Yep.
I’m on hellkitten duty again. And I need a night off the blog. Although, as previously observed, wrangling photos takes astonishing amounts of time**, it doesn’t take up nearly as much brain time as wrangling words. And as long as I’m still coping with the blog I’m not on line buying winter pansies and spring bulbs and bare root roses.
And so, without further ado, I give you . . . 
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* You realise that Phineas and Eidolon don’t actually go away every weekend. I just sneak up behind them and lock them in a closet for a while.
** Possibly aggravated by a need to go ‘ickle ickle ickle kitty ickle’ extensively over this particular photo series
Stars and Bells
Starred—starred—review from Kirkus:
PEGASUS. Robin McKinley. (Putnam: 978-0-399-24677-7)
Classic McKinley, from the original concept (pegasi!) to the lush, dense prose and the careful unfolding of a nuanced tale. In Balsinland, royal humans are bound to royal pegasi, intelligent winged horses. But despite this, communication is nearly impossible, requiring a magician interpreter and still fraught with failures, and so it has been for 800 years—until Princess Sylvi (small, spunky, overlooked and very bright) and pegasus Prince Ebon are bound and find they can communicate in silent speech. This almost stately tale laced with shimmering strands of humor and menace follows Sylvi and Ebon as they navigate a friendship that is of historical importance even as outside threats begin to press upon both their peoples. In some ways, little happens here, and the cliffhanger ending, on the eve of the eruption of everything, will leave readers desperate for the next installment. But in others, everything happens, as an unlikely but charming friendship across species changes the world—and, as with any great change, threatens some and brings hope to others. Magnificent and magical. (Fantasy. YA)
YAAAAY. ‘Magnificent and magical’! YAAAAAAY.*
And while I’m being all bookish and professional** let me remind you that you have less than twenty four hours left to get your silly title in for a chance at a signed copy of A KNOT IN THE GRAIN AND OTHER STORIES. This is not a judged contest. You do not have to lie tormentedly awake tonight racking your brains for scintillating fruit loopery. Any silly title will do, although preferably not one already out there on a book somewhere. Details here: http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2010/09/19/itty-bitty-contest/
Right. Now back to the important things.
Our new handbeller showed up again for our standard Thursday practise yesterday*** . . . I think we’ve got her. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha. Therefore I’d better give her a name: Fernanda. She worries me however. I think I told you she’s a very experienced tower ringer who burnt out†, and is starting again after a break of several years, and thought handbells might be a way of making ringing shiny and new again. It’s to her credit that she turned down an invitation to join the big kids’ handbell group—the ones who ring Great Frelling Catherine Wheel Spectacular as a warm-up and go on to methods so advanced and arcane there are no mere words for them—and instead pursued a faint rumour of a Dumb But Friendly group in New Arcadia. That would be us. But I have already begun to view her with deepest suspicion. That amiable exterior hides the beating heart of a perfectionist. I’m almost sure of it. And the horror of having an immediately semi-competent†† fourth has already begun: we’re going to be ringing bob major next week, when Colin is back. Eeeep. The worst of this is that since Fernanda is still the official newbie, she is going to get the easy pair of bells and I’m going to have to learn the lines for another two. Stop that grinning, Niall, or I’ll put salt in your tea.††† Although, speaking of Niall’s handbell grin, he told me at tower practise tonight that Tom, with whom we’d rung that (I admit) rather good handbell quarter of Totally Absolutely Plain bob minor some weeks back, and who is himself a member of the Super Frelling Catherine Wheel Spectacular‡ group, has been describing my ringing as precise and metronomic: which sounds a little awful, but is in fact exactly what you want in handbells. ::Beams:: It’s only taken me years, you know—and the trebles to bob minor are still the only blasted handbell thing I can ring reliably. But it’s something.‡‡
Meanwhile I’m a little discouraged about tower ringing. The good ringers all seem to have moved to Birmingham; we’ve increasingly got more bells than ringers around here, and the ringers we have got are mostly worse than I am. I’ve already written about not minding ringing lots and lots and lots of basic stuff for beginners—it’s one of the things those of us who can are for, and we were all beginners once (although some of us took rather longer to climb out of that distressing state than others. Ahem. I have also blogged about my dislike of naturally really good ringers who don’t get it about the rest of us). But—yes—I also want to ring stuff for me, and that’s not happening. When’s the last time I mentioned ringing Cambridge? That’s the last time I’ve rung it, and I only learn by frequent, relentless grind—which means I’m not learning Cambridge. Same goes for Grandsire Triples. I need to ring it over and over and over and over and over . . . and I need to do this week in and week out. Which I’m not. Whiiiiiiiine. I was talking to Niall and Fernanda about this yesterday during tea break: the usual recourse of people in my position is to find a tower that can teach them what they want, and commute. The ME kind of means I can’t commute and earn a living and perhaps my priorities are skewed, but the earning a living still comes first.