheating, spying, is justified because, well, the others side is so evil. When Senator Mitt Romney called out Trump for divisive rhetoric, lack of “honesty and integrity,” and low character, Republican colleagues chastised him for being too truthful. And here I thought that when I got blacklisted for protesting that sort of thing in publishing, that was an anomaly. Evidently not. NEW SCIENTIST for 12 January 2019 has a lovely history of Earth chart covering the first four and a half billion years. Life emerged in about half a billion years, grew, diversified, and in about two and a half billion years came the key breakthrough, the evolution of complex eukaryotic cells, with nucleus and mitochondria, capable of forming multicellular organisms like plants, insects, and us. Maybe the subsurface microbes have a different take on it, however. In South Korea young nurses are being hazed to death, literally, by the senior nurses, until some commit suicide. Hey, maybe they should go to work for that San Francisco hospital, as they have to understand about top-down bad treatment. A sample of the Wit & Wisdom feature in THE WEEK: “Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.” Franklin P Jones. And another article reprinted in THE WEEK for January 25, 2019, describes the secret war behind Amazon's reviews. This is dirty trench warfare, where a person can receive five star reviews, then be punished for faking them, with effectively no recourse, despite being innocent. That's how anonymous enemies get at you, with seeming favor. I'm surprised that Amazon can't seem to clean up this act. Just so my readers know: I don't do fake reviews of my books.

In Jamboree I mainly watched Star Trek episodes, two a day, as I gain on the complete series, and tried to gain on a four novel backlog of reading while keeping up with correspondence. When I am writing my own novel, my reading gets squeezed, and my movie watching stopped for the month. Bear in mind that I do the meals and dishes and such, so don't have all day. But I wrote the first half of Xanth #45, A Tryst of Fate, about 51,000 words, where the girl Squid learns that her future self was brutally murdered on a parallel time track, and she has to solve that murder by taking the place of that self and tempting the murderer to try again so he can be nabbed. Then she requires that murderer to become the protagonist for the rest of the novel. Critics who claim Xanth is all rehash obviously don't bother to read the novels, as my fans know. As I like to put it, some critics are finely crafted from spoiled fecal matter. I hope to complete the novel in Marsh, fate permitting. And yes, we are working on getting #42, 43, and 44 published. And still hoping for a Xanth movie, so far in vain. More anon, when.

PIERS

Star Trek: Enterprise