ONLINE CONFERENCE WITH FANTASY WRITER - PIERS ANTHONY

Fantasy Writer, Piers Anthony Tuesday, April 8 at 9 PM EST: One of the most prolific as well as popular writers of fantasy fiction, author PIERS Anthony has had over 102 books published, 21 of which have ended up on the New York Times bestseller list over the years. His most famous series, The Magic Of Xanth, began in 1977 with "A Spell For Chameleon", and won the August Derlerth Fantasy Award for the best fantasy novel that year. Anthony's latest book, "Hope of Earth", comes out in May. Meet Piers Anthony on April 8 at 9 PM EST and you may win a copy of his novel.

PEOPLE: Hi everyone. I'm Andrew Alden, your host, and on behalf of PEOPLE Magazine I'd like to welcome you all here tonight. Our guest this evening is fantasy writer Piers Anthony. To call him prolific may be an understatement: he's had over 102 books published, 21 of which have ended up on the New York Times bestseller list over the years. His best-known series is probably The Magic Of Xanth, which began in 1977 with "A Spell For Chameleon."

Welcome, Piers! Do you hang out much online, say, in the alt.fan.piers-anthony newsgroup?

Piers Anthony: I'm not online at all. As a matter of fact this is being typed through a willing amanuensis. I want people to KNOW I'm not online, because sometimes imposters take my name.

PEOPLE: Piers, your new book, "Hope of Earth" is coming out soon. Tell us a little bit about it.

Piers Anthony: That's the third novel in my Geodyssey series. Like the others, it covers about 4 or 5 million years of human history. It starts about 5 million years in the past and goes to 25 years ahead in the future. This particular volume covers 6 brothers and sisters who make their way through human history. The book is 230,000 words long. I have to be BRIEF when I talk about it... otherwise I could talk for six hours. I think it is the best of that series.

PEOPLE: Who's the publisher? And when's the publishing date?

Piers Anthony: Hope of Earth is being published by TOR books and it's out officially in May. Which means that you'll probably be seeing it any day now -- at least by the end of this month.

PEOPLE: You are particularly drawn to writing novels in _series_: Xanth, Tarot, Cluster, the Apprentice Adept, Bio of a Space Tyrant, Incarnations of Immortality, and now Geodyssey. What draws you to this particular format?

Piers Anthony: Money. Publishers will pay a lot more. Let me make this clear: I am a commercial writer. But the readers like me. Critics think I stink. And series are what the readers like.

PEOPLE: We have some of your readers here... and they've been submitting questions. So let me give you some...

Question: What will the next Xanth novel be about?

Piers Anthony: I just finished one. "Faun and Games" will be out probably in October. The one I just finished is called "Zombie Lover" -- about a girl who's sleeping and the prince kisses her awake... but she's not pleased, because he's a ZOMBIE prince: that's how it starts. I don't know when that is coming out. The publisher has not accepted it yet. It will come out in two years if it comes out.

Question: How is Jenny Elf doing?

Piers Anthony: This may sound funny... I don't have a lot of information. I write to her every week, but she's paralyzed, so I don't get many answers. As far as I know she's still paralyzed, still hoping to go to college, hoping to take some classes. She can say a few words on one breath. As far as I know it hasn't changed very much in the last 7 or 8 years. It's still pretty much the same.

Question: Do you still get ideas for the Xanth puns, etc., from your fans/readers?

Piers Anthony: YES! All the time! I work out the basic ideas myself, but I get spot ideas, little things I use along the way, from readers. I have literally hundreds of them listed.

Question: Hi Piers...I sent you the poem "the loneliest heart." Do you remember me? I was just wondering what ishappening with the book "How Precious Is That While?"

Piers Anthony: That book is the sequel to my autobiography and updates me for the last dozen years. It has about 20 poems written by readers. I've sent it to my agent who hopes that he can sell the book. But we don't know yet. There's also a small press publisher who is interested if we can't sell it to a large press. So I have no word yet, but I am hoping to sell the book complete with readers' poems. Some are really dramatic poems.

