Blood sugar issues and The Door into Fire

[dianeduane]

So there we were in Nürnberg, aka Nuremberg, home of the polymath who drew hares and hands (does he make anybody else think of Alan Rickman in that first image, or is it just me?) and of my favorite shoemaker-poet-philosopher-opera star, and I was cussing out my handy.

Excuse me: my mobile/cellphone/smartphone, for you English-speakers. A strange confluence of business and private stuff (Peter's 55th birthday, aka "The Day Before The Rapture Didn't Happen, AGAIN") had brought us to Germany for a few days. Since we seem to keep winding up there, I'd just bought a local cellphone SIM so I wouldn't keep getting smacked by utterly extortionate data roaming charges by my home provider every time I turned on Google Maps to find my way around. For reasons best known to itself, the new Fonic SIM, though correctly authorized in all possible ways, was refusing to receive or transmit data: thus causing the cussing. And then while flailing around trying any old thing to change the parameters of the problem, mostly by fiddling with the phone's network settings, I did something or other to it -- the Powers that Be only know what -- and data suddenly started to flow.  There was general rejoicing, and over the next few minutes I checked the email, and then loaded  Tweetdeck. And what's the first thing I find a tweet pointing to in the "mentions" column after several days away from the @ end of things?  This.

Jo is a peer and colleague and a thoughtful reader, and her assessment gave me the chuckles. Partly because parts of what she'd written seemed to me to be hilariously right on the money, and partly because other aspects of it were amusing for, well, some of the wrong reasons. See below. But let me first thank Jo for the really nice things she had to say about the book (and also the positive comments from the other folks who responded to the posting). However, one note in passing:  insulin shock is what you get when there isn't enough sweet stuff in the bloodstream. Jo was most likely thinking of  hyperglycemia. (I leave as an exercise for the reader the issue of what writers one should read to produce insulin shock.)

The burden of Jo's posting, though, is that The Door into Fire worked for her some time back, but doesn't seem to work now. She says that after a recent reread, she's found it just too sweet, and she doesn't care to reread the sequels. (BTW: the timing of Jo' s initial reading of Fire could be even earlier than she thought, as there was a Methuen/Magnet UK edition in 1981, featuring a truly goofy, inappropriate and anatomically challenged cover -- one which had also been used on a book by Andy Offutt a couple of years previously. See the second image in the "graphics" area of Fire's publication info page for the wonderful awfulness of this cover, rivaled only by that of the US paperback first edition.)

 While any writer is naturally going to be disappointed to hear that someone doesn't want to read a given work of theirs any more, it's more useful to consider the whys and wherefores than to waste time bewailing the circumstances or complaining that the reader is interrogating the text incorrectly. (Immediate image: Third-degree room with blazing Luxo Sr. lights pointing at a plain wooden chair. Copy of TDIF strapped into chair, struggling futilely against its bonds. Shadowy figure beyond the lights growling, "We have ways of making you talk." TDIF glares into the light with steely composure. "You're wasting your time," it says in Pierce Brosnan's voice.  "You'll never break my contextual integrity -- " ...See, this comes of all that '80s animation writing. Never mind....)

A good place to start is to admit where the complaining reader is plainly right. TDIF is a first novel, and it'd be useless to deny that there are ... infelicities. While tidying up the text for the ebook edition of Fire, I kept running into bits of attempted prose that repeatedly left me thinking migod you didn't ort to write a sentence like that molesworth or variants on that theme. Finally I gave up and tweaked some things, because I simply couldn't bear the thought of leaving them the way they had been -- and after thirty years and more than fifty novels' worth of progress as a writer, I don't think anyone would blame me. However, 98% of the material was left as it was when the book was last in "physical" press in the US, as I thought that people who sought it out in ebook form would be wanting something that closely matched the book they'd originally read. Was I occasionally appalled enough to wish I could rewrite the whole thing, or to wish I'd been a way better writer thirty years ago? Naturally. Would attempting any kind of serious rewrite have been a smart idea? I really doubt it. From somewhere in James Blish's Spock Must Die I can hear seriously-good-SF-critic!Jim saying, in Spock's character and voice, "The true scholar prizes all drafts, early and late."  So Fire gets to stay pretty much as it was.

