Some of the fan mail that comes in is a shade less polite than the rest: here's today's example

[dianeduane]

So I start going through the email and find one waiting for me that has no topic, no salutation, and the very first sentence is as follows:

First off i would like Diane Duane to respond not some hired help.

Then a critique of some timeline issues in the YW books ensues, in a rather brusque and cranky tone. The mail then ends like this:

Respond or I will send an email a week for as long as it takes to get your attention.

And that's it: signature, but no "thanks for your time" or anything of the kind. (eyeroll) Sorry, [name omitted]. The Lady Mevrian and I are of one mind in this regard: "patience only and courtesy shall get good of me", especially when somebody's work day looks like mine.* So [name omitted] gets one of the form letters which my long-suffering part-time assistant composed.

I resisted that kind of thing for as long as I could. But it got to a point -- what with the artless and delightful emails and letters from ten-year-olds looking for help with their school projects, the twelve-year-olds who want me to write their essays on Deep Wizardry for them (or, in some cases, instruct me to tell them where they can find the Cliff Notes online, and hurry up about it, because they need it for today, for something at school), the older fanficcers who want me to read their YW fic and [approve it / critique it / include it in the next YW novel], and many other similar kinds of query -- that I was spending whole mornings dealing with the e-correspondence alone, and we had to pull together some kind of FAQ or canned response for messages like this. (Paper letters always get answered. But the sheer volume of the emails is just too great these days -- routinely ten or twenty such messages each day, on the average.)

As regards this particular guy's query: yes indeed, there are timeline issues in the YW series, especially as regards the ages of the characters. For some of them, I accept responsibility: occasionally a writer can get confused, especially while transiting a series from one publisher to another. Other hiccups (especially in earlier volumes) are errors in copyediting where things got "fixed" for me and I didn't catch them in time to fix them back. (One notable example of this kind of thing: the book where Kit's last name is spelled all the way through with a terminal "s" instead of a "z".)

There's at least one online attempt to reconcile / make sense of the timeline (and document the parts that already make sense) -- the YW timeline and miscellany page run by one of our YW discussion forum moderators, the enthusiastic and thoughtful Peter Murray. But the "reconciliation" parts are a stopgap.

Pretty soon now I'm going to be talking to the present publisher about the next three books, and further plans for the series at large; and one thing very much on my mind is tweaking all the age references in the first eight books so that they make sense, and dealing with some other time-related issues to iron out various other difficulties. Obviously this is going to mean resetting the type on some, if not all, of the early volumes: which runs into money. We'll see what the publisher has to say.

Meanwhile, time to get another cup of tea and dig out that form letter...

*And if someone would tell me what a scan of The Worm Ourobouros is doing in the Sacred Texts website, I'd be grateful. Not that I mind, particularly. (Apropos of nothing: the Sacred Texts pages link to a fairly recent map of the world of The Worm, which is useful if [like me] you sometimes have trouble getting to grips with the geography there.)

Comments

[dduane.livejournal.com]

I would be tempted to say that this is just another of the examples of how the Intarwebz Are Making Us All Ruder. We don't yet have a word for "an inaccurate sense of over-entitlement", but that would seem to be what a lot of these folks are exhibiting.

Sometimes it just boils down to thoughtlessness on the mailer's part, or unconsciousness about how they "sound" in print. But sometimes it's just "I want this *now*, and you're here to give it to me! Get on with it!" Which can be annoying.

Then again, maybe it's because -- since one of my books can be bought in stores -- I'm seen as a part of the service economy. As "customer support." :)

Well, service can be a very high level of operation, when it's conducted properly. But "support"? I don't think I signed up for that. (resigned look) Question is, will this kind of person ever believe that?...

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Have you ever thought of selling a Maintenance Plan? it's a wonder for those of us who do have to worry about customer support. "You're not on maintenance? Oh, I'm sorry, I'll see what I can do, but I can't guarantee anything."

(Actually, the Concordance would count as better customer support than some vendors provide.)

