Piers Anthony is one of the world’s most popular fantasy authors. He is most known for his New York Times bestselling Xanth novels, a long-running series filled with humorous puns and adventure. One of his greatest achievements has been to publish a book for every letter of the alphabet, from Anthonology to Zombie Lover. He has also received special recognition for his Internet Publishers Survey that he maintains to help aspiring writers learn more about publishers and services. Piers lives in Florida, which happens to resemble the terrain of his popular Xanth series.
Matthew Peterson: My next guest is Piers Anthony. Most known for the Xanth Novels. I remember when I was younger--I’ll just preface this interview, when I was younger, about 10 years old, my brothers were reading the Xanth Novels and I remember those covers. And years later, actually just a few months ago, I saw those covers again and remembered them, started reading them and never realized how interesting they were and I wish I would have picked them up when my brothers were reading them. But I have Piers Anthony on today. Thanks for being on the show Piers.
Piers Anthony: You’re welcome.
Matthew Peterson: You have a lot of novels in the Xanth Series, you also have some other series–Incarnations of Immortality–but the Xanth Series are your most popular ones, I think.
Piers Anthony: Yes.
Matthew Peterson: You started back in 1977 with A Spell for Chameleon.
Piers Anthony: Yes.
Matthew Peterson: Did you have any idea back then, how popular this series would become?
Piers Anthony: No idea at all. The only reason I wrote it, because I wanted to work with the editor of Del Ray. I’d seen his editing in magazines and he was a fantasy editor, so I wrote a fantasy novel. I had no idea what I was starting, and I don’t think he did either.
Matthew Peterson: Well, I had no idea what the books were like and I pick them up. I just remembered those covers, I picked ‘em up, started reading, and all of a sudden the book starts talking about the main character sowing wild oats. And I was like, literally, sowing, you know, digging and planting wild oats, and I was like, “Oh this is a pun!"
Piers Anthony: It was literal.
Matthew Peterson: Yep. And then I had a totally different perception of the books and I continued reading them. Just finished Nightmare actually a couple days ago. So, I’m still kind of a baby in [Xanth].
Piers Anthony: When I wrote Nightmare, my big worry was that people wouldn’t identify with a non-human protagonist.
Matthew Peterson: Uh huh.
Piers Anthony: No trouble.
Matthew Peterson: Oh, I loved it. I loved it. It was really good. I really enjoyed the way that you did put lot of puns. Because that’s different. We don’t get that as much in fantasy nowadays. But I also enjoyed that you do have the mystery, and the characters are very endearing.
Piers Anthony: Yes. The act of puns started because I just couldn’t take fantasy seriously. And so the jokes started coming in. Now I can take it seriously, but then I was relatively new to fantasy and you know, it seemed frivolous and that was my attitude.
Matthew Peterson: Well, how do you come up with all these puns? I can imagine doing it for a few books, but continuing on . . . I think your next book, Jumper Cable?
Piers Anthony: My next one to be published.
Matthew Peterson: Yeah, the next to be published, I mean that’s your 33rd book in the Xanth Series.
Piers Anthony: I’ve already written the 34th one and I’m about to write the 35th one.
Matthew Peterson: Oh wow! How do you come up with all of these interesting puns and different takes and humor?
Piers Anthony: Well, to answer the first one, I’d used up humor that I had on my own, but then readers started sending in their suggestions and now my problem is they send in more suggestions that I can use and I have to be very choosy and tell a lot of people, “no". And even so I could use 100 or 150 or even 200 in a given novel and there’s still more piling in.
Matthew Peterson: Yeah.
Piers Anthony: So, where do I get my ideas? In that respect, from my readers.
Matthew Peterson: From the readers. That’s ideal because that’s what they want. They’re giving you what they want.
Piers Anthony: Yes.
Matthew Peterson: That’s good. One of the things, for people who aren’t familiar with the Xanth Series, there’s some humor in there, but it’s set in a strange land, called Xanth, which happens to be very similar to the area of Florida.
Piers Anthony: Yes, it’s like Florida with magic.