‡‡‡ But even supposing I was willing to commute we were still coming up a bit short of towers with suitable bands who furthermore are willing to teach visitors. We’ve got at least a couple of crack bands in this area but they’d spit on me, I fear: not only a visitor but an untalented visitor who needs relentlessness and grinding. Sigh. But there are still a couple of towers to try. The more amusing possibility has another Wild Robert type as ringing master, which is to say mad, but he’s also more miles away. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile we did scrape together a touch of Stedman doubles for me tonight—and Leo managed his first plain course without a minder. Yaaay! Another Stedman ringer in the making! I also had a kind of mini-breakthrough of my own. We were bearing down on the end of our plain course and Leo had fallen out by a couple of blows—and when you’re that close, especially with a beginner who can use the morale boost of getting through it, you really want to winkle it through if you can. Hey! I yelled. You should be dodging with me! He duly dodged, and we made it back to rounds. Hurrah. We were all congratulating him and Vicky turned to me and said, That was excellent. Huh? I said intelligently. That you said something to him, said Vicky. This is something else you need to learn to do. Vicky, you may recall, was instrumental in forcing me into Deputy Ringing Mastership.
It’s interesting, the business of helping other ringers by shouting at them mid-touch. In the first place, if you’re someone like me, you’re almost never sure you’re right anyway, and ringing goes so fast that you have to be hellishly decisive if you’re going to say anything that is going to be of any use. By the time you’ve made up your tiny mind the moment is long past. But the second thing is—it feels so impertinent, shouting at people, even when you’re aware that you’re very grateful when people shout at you.§ On top of worrying about being sure you’re about to shout the right thing there’s this enormous resistance to shouting. I’m not even sure how the right shout managed to burst out of me tonight. But it did help haul Leo to triumph.
. . . We will however pass over in silence Niall giving me dodging practise on a big bell. We were ringing the back six, and I was on the fourth bell, which is biggish. We were going to ring plain hunt on three for our beginners, which meant that the back three bells would just be ringing rounds—and could essentially go to sleep, which is what I promptly did. And then Niall called for the four and the five to dodge. What? Huh? Blah? Arrrrrgh. He had to call stand while I found my head and put it back on again, and Vicky, who was on the five, was sardonic. . . .
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* I did ask my editor if there was a link or could I post it and she said Kirkus wasn’t on line but yes.
** YAAAAY is very professional. Ask any author who gets a good review.
*** Maybe she just likes the hellhounds.
† Silly woman used not merely to ring full peals but long lengths. Full peals run three, three and a half hours or so of standing there pulling nonstop on your bell rope . . . long lengths are longer. She said she stopped ringing them because they stopped being fun. You mean they had been fun? Would you run the definition of ‘fun’ past me please?
†† Gods I hate these people. Colin is another one. Can ring anything in the tower and can therefore have a go at almost anything in hand, although it may take them a little longer and they may make a few more mistakes. Gah. It’s hard being the reason why your group is the Dumb But Friendlies. Bronwen! Alicia! Come baaaaaack! Save me from the humiliation of being the only person who has to learn everything agonisingly from scratch!
††† There are some perks to being host. Aside from the weekly necessity of clawing the cottage into some semblance of order so I can risk letting other people in the door. This regular urgency is a good thing.
‡ So is Niall a member, although he won’t admit it.
‡‡ My obituary will read: She was perhaps most famous for her twelve-book series laid in and around the country of Damar and her nine books about an alternate Earth afflicted with vampires and demons and were-chickens and so on, including four novels and half a dozen short stories concerning a young woman nicknamed Sunshine. And the trilogy about a bunch of flying horses^. She also rang a hell of a lot of bob minor on handbells.^^
^ Obits always get important stuff wrong. Pegasi are not flying horses.
^^ She rarely admitted that she could also ring Great Frelling Catherine Wheel Spectacular. On any pair.
‡‡‡ I of course being menopausal can live without food. But the hellhounds need their chicken.
