The Perfect Reader Letter
Have just had two more ‘so, why are you writing a sequel to PEGASUS when you’ve always said you wouldn’t ever write a sequel?’ emails—two in a day is unkind. Usually they space out a little better than that. Somebody tell me why people translate ‘volume two of the SAME STORY’ into ‘sequel’ so easily* AND why these SAME people believe that I’ve said I’ll never write a sequel? How many times can I say I would LOVE to write a sequel to SUNSHINE, but I can only write what comes? And even when I do get around to Damar again, none of the Four or Five (known) Third Damar novels is a proper sequel—they’re all related, like SWORD and HERO are related, but none of them really follows another one.**
Anyway. I should be hoovering. Or dusting. Or weeding.*** Or something.† I need a night off.†† And yesterday I received the perfect email from a reader. I was so ravished by its sublimity that I wrote to her immediately and asked if I could hang it on my blog. She graciously (if perhaps bemusedly) agreed. So. Spare my blushes and all that, but it’s not only madly, excessively, gratuitously egotistically gratifying but a relief to receive one like this occasionally. †††
Dear Robin–
I finished Sunshine yesterday. It’s one of those books that stick with you past the ending–the ones you can’t quite get over, the ones that prevent you from reading anything else, because nothing really compares. I read your blog post, so I won’t say anything about a sequel, though I think I’d like to know as much as anyone about some of the loose ends. Is Mel a sorcerer? Is the grandmother really dead? (Most of all, though, what kind of were is Ms. B?)
One of the things I loved most about the book, though, is the development of the world. I’m not entirely sure how I can articulate this, but here’s how I think of it: when someone writes a novel about this world–the real world–they show us a tiny slice without telling us everything ever to happen in the history of Earth. We know the rest of that history is there, but it’s not a part of the novel. It’s like a ghost. I had never really gotten this impression from a fantasy novel before. Worlds were too shallow, I suppose, or not exactly realized beyond what happened on the page. It’s not that I missed it, exactly. I didn’t really notice absence of that more out there feeling until I read Sunshine, and felt as though I was looking through a pinhole at another Earth. There seems to be so much more beyond what happens in the novel. It’s not just the history of the Wars, or of the sorcerers and vampires and weres. It’s everything. It’s the dead spots and the politics and the characters and the whole Earth. It all seems to keep on going, even after I’ve closed the book. Does that even make sense?
That was the first thing I loved about the book. The second was Mel. I loved Con. I liked his age and his sensibilities, even his honesty. In some ways, I think he was the one we were supposed to love. I felt–like Rae–a little cheated by the scene in the basement of Con’s house. But. But. Mel is the closest any author has ever gotten to realizing this intangible idea I have of the perfect boy. More than I want a sequel, having finished the book, I want a whole novel devoted to Mel (I realize you don’t do sequels–I figure that means you don’t do prequels either). I hate that I don’t know everything about him, yet his mystery is one of the things I find most attractive. Well, that and his tattoos. They sound so, so beautiful.
Third, I think I love the ending. Of course I’m frustrated, but I like how unexpected it is. In most vampire novels, there are only a few choices: change the human, try to live together, die, or decide it won’t work. Sunshine deftly avoids all of them. It doesn’t feel like the end of a story, or the end of the life, but more like a little piece of it. Like I said, it feels as though the world goes on, extending in front and behind.
In some ways, I’m still in that buzzing space after a novel when you just want to follow that story for the rest of your life. I don’t really want to get over Sunshine, though, becuase Neil Gaiman (my idol) has it right–it is pretty much perfect.
Anyway, I’m sure parts of this are totally incoherent. I believe in writing to authors, though (if you have a good waitress, you tip them, you praise a cook for a good meal. Why should writing be so thankless?). Sunshine is one of those lingering, perfectly-written books, though, that makes you want to share with everyone.
I guess I mean, thank you. For a beautiful novel and a beautiful boy and a few beautiful days when I thought that maybe, maybe, I could just keep reading forever.
If it weren’t for that tedious business of having to earn a living, I could at this point retire happy. It’s not the only Perfect Reader Letter/Email I’ve ever received, but it’ll sure do for making my day, even while I’m winkling the big, mean hoover out from under the bed and trying to remember which bit of the thing goes where and how to turn it on. I may even yatter on a bit about Mel and world-building some other evening, but tonight I am going to try to go to bed early. Just for laughs. Just for a change.
* * *
* Yes, I know, there was an interesting discussion on the forum about this. But it does seem to me that ‘sequel’ has evolved to mean something fairly specific in the genre fiction world, which has to do with series, with one more-or-less-complete-in-itself story following and being followed by the same, but with enough common characters and developing background that you’ll probably want to read them in order. It does NOT mean one long frelling story hacked up into separate books. There’ll be an omnibus PEGASUS at some point down the line of the ENTIRE STORY BETWEEN ONE SET OF COVERS. Or one digital squirt.
** Okay, except KIRITH. Which, if I ever get round to tackling it again^, is two books and might even be three. Ewwwww. But they aren’t really sequels either. They’re one long story, like PEGASUS. Well, the first two are anyway. I freaked out so much at the idea that there might be a third I didn’t hang around long enough to find out much about it. Maybe if I rewrote it it would get shorter?^^
^ You realise that the reason I stopped posting bits of it here is because I found myself rewriting it which means it’s still ‘live’. Although I could give you to the end of the first chapter, which is in the back of my mind that I am going to do. Some day.
By the way, it’s a total ratbag that I can’t post bits of PEG II here the way I posted occasional bits of PEG I, because it’s pretty well impossible to excerpt II without reference to how the first one ends. Teetering on its crumbling cliff.
^^ HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. When has anything I have EVER written got shorter?
*** It’s a little late for weeding, even on the longest day of the year. And I think candlelight might lead to error.
† Hellhounds say: or hurtling hellhounds! That was really fun, yesterday! Can we do it again? We’re sure we can see well enough in the twilight of the longest day of the year to disappear! Yes, I reply, I’m sure you can too: No.
††Relatively speaking. I am also in throes of deepest trauma and horror as a result of today’s voice lesson. Here I am being a good student and rescheduling my lesson this week because I have a train to meet during lesson time tomorrow, and what happens? I am punished by being told that I should learn the little Dowland piece as Blondel put it ‘off copy’. Which is a euphemism for memorise. Oh, I don’t mean exactly memorise, said Blondel. Sure you don’t, buddy.
††† I’m not insane! If I were insane, manifestly sane people would not write me graceful letters about my books!^
^ I don’t want to hear about the gaps in my logic.
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