PEOPLE: I was gonna ask about your autobiography "Bio of an Ogre." What stuff did you leave out that will go into this one? And what isn't going into either book?

Piers Anthony:(LAUGHS) "Bio of An Ogre" doesn't have the last dozen years. It covered me to age 50, and now I'm 62! The new one tells the truth about publishing. Thay's why I'm not sure I can get it published. Publishing is ugly. There is cheating. It is too bad when a writer has to engage a lawyer's services in order to get paid. But that is what happened to me. Most of it is just clumsiness. Publishers make horrendous misake that cost everybody.

PEOPLE: Presumably, none of this applies to TOR, which is highly reputed.

Piers Anthony: It applies to TOR too, which is why I am sure that TOR will not publish it.

PEOPLE: Sorry to hear that... Here are some more reader questions.

Question: Where did you come up with the idea of the first Xanth book? I bet you get asked this all the time.

Piers Anthony:(LAUGHS) I do! I turned Florida into the magic land of Xanth -- ultimately it's _that_ simple. Once you add magic to Florida, you've got a lot!

Question: What would us fans have to do to get you to write the sequal to the Tyrant series?

PEOPLE: The questioner promises a national campaign.

Piers Anthony: The fans don't have to do anything. I have to find a publisher who wants it. I was up against economics -- publishers would pay me several times what they did for Space Tyrant novels for a fantasy book. I'm like anybody else -- I have to pay for my daughter's college. If a publisher gives me $100,000 for a fantasy book and only one-third of that for another novel, and they take the same time to write, I'll do what the publisher wants.

Question: Will the people in "Hope of Earth" meet any of the people from the previous novels?

Piers Anthony: YES! A number, quite a number they will meet. This is a policy in this series -- that I always have the lead characters in earlier novels become supporting characters in the latest ones. One minor character from an earlier novel, marries one of the characters in "Hope of Earth." So he becomes more than just a cameo appearance.

Question: Why did the Mode series get canceled ?

Piers Anthony: The publisher was losing money on the first volumes. So they didn't want any more. "None but a blockhead ever wrote except for money"... That's one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Johnson.

PEOPLE: Here's a long one...

Question: Hello Mr. Anthony. I represent the XAC: the AOL Xanth Fanclub. We are but a group of about 67 members who love, or maybe even obsess about your work. How did you get the idea of using prostitution and drugs in "To Be a Green Mother"?

Piers Anthony: Okay, "Green Mother" is not a Xanth novel.

PEOPLE: They're not a limited group!

Piers Anthony: "Green Mother" is an Incarnation novel and addresses real human concerns, such as death, such as sex, such as the nature of good and evil. And let's face it, when we get into good and evil and the young girls who get hooked, it's a problem, being lost in the streets... The one you're talking about is a 15- year-old girl who got hooked on drugs and forced into prostitution.

Question: Will you write more about the life of Bink?

Piers Anthony: Bink! He started off in Xanth. In the novel I just wrote, "Zombie Lover," Bink is one of the major characters. So the simple answer is: yes! People like Bink because he has a magic talent that he can't be HARMED by magic... That's his major talent. Some weird coincidences happen in order to allow him this talent.

Question: You say you are "strictly" a commercial writer, but it seems more like "Tathem Mound" and the GeoOddesy aren't quite driven by commercial need on your part -- more like something YOU wanted to share with your readers. Are there other projects you have in mind like these -- things you want to share with the rest of us?

PEOPLE: A flattering question!

Piers Anthony: Yes, you are right: Tathem Mound I wrote for love. I will say that I compromise and try to work in the things I like into commercial fiction. The compromise between art and commercial is SUCH a broad subject, that I can't give it justice in this short time. I write the highest quality I can get away with though. There is art in what I do.

PEOPLE: Which of your series do you consider to be finished, and which are still "live"?

Piers Anthony: Xanth istill alive, Geoddysey is in doubt. I want to write it -- but I have to get a publisher for what I write. And I'm not sure that I will be able to get publishers for it in the future. Probably Xanth is the only one that is still alive.