§ Nicely. I’m sure I’ve blogged about the extreme grisliness of being shouted at not nicely.
Fame. Sort of.
So I spent yesterday visiting Diana Wynne Jones. I wasn’t going to mention it till Neil Gaiman went and made us all famous on Twitter last night. Yes, Neil was there too. Or rather he arrived as I was leaving. And I wouldn’t have still been there at all if I hadn’t spent an hour sitting in a dead train outside the station two stops from Diana’s. Alternately I would have been there if my hellhound minder hadn’t dumped me last week. Except a week ago I didn’t know Neil was coming. Are you confused yet?
I’ve known Diana almost forever. I changed publishers after my first book, and almost the first thing my new editor, Susan Hirschman of Greenwillow Books, did was thrust a copy of CHARMED LIFE at me (which had come out a year before BEAUTY did) and say, Read this. You’ll love it.
I was an instant and complete sloppy and slavish fan. That was in 1980, I think.* There was nothing like Diana then—well, there’s nothing like her now either, but in those days I can’t even begin to describe how amazing CHARMED LIFE was,** as well as adorable and hilarious*** and so frisky and exuberant just reading it (still) makes me breathe harder to keep up. I don’t know what my favourite Diana Wynne Jones book is—feels a bit like saying, so, what is your favourite body part? Left arm? Right leg?—but I often say it’s CHARMED LIFE because it was my first, and it blew me away. Blew. Me. Away. Greenwillow in those days was a smallish imprint. It wasn’t impossible to put yourself in the way of meeting a fellow Greenwillow author. . . . †
I assume a lot of you know that Diana’s been seriously ill. She’s doing enormously better than the medical establishment, in its somewhat less than total wisdom and foresight, predicted,†† but she’s still a bit frail. A lot of you will I fear know about this too: how easy it is to neglect friends who clearly have rich happy lives and don’t need you cluttering up the landscape.††† That would be me about Diana. I finally received the necessary prod to get back in touch last spring from Firebird editor Sharyn November.
I went to see her again yesterday. Diana has determined that the reason why so many Weird Things happen to each of us in various aspects of our lives is that we are simply from another planet. I feel this does explain a great deal—probably including why we are both compelled to write stories this world calls fantasy—but it also tends to mean that the time-space continuum risks becoming dangerously warped when we are in contact. I am privately convinced, for example, that the reason why my hellhound minder chose last week to dump me is because I was trying to visit Diana this week.
I went anyway. The new train station for my new improved route was unsettlingly easy to find and there was even a parking space for Wolfgang‡. It was so easy to find I had time for a cup of tea from the friendly station café and sunlight to sit in while I drank it. I should have known this meant trouble.
Three-quarters of the way there the train rumbled to a stop in the middle of a field and did not rumble to a start again. BLAT BLAT BLAT WILL KEEP YOU BLAT INFORMED BLAT AS SOON AS WE BLAT KNOW ANYTHING BLAT BLAT crackled out over the PA-facsimile system. Every fifteen minutes or so we got a crackly-blat non-update to the effect that yes, we were still sitting here. Did I mention the sunlight? The temperature in the frelling car was getting on toward Ralph Richardson in THE FOUR FEATHERS. And meanwhile . . . I couldn’t get a signal on Apocalypse. All around me people were making calls on their compliant, tractable mobile phones, saying they were going to be late to a variety of appointments. Apocalypse kept saying, those bars in the upper lefthand corner of your screen are a mirage. I can’t get a signal. No. Can’t. Won’t. Don’t want to. And you can’t make me.‡‡
We sat, parboiling gently, for an hour. It was not a good hour.‡‡‡ I learned all kinds of things about the sub-sub-sub menus of the iPhone 4, but none of them was what I WANTED.
So. Okay. Train finally started up again. Finally got to Diana’s. Panting and semi-hysterical.§
Meanwhile . . . Diana had emailed me the day before saying, could I stay later, because Neil Gaiman was coming. Neil?
I met Diana because we had the same publisher. I met Neil because we have the same agent. I am a major, major wuss and have therefore never read SANDMAN, but I have been a dedicated, not to say drooling, Neil follower since AMERICAN GODS which still makes me weak in the extremities on rereading. It’s like CHARMED LIFE: I wouldn’t want to pick a favourite Gaiman book either, but I sometimes say it’s AMERICAN GODS because it was the first one that blew my socks off.