(BTW, I think the piece of verse that set Jo's teeth on edge is supposed to be sort of clunky due to originally being a jumprope rhyme. If it doesn't say as much in the original TDIF, I should go in there and amend the citation. [I know a similar rhyme is so denoted in TDISunset.] In the meantime, it's always possible the rest of the poetry in the book really isn't worth anything. Poetry is so tough to judge at the best of times, and possibly toughest when on the execution end. So this is an issue probably better left to the readership, though I'd also suggest that Jo's opinion, after publishing a bunch of poetry collections, is to be taken seriously.)

The issue of liking a book once upon a time and not liking it as much, or the same way, later on, is complex from both the reader's and the reader/writer's side. Both sorts of viewpoint are likely to change without warning due to satiety, boredom, or the mere passage of time and the long slow shift of preferences that can sneak up on you while you're not looking. And Jo wouldn't be the only one to have this going on. Eddison, for example: I don't read him the same way now that I did ten years ago, or twenty. Or C. S. Lewis. Or Heinlein. Maybe it'd be a poor reader whose tastes didn't shift at least somewhat with his or her own increasing accomplishments as reader and (in Jo's case) writer; and this being the case, a book that worked for you ten years ago just may not cut the mustard now. (Though routinely I'll try a book again after a few more years, on the off chance that something was going on with me that I was missing.) So as regards this issue, Jo's entirely off the hook as far as I'm concerned.

It probably wouldn't do any harm, though, to do a little light writer-side analysis as regards the sweetness issue: the kind one of my psych instructors in nursing school suggested was useful when trying to get a lead on a patient's motivations. You simply ask yourself "How do you raise a person so that they come out like this?" -- and then see if anything in their past maps onto the educated guess, or vice versa. One fragment of the (usually complex) answer revealed by this technique may be useful in finding some other fragment of it: the way the patterns on a few jigsaw-puzzle pieces can help you intuit the shape of a missing one and search for it in the pile of pieces yet to solve.

So the answer to "How do you raise a writer so she grows up to write The Door into Fire?" might look something like this:

Start with a NY suburbs kid, routinely the skinny, booky, bullied one, with very few exceptions living a desperately banal suburban life -- one nonetheless rich with Tolkien and Norton and Heinlein and the other late-50s-early-60s greats. Into this life, between ages ten and sixteen, drop both the profound grief associated with the loss of a beloved parent, and another significant personal trauma which we'll deal with briefly later.  Both these events leave the kid with a sense that in various important aspects -- about which apparently nothing can be done -- the world really, profoundly sucks. Then add to this initial clinical picture the fact that the kid's been writing fanfic (first Tolkien, then Trek) for most of her life, not knowing that's what it was or would come to be called.

You could make a case -- says the analyst in me -- that such a developmental history could in later life very well produce a writer with a fondness for constructing utopias, or at the very least worlds where people were kinder and nicer to each other, and things worked better than in the present one.

This kid went to college on a NY State Science and Nursing Scholarship with dreams of becoming a professional astronomer. These dreams foundered abruptly when the dreamer discovered that she couldn't handle calculus and other necessary higher math. She then promptly used the other half of her scholarship to go to nursing school at a gigantic state hospital, where along with the anatomy and physiology, medical-surgical nursing, public health nursing and pediatrics, she discovered psychiatric nursing.

The psych nursing, strongly based as it is in the understanding of human motivation, became her first great strictly intellectual love. But as this process went forward and developed, the writer-in potentia found herself dealing with many chronically mentally unwell people, many seriously physically old and sick people who had no hope of ever becoming well, and a whole heap of corpses. It's one thing to see dead people at a distance. It's another thing entirely to have them repeatedly die in front of you, or very close by. (The thing about people being more likely to die at 4 AM? It's true.) It's yet another matter to be the one who washes these people postmortem and wraps them up,  sometimes two or three times in a shift, and turns them over to their relatives... or worse, hands them over to the guy who takes them away for burial in the hospital's Potter's Field because the former patient's relatives dumped them here after diagnoses of dementia, and don't give a shit what happens to them now.  All the above can seriously color your outlook, driving deeper the sense that Life Often Really Sucks (especially the Death part of it) and it would be nice if there was somewhere it didn't suck, or at least not so much.