[dduane.livejournal.com]

(snicker) But that's one of its purposes. The Concordance is just a very large FAQ. With pictures.

[gearworld.livejournal.com]

And I want fries with that book! And a small coke!

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

*grumble* That minor witticism was me. One of these days I'll remember to switch my log-ins...

[dduane.livejournal.com]

(heh) Meanwhile, I see from the "popular pages listing (http://www.youngwizards.com/ErrantryWiki/index.php/Special:Popularpages) at the Concordance that the pig in question (http://www.youngwizards.com/ErrantryWiki/index.php/Transcendent_Pig) has run straight up to near the top of the popularity listing, beating out even the Biteless Apple, (http://www.youngwizards.com/ErrantryWiki/index.php/Apple_Without_A_Bite%2C_the) the WizPod, (http://www.youngwizards.com/ErrantryWiki/index.php/WizPod), and the Cockatrice (http://www.youngwizards.com/ErrantryWiki/index.php/Cockatrice). This takes some doing!

People really like that pig. :)

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

Well, who doesn't love a mystical pig? Doesn't every young girl spend hours brushing the sparkly hair of My Little Piggy? C'mon!

[dduane.livejournal.com]

(headclutch) Now *there's* an image. And I bet these pigs have little hearts and whatnot branded on their butts. Oh dear.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

No, the tail, instead of being a normal spiral, is kinked into a heart shape instead.

[dduane.livejournal.com]

*You* plainly have blood sugar issues. :) P has that thing almost ready...I'll put the links up momentarily.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Send him my thanks.

And how can I have blood sugar issues? I just happen to be on a plain chocolate jag!

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Ok, check the next LJ entry...it's up there, with links.

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

Absolutely!

That's where we went wrong with the Transcendent Pig! He needed a sparkly infinity symbol on his butt!

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Or maybe the tail kinked into that shape. (snort)

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

You know, I really don't have too much time on my hands, I swear. But you'd never know it.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/27813516/

[dduane.livejournal.com]

It's hard to know what to say.

(hysterical laughter)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

That's exactly how I imagined the tail.

The rest, however, is deeply disturbing. By the way, is that streaky bacon on the rump?

[mneme]

Well, he's pretty neat.

Though (having only gotten around to reading Dillema recently) his final remarks seem very, um, Aslan-ish.

[dduane.livejournal.com]

I could see why. After all, he's not a tame pig. :)

[mrscosmopilite.livejournal.com]

I choked on my tea then- please give adequate warning before writing....well anything really
Mandy

[dduane.livejournal.com]

(chuckle) Maybe I should have somebody walk in front of me with a red flag?... :)

[kengr]

Oh, that attitude predates the modern Internet. It was prevalent on BBSes in the early 1980s.

If I had a nickel for every time I've had to explain some yahoo (in the Swiftean sense!) that "freedom of speech" is *not* the right to spout of on anything they choose on someone else's forum...

At least my fanmail is still sparse and the worst I get is "when will another chapter be done?". Then again, I'm just posting stories on my website with links on a couple of sites for the same "shared universe".

[dduane.livejournal.com]

I used to be on some of those BBSes, and yeah, it was there, but it seems in memory to have been far less widespread than it is now. Ah well.

[kengr]

The rreason it was less widespread is that most sysops would give that sort of user a "shape up or you are gone" lecture.

Very few ISPs pay any attention to how their users act unless it's sending viruses, pirating files, or sending *lots* of spam.

The result is that there's no penalty for bad manners. :-(

[posicat.livejournal.com]

It's not just an effect of the internet, it happens in cars, over the radio, any point where technology puts up a wall between us and the physical person. It's all to easy to disregard someone's feelings when you arn't there to see their reaction in person. There's an empathic connection between people (and cats) that comes from someone's expressions, body language, gestures, voice tone, that just doesn't quite translate into other forms of communication.

I've heard the term "internet balls" used to describe the ability for people to be rude in these situations.