I no longer remember how these things were engineered, but Neil and I crossed paths a few times, and I do remember having One of the Worst Breakfasts of My Entire Life in a New York City hotel with him and Merrilee. Fortunately the company made up for the food. This was before he became Mega-Neil the Phenomenon. If it weren’t I have the proof of his notice in the shape of a killer quote for SUNSHINE§§ I wouldn’t actually expect him to remember who the hell I am. When I read Diana’s email I thought, Late! No! No late! Can’t do late! Must get home to legs-crossed hellhounds! Frell! Author of AMERICAN GODS, STARDUST, ANANSI BOYS, GRAVEYARD BOOK—frell!
It was still a kind of twenty-minute semi-collision rather than a meeting, but it is true, as reported on Twitter, Neil Gaiman, Diana Wynne Jones and Robin McKinley did inhabit the same small piece of mundane ground for nearly half an hour and nothing exploded. I was only even still there because I’d arrived so late and was failing to tear myself away to catch the train I’d planned to catch—I had assumed I was going to miss Neil entirely. Maybe the evil travel-jinx/earth-detonating fairies were a victim of their own success and caught off guard.§§§ But there was Neil coming in the front door slightly before I was running out the back door for the taxi, which was late, and I made my train going home with three minutes to spare, having spent the taxi ride frantically murmuring, let me make this train let me make this train pleaseIreallyhavetomakethistrain.
Wolfgang was where I left him, although the sense that I’d just wandered into THE HOMEWARD BOUNDERS was stronger than ever in the dark.# And clearly we brought otherspace with us because when we got to Mauncester it was closed. I swear the grinning creature in the overalls and hard hat behind the carefully disguised to be invisible till just before you run into the traffic cones ‘DETOUR, back the way you just came’ sign had six limbs, which is no doubt very efficient for digging holes in the roadway but disconcerting to a fantasy writer just back from what she suspects was a narrow escape from triangulating the end of the known universe.## Furthermore this was not the side of Mauncester that I know. I saw a lot more of HOMEWARD BOUNDERS, possibly with lashings of AMERICAN GODS, before I finally found the road to New Arcadia. . . .
And the hellhounds, bless their tightly crossed little legs, were very glad to see me.
* * *
* Forever. Yes.
** Note that Terry Pratchett’s first novel was 1983. Diana invented funny British fantasy.
*** And infinitely rereadable. I lost track at around thirty.
† THE DARK LORD OF DERKHOLM is dedicated to me^, although the dedication went in late and doesn’t appear in the American edition. It appears in the British edition, however, and also in the Finnish. Sic. One of my prize possessions is a copy of the Finnish edition, gloriously entitled DERKINHOVIN MUSTA RUHTINAS, and in which the dedication appears: Robin McKinleylle. I’m not sure why this is quite so pleasing, but it is.
^ ::PREEN::
†† AND SHE’S WRITING
††† A robust sense of self worth has never been one of my defining characteristics.
‡ Although located in so manifestly a between-worlds inter-dimensional leak, complete with implausible flora like something out of a Diana Wynne Jones novel, I did wonder if he’d still be there when I got back.
‡‡ True.
‡‡‡ One of the purposes of train journeys is to catch up on your reading. I had however by then discovered that when Peter printed off his new manuscript for me to read HE’D LEFT OUT TWENTY PAGES. I’d also forgotten to bring the book I’d been reading in bed the night before with me . . . which meant I only had one book left. I had to borrow a fresh book from Diana to get me home again. Fortunately she’s equipped in terms of books rather the way I and most of you are.
§ To be met with fresh sweetcorn and smoked salmon. Suddenly I felt a great deal better.
§§ Just in case anyone’s forgotten, it says: ‘SUNSHINE is a gripping, funny, page-turning, pretty much perfect work of magical literature that exists more or less at the unlikely crossroads of CHOCOLAT, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, MISERY, and the tale of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.’ ::BEAM::
§§§ I will add there was a further party to the festivities, Dave Devereux, who writes thrillers which are much too thrillery for me, a bit perhaps like the thriller version of SANDMAN, but is very good at making his iPhone do mesmerising tricks. And yeah, maybe I dazzle easily but Dave is very slick.
# And the local bell tower was ringing some remarkably well struck Grandsire Triples. Very disconcerting when you’re still reeling from not having destroyed the universe.