Matthew Peterson: Yeah. And you happen to live in Florida, so you know a little bit more of the landmarks of Xanth.
Piers Anthony: Yes, and they translate freely. We live near the Wit Macuchi River, it’s an Indian name, Macuchi and that become the “with a cookie river". I do that all over the place. In Florida, elsewhere there’s Make Whales, and that becomes pun-ish in many ways. There’s the Kissimmee, in Florida, you know on the other side of the state, that becomes Kiss Me.
Matthew Peterson: [Laughs] Well there’s a lot of magic, of course, in the series. The interesting thing about the series is that everybody who lives in Xanth has a magical talent. But you’ve kind of changed, not necessarily the rules, but broadened out the rules as the series goes on and you find that sometimes people might have a different quality or can use different spells through magical words, or magical objects.
Piers Anthony: Yes, there’s a lot of incidental magic around, in addition to the talents that people have and usually talents don’t repeat, each person has a different talent. But the key there is that talents can still be very similar so that it might be hard to distinguish one from another.
Matthew Peterson: Yeah, I thought that was very interesting. I already mentioned the covers. Those covers were so memorable for me, as a child. I have to tell you, I love those covers, especially the very first ones with the . . .
Piers Anthony: Well, that Darrell Sweet number and Michael Whelan. Whelan’s considered about the top fantasy artist in the world and he was doing covers for them.
Matthew Peterson: That is great. Another thing I wanted to ask you about is the audio books. I noticed that you do have audio books, quite a few of them, but I couldn’t find them readily available, like on Amazon, or audible.com, is there a reason for that? Are the rights tied up somewhere?
Piers Anthony: There’s a reason, frustrates me as much as the readers. The audio companies, they’re publishers and publishers are choosy. And they’re just . . . I’m trying to get Xanth into audio and apparently they don’t think there’s a market. So, they’re not taking them. The ones they do take, do very well. But trying to get through to them . . . I’ve written a letter once, I couldn’t even get an answer. They do what they choose to do and who knows what their basis is.
Matthew Peterson: I listened to some of the audio of the first book and the narrator was just amazing with it. So, I’m surprised that they don’t think that there’s a market.
Piers Anthony: What I’m recommending to some people now is this new Amazon Kindle has a speaking feature, you can turn it on, and it’ll read it out loud. And they say if you are blind, and there isn’t an audio on the book you want, try it on Kindle. It’s not perfect, they do make mistakes, you know, it’s a machine reading it, but it’s a lot better than nothing.
Matthew Peterson: Yeah, that’s a good idea. And then also, is there a movie? Is there any animation in the works with the Xanth Series?
Piers Anthony: On the Xanth Series, for four years there was. Warner Pictures had an option, they were paying handsomely for it, year by year. And then apparently they ran afoul with the credit crunch and that option came due. And so instead of making a movie, they were firing hundreds of people and canceled the movie. It’s too bad, I really had a lot of hope in it. My hope is that if the economy improves, they’ll come back to it and be able to raise the money to make the movie. And then they will.
Matthew Peterson: That would be great.
Piers Anthony: Hope that happens while I’m still alive.
Matthew Peterson: Yeah, that would be great. Well, I’ve been speaking with Piers Anthony. Very, very pleased to be able to speak with you, especially after I’ve been just reading your books this month. Thank you so much for being on the show, Piers.
Piers Anthony: Okay.
Matthew Peterson: Well guys, I hope you enjoyed the first episode of The Author Hour. I really want to emphasize that right after every episode airs, I’m going to post tons of bonus questions on my website that didn’t make it onto the show. So, you really need to go to my website at www.TheAuthorHour.com It’s kind of like deleted scenes from a movie. Plus I’ll have some more info about the guests and links to places where you can buy their books. I’ve got over 50 best selling and award-winning authors lined up this season, so I hope you stick around and tell your friends about the show. Next week’s going to be a great one. I’ve got a super star line-up with Diana Gabaldon, Meg Cabot, Shannon Hale and Kristin Cashore. You don’t want to miss that one. I’ll see you next week. Bye bye.
Read or Listen to the extra questions that didn't make it onto the live show.