So, to the earlier picture of a writer with a tendency toward the construction of utopias, we can here safely add the suggestion that pretty serious overexposure to death/entropy relatively early on is going to mean that these themes too start turning up and working themselves out in the writer's work, in a relatively unaccepting mode. Nothing so crude or simplistic as denial... but a repeated suggestion that mortality in these other worlds can sometimes be hornswoggled, or that entropy can sometimes be fought to a standstill. Fantasy, of course, and understood to be such. But personally satisfying.

During this period, the writer's Tolkien fanfic gradually veered into a different direction. A new universe got  established, a lot of backstory got laid down, and some of it crystallized out into a single plotline that eventually started becoming The Door into Fire. This work continued through the time the writer graduated nursing school, completed her certification exams and became an R.N., and went to work at one of the best psychiatric clinics in the US (now a part of NYU/Cornell Medical Center). With her work's increased focus on human interaction and motivation (surprise, surprise), these themes also started working their way through into her writing... while local circumstances continued  to reinforce the sense that, Death aside, a lot of the behaviors of living people weren't really very nice either, and if one couldn't significantly offset this trend in one universe, it'd be nice to offset it in another.

After that, all that needs to happen is for the subject to meet people who actually make a living as writers (this concept had never previously occurred to her in terms of her own work, which tells you exactly what an innocent we've been dealing with here). She writes her first novel, with all the influences described above operating at full. The book goes off to Dell Books, and it's bought two weeks later.

...Enough of case-study mode. And yes, of course this is all a posteriori stuff, especially since I've been drawing the conclusions as well as describing their precursors. But the reasoning still holds up, and more than adequately suggests reasons/motivations for the tone and mood of The Door into Fire. An undeniably sweet-natured book, especially by this decade's standards for heroic fantasy. Positively utopian: seriously contaminated, from the present-day writer's point of view, by visions of a world where some people, as regards sexual orientation and preference, get a built-in fair shake unavailable in our reality -- a world born of the writer's never-answered question to her long-lost mom after a bedtime story, many years previously: "Why can't the prince rescue the prince?"

So that's  all the apologia Fire is going to get. But, being the first of three books, it doesn't stand alone... which itself opens up opportunities. If you're a writer, sooner or later you find yourself looking over your early work and saying to yourself,  "Wow, did I ever miss some stuff there." If you're writing a series, you often enough have a chance to take another run at issues that got scamped the first time out, or the second: or to put a little more strain on your core assumptions and see how they hold up. Even utopias can do with some stress-testing.

In a reply to one comment to her posting, Jo mentions her intention not to go on to reread The Door into Shadow, apparently because the management of a core character's problem-resolution is too reminiscent of "hippy-psychology" and would make the reread more difficult for her, not less. This is something I've occasionally run across before, so let me touch on it lightly before finishing up.

Psych tends to get  popularized with great abandon -- sometimes, I suspect, to make it less scary. So I'm used to watching as terms and concepts which my psych teachers and colleagues and I previously used very precisely are assumed into popular culture and routinely stripped of all but their most superficial meanings and implications. This tendency is annoying, especially as it backwardly devalues earlier, more exact usages in cases where the reader isn't aware of them: but there's not much you can do about it.

When Shadow comes up for discussion, some people have occasionally assumed that the self- and other-redemptive arcs in it are an outgrowth of what Jo describes as the open-yourself-up-and-get-over-it school of pop psych.  All I can say here is that there's a certain amount of "write what you know" going on. During my professional practice I assisted or mediated in a number of such prolonged therapy sequences, and a surprising percentage of them were successful. (It irks me a little at this end of time that the new and admittedly often-effective antidepressive and psychotropic drugs are now routinely, maybe too routinely, considered the first line of action for the troubled patient, with one-to-one and group therapies now being casually and a little scornfully dismissed as "talking therapies".  Sometimes words work at least as well as drugs; sometimes way better.)

Anyway, one of the above cases was my own. I can assure readers concerned about the possible philosophical or psychological underpinnings of the core character-business in Shadow that it's no abstract plot construction, but a prose restatement-and-farewell to childhood issues in my own past life. Lots of writers work out personal stuff in prose, so I don't think I have to spell out the details here: Shadow's readers will almost certainly figure it all out if they have the inclination. I'm sure there may be people for whom the resolution in question isn't edgy, bloody or retributive enough. The only possible response to such folks is: Tough. Go get your own. Mine worked for me.