## Unfortunately you don’t get to ask if the new universe would be more fun.
Another interview
Several people have tweeted this already, but this is still tonight’s blog post. You can read it again and pick out more faults in my logic.* Or go do the laundry or something. And note that they’re giving away three copies of the PEGASUS ARC. You don’t even have to make up a silly title to enter.**
http://community.livejournal.com/enchantedinkpot/68526.html
* * *
* Logic?
** Note that the silly title threads for a signed A KNOT IN THE GRAIN are still open here on the forum, Facebook and Twitter. Details here: http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2010/09/19/itty-bitty-contest/
Ask Robin. Sort of. Not. Yes. No. Maybe.
There’s a very positive and flattering review of PEGASUS here*:
About two thirds of the way through she writes:
Although the humans love the Pegasi, these creatures are so completely alien that, even after centuries of coexistence, the humans still experience a fair amount of xenophobia. . . . The amount of awkward formality directed towards the Pegasi highlights the humans’ continued discomfort. . . . As I read I couldn’t help but be reminded of modern day race relations or peace talks between peoples who are always at odds. Maybe I’m strange for drawing similarities between a fantasy novel and current events, but there is a small part of me that wonders if McKinley, on some subconscious level, has . . . written this novel as a larger social commentary.
Yes. Except it’s not subconscious. It’s also not done deliberately in a ‘okay, I am now going to highlight the trials and tribulations of cross-cultural life in the crowded global village of 2010.’ The story that comes is the story that comes—I don’t have a lot to say about it. But who and what the author is—who and what I am—can’t help but inform my choices as I try to get the fabulous, but so fabulous as to be essentially untellable story in my head down on paper—on paper for other people to read, and retaining, I hope, some faint recognisable shadow of its original scintillating reality. I also believe (or at least I want to believe) that the Story Council is not entirely populated by fools and knaves, and that they do try to send stories that will resonate for the particular author they go to. I talk about this in my FAQ somewhere: that if the Story Council ever sends me a story about a square-jawed brick-headed laser-rifle-totin’ he-man with a female sidekick who mostly screams and is so wasp-waisted she is in permanent danger of breaking in half, and never mind the things with tentacles that keep menacing her to give Brickie something to do, there will be trouble. But a story about neighbours who want to get along but can’t for one reason or another, including that they don’t speak the same language, either literally or metaphorically—and how easy it is then for someone with a personal agenda to make the situation worse . . . yeah. I can identify with and get stuck into that very easily. I also respond to stories where doing your best isn’t enough—where the chasm between you and them, or your truth and their truth, or your history and their history is too great.** Which in PEGASUS is what causes that cliffhanger ending, and will be the force driving PEG II. ***
And now, since that was pretty much an Ask Robin even if it wasn’t an Ask Robin, here’s another Ask Robin that isn’t an Ask Robin either.
The standard email question du jour for most of the last, er, annee, is Does Aerin ever go back to Luthe? †
I’ve blogged about this at least a couple of times but maybe it doesn’t come up in the search very well.†† So let’s get it into the Ask Robin archive and see if that helps.
The short answer is: yes. The very slightly longer answer is: yes but. Even pushing thirty years ago††† when I was writing HERO I knew that happy endings are rarely unmixed‡, and while I didn’t know any details, I knew that Aerin and Luthe would get back together but that it would not be for an easy shiny happily ever after. Aerin genuinely loved Tor; he was, if you like, her mortal side, the side of her that her father’s people would have been able to accept as their princess, their first sol, if that had been all of her there was. But she was also her mother’s daughter—which is why she survived Maur and defeated Agsded, but it didn’t make her popular. Irony alert, right? But I think this is very often the way life is—the bits don’t fit together.‡‡ Aerin did finally become popular with her father’s people as Tor’s queen, but it was by then too late for her to settle down and relax and take every day as it came. She still managed to have quite a lot of happy times as queen of Damar with Tor at her side.
And she is devastated when he dies—even though they both know it is coming, and both know that Aerin will be left behind. I don’t myself know how much she’s told Tor of her relationship with Luthe—not a lot, I guess, but he’s guessed more—but he knows about the not quite mortal part, and that Luthe called that out of her to save her life. Yes, after Tor dies, Aerin goes back to Luthe—but she’s badly caught between worlds—she can’t be completely a part of Luthe’s any more than she was able to be completely a part of Tor’s. She’s caught between worlds worse than Luthe is: mages start their training young, and he didn’t spend many years pretending to be the (relatively) ordinary mortal husband of a (relatively) ordinary mortal wife. Luthe is also a selfish brute, and lazy with it—he says so himself. His falling in love with Aerin is a point in his favour: it forces him to think about something other than his own comfort.