PEOPLE: At least one reader laments the fact that you won't write "Iron Maiden." Do you wish that could come out?

Piers Anthony: Oh, I'd like to write it. But I won't write it unless I think I can get it published. If they wanted to make a book like that, I would be glad to write it. I don't do screenplays myself but my assistant has written a treatment and we are shopping it around for a television series. It's a project called "Candle." I worked it up and gave it to my agent to see what he could do with it. It may go nowhere.

I can give a simple notion about its nature. It's a HOUSE, it's on a busy city street, and the back door opens upon an ancient forest, untrod by human foot. If you go out the back door, the forest surrounds the house. If you go out the front door, the CITY surrounds the house. That's the kind of dream I have: I like the city and the forest both! But I'm an ignoramus about Hollywood. It took me about 5 years to learn to recognize the name "Spielberg." I recognize it _now_ but that's an example of how slow I am about stuff like this.

PEOPLE: That is a lovely notion... and maybe a movie version would be best!

As a reader, Piers, what are your own favorite kind of stories?

Piers Anthony:(LAUGHS) I don't read stories for pleasure; I read non-fiction. I just read a book called "Water" by Alice Atwater -- it's about the world's water supplies! (I find the juxtaposition of the author's name and title amusing.) It talks a great deal about what useful creatures beavers were, and how destroying them for their fur really harmed the environment in an enduring way. That's the kind of thing I like to read. I like to know everything about everything!

PEOPLE: Well, then what about your writing instead... Do you write every day? When? For how many hours? On a word processor? What about those all-important *mental* habits?

Piers Anthony:(LAUGHS) Okay. I write all the time I have available. I have to qualify that because I receive 150 letters a month, so one-third of my time goes to answering mail. These letters are from readers. That leaves me two-thirds of my working time to write fiction. I start at 9 in the morning and work until 8 in the evening. I take a couple of hours off for lunch. I also have to exercise. But that's what I do, 7 days a week. I take no vacations -- my vacations are answering my mail. I'm a workaholic; I love writing! That's my problem.

I jumped from pencil to the computer in one step about 10 years ago. My style didn't change that I could tell, although critics claimed that it did. (I knew they were wrong because they didn't guess WHICH novels were written on a word-pager.) I love computers because I REALLY HATE RETYPING!!! I also love the spell-check. I use a Pentium with Win 95. It's not that I love the technology, it's just that they're constantly coming up with innovations. I can tell you one thing though: nobody who ever wrote worked for Microsoft.

PEOPLE: The readers here are asking many variations of this question, which is part of any writer interview: What advice do you have for aspiring novelists? I'm not talking abstractions here like "Stick to your dream!" I mean practical stuff!

Piers Anthony: They don't really want to hear it! You keep writing: you just write and you write and you write and you write... and you keep trying it on the market. That's the secret: you keep on doing it. Some readers get mad at me for saying that. They think there should be something more magical about the process than there is.

PEOPLE: We have a minute or two for some final reader questions...

Question: Are your daughters inspired to write?

Piers Anthony: Apparently not. One might have been interested, but she likes to be the best at what she does. She took one look at what I do and gave up I'm a little bit sorry -- I think I may have discouraged her. Both daughters work in offices right now. These days a college degree gets you a routine job.

PEOPLE: Lastly, "Ekelley" wonders if there will, as rumored, be a second Xanth computer game.

Piers Anthony: I think so. We gave them a contract for it over a year ago. The company, Legend, has been in stasis. There's some sort of hold-off. They haven't moved. Maybe they had a programmer leave or something. That's just a guess!

PEOPLE: Piers Anthony, THANK YOU so much for sharing this hour with us! Best of luck with your next book, and the movies that everyone wants you to make...

Piers Anthony:(LAUGHS)

PEOPLE: and thanks to our audience too!

Piers Anthony: Oh I'd love to see my books be made into movies, but I am not the billionaire to do it. If they turned all my novels into movies the way they do with Stephen King, guess how high my sales would be! (That's true of any writer.)

PEOPLE: Maybe someone in the audience will be inspired to become the next Bill Gates and bankroll you... Good night!

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