...Meanwhile, the scheduling of further stress-testing of this particular universe is still up in the air. All I can do at this end is promise to keep the Middle Kingdoms true to themselves, without rendering the readership unduly hyperglycemic. But now, as with Fire, one way or another I'll be writing the book that's in me to write, as well as I can at the time. And whether it'll stand up to rereading thirty years later, I'm sure the readership will let me know.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Despite the strong general advice against writers responding to reviews (which I generally support), I find your discussion of the history of this book to be very interesting. Thank you!

[dduane.livejournal.com]

:) I take your point. Normally I don't. But if the review's thoughtful and I can add something useful, I sometimes do. (Though normally no sooner than 48 hours after the fact. Just to be sure...)

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

When I went back and edited my first novel, a mere ten years after the fact, for publication...boy howdy. I wanted to build a time machine, find my younger self, and beat her about the head and shoulders while yelling "You cannot plug a plot hole with adjectives!" Nice to see that somebody else has had that experience! (Mind you, if they want another version in twenty years, I will probably do that exact same thing to both younger incarnations...)

And then again there were some bits where I went "Dude. I got that bit almost exactly right. Go younger self!"

So I am both desperately proud of it and horribly embarrassed by it. But I think that's probably normal for first novels.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Oh. I know that. I don't write novels, I write computer programs, but most people with whom I've worked have heard me cry "Who wrote this rubbish?" (or sometimes a stronger word is used), the answer of course being 'me'. But it was a 'me' several years ago who knew less and had less skill (I'm very glad that after 30+ years in the industry I'm still learning skills and still have more to learn).

I think it's true of almost everyone creative I know. Writers, artists, programmers, sound engineers, musicians -- oh, especially musicians. Musicians complain about their mistakes five minutes after writing or playing it, never mind years. Heck, I bet the Goddess said it pretty soon after She let Entropy in as well...

And in my book that's a good thing, that we can do better than we did before and recognise it.

[dogmatix-san.livejournal.com]

I remember enjoying your Young Wizard books back when I was a kid, and I recently found them in audio book format (which I listen to while I draw), and I was happily surprised to find that I liked them even more now than I did then. I also fully intend to read the rest of the series, since I think I've only read three of them (probably all the library had - I was a voracious bookworm).

And yeah, TDIF is sweet, but I still like it, and it can be a nice balance to some of the too-dark fantasy books floating around today.

I know exactly what you mean about looking back at earlier work. *wry* At the same time, you have to move through the earlier work to get where you are today, so it's for a good cause. *grin*

[the-10thdoctor.livejournal.com]

An undeniably sweet-natured book, especially by this decade's standards for heroic fantasy. Positively utopian: seriously contaminated, from the present-day writer's point of view, by visions of a world where some people, as regards sexual orientation and preference, get a built-in fair shake unavailable in our reality -- a world born of the writer's never-answered question to her long-lost mom after a bedtime story, many years previously: "Why can't the prince rescue the prince?"

I love this so much, being a princess who prefers to rescue princesses myself. I remember finding the books as a teenager and thinking how real everyone in the books seemed. No stereotypes, no saccharine "high fantasy" speech, just solid characters.

Thank you so much for creating them!

Shadow's readers will almost certainly figure it all out if they have the inclination. I'm sure there may be people for whom the resolution in question isn't edgy, bloody or retributive enough. The only possible response to such folks is: Tough. Go get your own. Mine worked for me.

You too, huh? :(

I can kinda get this, too, I think. When I was a walking open wound I wanted nothing more than to hop a plane to CA, find the bastard and toss him down a flight of stairs. Then I got therapy. LOTS of therapy. And now I feel like - it happened, yes I lost, I hurt, but I healed, and I think things happened the way they needed to, I wouldn't be who I am now without that experience (cliche, but true) and the things he did - well, they caught up with him in other ways. He created his own Hell, so I don't need to send him there myself.

[miladygrey.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to say, love your icon. I'm no longer a little girl, but my aspirations towards Timelord are still in full swing. *grins*

[demarafis]

For me, it was "Why couldn't the princess escape on her own? Why does she HAVE to wait to be rescued?"

There was also plenty of "Why do I have to be a princess? I want to be a WIZARD!"