After Tor dies, Aerin does some extended wandering. I hope I’ll be able to write about some of it.‡‡‡ I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to write the (cough cough cough) short story about her and Luthe’s meeting after many years, but I’m not sure how much of the rest of it I’m going to be let in on. And—an awful lot of it is pretty sad. That’s the big but part of the yes. Those of you expecting another Technicolor sunset§—not gonna happen.
So let’s end tonight’s post somewhere else. Here are two absolute made my day dance around and shriek emails that have come in recently. Thank you, thank you, thank you! During stretches when sky diver (have I told you how much I hate heights?) or Arctic explorer (have I told you how much I hate cold?) seem like attractive career choices, and PEG II seems to be made up entirely of a malevolent jigsaw of sniggering gremlins, mail like these reconstruct the will to live (and write. Now, where did I put that biscuit jointer?).
* * *
While shopping for books to read on vacation this past summer, I spotted Sunshine… that yellow, sparkly cover caught my attention. After reading the back, it seemed like a book that my daughter and my mother might also read. Then I saw Neil Gaiman’s comment and knew that I should buy it.
I read it in one day. Then I passed it on to my daughter, and she read it in one day. Two months later my mom picked it from her big stack of books and read it in two days. Then two days later, she read it again. We are now passing it on to my niece.
I just want to say THANK YOU for creating an incredible world that we could all immerse ourselves in and, at the same time, let our imaginations play in for a while. We all absolutely love your writing.
I am starting Beauty today.
I hope that the Story Council continues to favor you.
* * *
I was rereading Hellhound before I went to sleep, and I noticed a simple offhand remark about off-lead dogs. It made me smile. It made me smile because I can imagine your glee as you use this medium to express your irritation. I never would have noticed that phrase as something special without having read your blog.
Another reason I love your blog is that I get daily tidbits from my favorite author. Even when you talk about things in which I have no knowledge or experience, I still enjoy reading about them. For example, before your blog I had never heard of method ringing, but I love hearing about your successes and your learning experiences.
I particularly love the footnotes. They make everything more fun!
I have been a major fan of yours ever since I was young. I can always count on your stories to make me smile. Now, I get stories and a blog. I am a lucky fan.
Thank you for taking the time out of every day to post and giving me (and all your readers) a piece of yourself.
You’re welcome! YAAAAAAAAAAAAY readers.
* * *
* She does take some pains to emphasise that PEGASUS is only the first half of the story and furthermore ends on a cliffhanger. Well . . . um . . . yes.
** There is a famous quote, applicable to way too many situations, which I have long believed was originally about Northern Ireland and its ‘Troubles’, and which Peter is positive is by Herbert Asquith, and which is: ‘There is not enough justice to go around.’ I am totally failing to find it, by Herbert Asquith or anyone else, on Google or anything else. If someone with better web fu than mine can find it, I’d be very grateful.
*** Okay, is driving PEG II. Slowly. I wish there was a pill or a spell or a homeopathic remedy or a whap up longside the head that would make me a faster writer. Trust me. No one out there wishes this more than I do.
† The sequel to SUNSHINE is still ahead in the polls however. Maybe I should just repost THERE IS NO SEQUEL TO SUNSHINE once a week. It would give me a regular night off too. And may I please remind regular readers of this blog that jokes about the sequel to SUNSHINE are not funny? Thank you.
†† As opposed to all those emails from people saying, I saw what you wrote about no sequel to SUNSHINE, but . . .
††† My usual eeeep here. How did I get this old? I vary between thinking for pity’s sake why am I so crocked, and if my nice, disgracefully young osteopath makes reference to wear and tear one more time I’m going to whop him one, and thinking for pity’s sake this arm, leg, gall bladder or eyeball is over half a century old, what do you expect?
‡ I did it in BEAUTY. I’ve paid my dues. And anyone who thought SPINDLE was going to have the standard ending wasn’t paying attention.
‡‡ This is of course what I’m writing about again in PEGASUS. Bits not fitting together.
‡‡‡ Arguably I already have. If Aerin stayed home more Harry wouldn’t have seen her so often. Is she still alive then? Not exactly. A ghost? No. She’s a third thing.
§ Like the one at the end of BEAUTY