Unsurprisingly, Robin McKinley and DD are some of my favourite YA fantasy authors =)

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

There can be a lot of truth in sweetness.

Strangely, this is something people have trouble believing. Because only the believing in the hard and ugly stuff feels more admirable by the culture's standards, I suppose.

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

Some people don't walk away from Omelas.
They savor what's happening there and call themselves "deep." :P

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Because the only depth in life is found in sorrow and cynicism, apparently. :,

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Nice ref, and quite true.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that the bit of poetry under discussion is specifically called out as a children's rhyme -- it's one of the chapter-opening pieces IIRC, and all of those are identified. And it certainly reads like something out of children's lore; it wouldn't be out of place in that world's version of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts (http://www.amazon.com/Greasy-Grimy-Gopher-Guts-Storytelling/dp/0874834449).

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

Hi, Diane. You won't remember me, of course, but I met you in person one year when Judy Gerjouy got me working the door at Gaylaxicon and you and your husband spent a good deal of time in the entrance to the con telling hysterical cat stories. but still, I always feel it's nicer to introduce oneself before commenting. Anyway...

I loved this series for many years, and probably still do. But I find Jo Walton's analysis surprising because I never, ever saw the books as "Sweet". I saw them as pretty damn dark and scary, though with positive endings. Of course, of them all, I was most drawn to/appalled by the second.

Mind you, in the last five years I haven't tried to re-read them because I'm afraid they won't resound for me anymore, as I'm older. And no longer attached to the gentleman who introduced me to them (who wanted desperately, of course, to be some kind of combination of Herewiss and Freelorn, which will probably bring a rueful chuckle from you.)

Still, I suspect Shadow still has power for me, in a way that a lot of writing of the same time/ilk does not.

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I suspect that anything that contains indisputably happy endings for a majority of the characters is "too sweet" by the standards of today's audience.

There is a strong tendency in SF/F fandom today to value the grimdark. No character can be allowed to be wholly or even mostly noble; no one ever simply processes and gets over a trauma. (Of course, no one is allowed to find actual satisfaction in revenge either; the avenger simply *has* to fall into despondency on realizing they no longer have a reason for living.)

[estara.livejournal.com]

I find it helps when I filter the books I read by checking on what sort of authors wrote them ^^ - I trust various authors to lead me through the dark parts and still have a positive solution for the characters I care for. And by buying their books I try to ensure they have the opportunity to write more of that.

Non-grimdark authors for my money:

Sharon Lee
Sherwood Smith
Michelle Sagara West
Diane Duane (but of course)
Katharine Eliska Kimbriel
Robin McKinley
Martha Wells
P.C. Hodgell (although that is one series where the ending hasn't happened yet. Still the heroine keeps surviving with humour and determination and a way of creating bonds with others, which is amazing considering the role she has to play in the destiny of her people)

~ there probably are male ones, as well, but I have found with increasing age I prefer well written woman characters or protagonists, and I find that more often in books by women.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I too have noted this, and find it tiresome to have piles of people deciding that because someone seems good, they cannot possibly be as good as they seem. They keep picking at the edges, hoping that they'll be able to find one, rip it off, and reveal... what? A clockwork god, or a scheming villain.

Since, at some level, you find what you seek, I don't like what that implies about what our culture is encouraging. :,

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

Quite honestly, I find that Real Life produces enough insulin shock as it is -- sometimes an emergency jolt of exogenous sweetness is just what a person needs to restore a little balance..

[estara.livejournal.com]

this!

[lodo-bear.livejournal.com]

While we're on the subject of insulin shock, have a corgi!

(http://vertebrateanimals.edublogs.org/2011/01/14/dogs-3/)

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's sweetness personified, all right!

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I appreciate the better world you built for us all.

[vr-trakowski.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I've got all three of the worst covers! *cheers*

I read Ms. Walton's post and was puzzled; I like the poetry. But then I go around muttering "strike the bell and bide the danger" to myself sometimes. Anyway, one of the things I realized recently is that TDIF is always fresh to me; unlike much sf/f from the same decade, it hasn't aged, doesn't feel like it belongs to a past era.

And the sweetness--I call it hope--is one of the reasons I re-read it.

[estara.livejournal.com]

Aww, Nuremberg is just one and half hours by train from where I live... If you ever do a get together down here for German fans (I'm sure you didn't want to meet me the day after your husband's 55th birthday *grin*), do tell!

I hope you had some good weather!

Thanks for pointing out that "handy" bit of Denglish which I try to teach my students to avoid ^^.

Re: Positive Utopias - I read books to have a positive experience that encourages me and - if I sympathize strongly with the protagonist/s - can be cathartic for my mood. And just to take a break from real life, when it depresses me (only works if the problem in rl is not too worrysome, otherwise I can't fall into the book). I don't see this as problematic, actually (which of course means that books celebrating Dystopias or ending with the world being ever bleaker for the protagonist until he despairs are not books I would read voluntarily).

I am so sorry that the very dark core of Segnbora's story was not just an invention.

[snakey.livejournal.com]

The fact that the Door books had a world in which it was *normal* to be queer and poly was MASSIVE to me in my teens, and is still something that I honestly can't say I've seen in many SF/F (or other) books. I like Jo Walton and her work, but "hippy communes" be damned - for some of us it's a glimpse of a world where we're not treated as freaks. :S

(I'd wonder now, as well, how trans people fit into that world.)

[undauntra.livejournal.com]

This.

You can call it "seriously contaminated" if you choose, but it's the sort of "contamination" that makes a positive difference in real people's lives.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

It threw tween-me for a serious loop, because I couldn't reconcile a divine preference for same-gender relations with biology that had (as far as I could tell) two genders that engaged in sexual reproduction. As an ideal, perhaps, that only some sapient beings could approach/achieve; but (again, as I recall it being presented) a template for all life? How could that possibly work? Why wasn't everything She created single-gendered and parthenogenetic, then?

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

I hate the word "queer". It implies that relationships between someone else who is the same gender as you is somehow strange. Or to put not too fine a point upon it, wrong. There's nothing wrong with falling in love with whoever you fall in love with. Love is love.

I like what Diane did in the Middle Kingdom stories, because she threw the entire concept of "straight" or "gay" or whatever out of the window. Herewiss and Freelorn are in love because they love each other. It doesn't even matter that they're both men, because they love each other. Their love is what drives the story.

"Gay" is an artificial societal construct. You don't have to be "gay" if you're a man and fall in love with another man, or if you're a woman and fall in love with another woman. If you're a woman and fall in love with a man, you're not betraying some kind of pact in society--you just care about someone else especially hard.

The fact that the main couple at the heart of the Middle Kingdom stories are a couple of men isn't even relevant to the stories themselves. It's the love that's important, not the configuration of the protagonists' gonads. Love is more important than sex.

(This is at least part of why I want to see Diane write a Doctor Who story. I really like the way that Doctor Who has been developing in recent years, and i think she would write a story that would not only do Doctor Who itself justice, but also do Diane Duane's outlook on life just as much justice.)

Sorry, Diane, for talking about you as if you weren't actually present to take part in this conversation. I expressed them badly, but these points came to my mind while I was thinking over the last few days.

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

That was interesting and made me think. Looking at stories on the axis of Utopia or not, it seems to me that in periods when life seems to suck particularly, books that are well along that axis away from Utopia are ones I can't read. I am sure I have used stories as a break from real life, in which case something partly Utopian can be balm to a troubled mind. Perhaps I'll re-read this when it seems like I need it.

Also, it seems to me that most writers must have a good practical understanding of psychology, as a result of following their craft. What do you think?

[lauowolf.livejournal.com]

completely off topic, and just to help out your day, there is this:
http://allcreatures.tumblr.com/post/11860434394/a-22-month-old-female-scaredy-cat-tiger-appeared
because who doesn't need a adolescent tiger in their head once in a while.

[batyatoon]

I've been an avid reader of whatever feminist fantasy I could find since I was introduced to the Sword & Sorceress anthologies at I think roughly the age of ten. I've read I don't even know how many rape-and-revenge stories; I think Segnbora's may have been the first rape-and-redemption story I ever encountered.

That's hardly the only thing I love about the series, or the only first I got out of it, but I felt it worth mentioning.

Too sweet? I'll take it. I can always use a glimpse of a world where people are decent to each other now and again.

[finnyb.livejournal.com]

Having only just encountered the series this year (and promptly bought all three as .epubs...though I'm thinking I'll be replacing them with the omnibus edition), I can only say that the world those characters live in is one I very much like and enjoy visiting, often.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

I absolutely get the desire, "naive" though it may be, to create better fairer worlds because this one sucks so much. My own efforts in that direction tend to run afoul of the problems that different people want different things out of their escapes... and also, that as soon as you include people (as in players/audience), they inevitably bring some of the "sucky" things with them, because People (alas) are People. No matter where you go, there you are. The act of visiting Eden, or Utopia, corrupts it with our fallible imperfect humanity.

Those early covers

[pumpkin-soup.livejournal.com]

I had to stop reading this post midway because i had to comment and say that I AM the proud owner of BOTH the ridiculous cover editions! and they make me laugh every time i bring one out for the re-read. it's magical!

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I have a copy with that second cover! And one with the third, which I think is my favourite, the colours are so vibrant that I can believe it's Sunspark.

I love the philosophy in the books. Yes, it's a 'better' world than this, but it's the sort of world in which I want to believe. I also love that a fair bit of that weltanschauung gets into your other books, especially the Young Wizards of course but also into the Star Trek ones (and yes, parts of it make me cry because it's so beautiful, like the scene on the observation deck in The Wounded Sky which gets me every time).

I admit that I read (and watch movies) for 'escapism'. I don't want 'reality' books any more than 'reality' TV, I can get enough of that just be watching or reading the news, I want something which tells me that somewhere, somewhen, people can be better than they often seem to be here, where events can have a happy ending (or at least a meaningful one, your books aren't short of the concept of sacrifice). And I want characters with whom I would want to be friends in Real Life(tm). I get that from your books, and from some other authors, whereas from some others I get only characters I dislike and events which depress me (those are authors I'll try a few times and then give up).

Too saccharine? May well be, for some people. I like sugar in my tea, I don't like it unsweetened, some people feel the opposite. In my opinion two sugars is about right, and TDIF feels about that. But tastes do change over time and with experience and we don't all like the same thing (I can't stand coffee, many people like it, and neither of us understands the other but hopefully we can agree to celebrate the differences).

"I'll be writing the book that's in me to write, as well as I can at the time."

In my opinion that's all anyone can ask or do. And shortly after that, I hope, I'll be reading it. Waiting is...

[mitchy.livejournal.com]

I haven't read "The Door Into Fire", so I can't comment on the review. However, I want to pick up the point you make about wanting there being a world somewhere where things don't suck. Your later Young Wizard books haven't flinched from making difficult plot choices - I'm thinking of Wizard's Dilemma in particular here - and I'm wondering what made you chose the fate you did for Nita's Mum? Because that's the one book I can't go back to because, dammit, I wanted her to win. Someone has to, somewhere, and if I can't get it in real life, then I want it in my fiction. Was that decision motivated by the needs of the story or a desire not to raise false hope for young people going through that situation or something else? If you'd written that book earlier in your career, would you have written it that way?

[dduane.livejournal.com]

As regards the most important plot point, that book would be the same if I'd written it in the 80s, 90s or 00s, because that's my Mom's story.

[grayhoss.livejournal.com]

Hi Diane,
Will here. I wanted to comment. The Door books helped me -profoundly- as a disabled gay teen coming to terms with my own abuse

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<until [...] shame'..as>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

Hi Diane,
Will here. I wanted to comment. The Door books helped me -profoundly- as a disabled gay teen coming to terms with my own abuse <Until then, I simply thought of the incidents as 'my shame'..as thats what the priest at the local church told me when I tried to ask for help during confession> Herewiss and Freelorn's story taught me that the physical side of love wasn't always frightening and horrible, and Segnbora's taught me that I didn't 'ask for' or 'deserve' what my abusers did to me all those years. That was profound in a time and a culture when a large congregation were happy to claim a birth defect as a divine punishment on my divorcee Mom and that the molestation was a similar punishment on myself for not being 'natural' <aka heterosexual>. I literally turned from reading 'Final Exit' to your Tales of the Five. That hope for a better world, however Utopian kept me going. two decades later I'm happy, at peace and in love with someone I never would have believed I deserved the love of, growing up.
I'll always be grateful to you for those books. They taught me to hope, and to dream.

Thank you.
Will