What Is Piers Anthony Writing For?

Cover Art for On a Pale Horse

Cover Art for Piers Anthony’s novel On a Pale Horse

Piers Anthony has spent nearly SIX DECADES doing the one thing I want most to do – creating worlds and stories and characters that captivate readers.

I’ve had the pleasure of exploring a number of those worlds having read several books from the Xanth series, as well as each of the books in the Incarnations of Immortality series which includes my favorite novel by Anthony (one of my all-time favorite novels): On a Pale Horse.

Just reading the back cover intrigued me: “Shooting Death was a mistake, as Zane soon discovered. For the man who killed the Incarnation of Death was immediately forced to assume the vacant position! Thereafter, he must speed over the world, riding his pale horse, and ending the lives of others.”

Add to that premise (for a novel, it should be noted, that came out thirty years ago), a great voice, interesting (and at times diabolical) characters, and I was hooked.
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Art: A Knocking From Your Soul

Just a small version of The Buffalo Hunt by William Robinson Leigh

Photo of small section of the painting The Buffalo Hunt by William R. Leigh

“Art is when you hear a knocking from your soul —
and you answer.” ~Terri Guillemets

That’s so true. Especially when it comes to creating art.

Of course, we’re also given an opportunity to connect with a deep down part of ourselves when we experience the art others have created which reminds of a quote by Rodin: “The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.” Spending time with Family and with Friends does that to me. WRITING (which is me answering the knocking from my soul) does that to me. ART often does that to me.
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Dear Billy Collins

Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins

Just Two Books by Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins

If you had uttered the word “POETRY” when I was a boy, I’d have probably run, sort of the way I would have reacted to the words FIRE or SNAKE or to the phrase WANNA KISS (though, as with poetry, I later came around regarding one of those, as well).

English (now called Language Arts) was the ONLY school subject I have ever flat out hated.

Most of that was due to grammar exercises (which seemed, at the time, to be an ingenious method of torture invented by adults especially for teens). Part of my aversion, however, was also due to that other devious cruelty called poetry. These were the sort of topics that could make a somewhat hyper person (meaning me, of course) start banging his forehead against text books and desks and lockers and (if we had grammar and poetry the same day) off the dull-colored cinder block walls of the back hallway.

It sure seemed as though the poems to which we were introduced were secret coded messages and we were supposed to decipher them without any cool decoder rings or fancy machines. It was like translating some long-lost foreign language that looked remotely familiar, sure, but made no sense at all.

Somehow, I managed to get through most of my undergraduate years avoiding anything that might have even been mistaken for an English class.

Eventually, however, I ran out of options. I was twenty-six. And my life changed forever.
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Remember Every Scar

Got Pummeled Here

The Hurt Wall

“A little talent is good to have if you want to be a writer,
but the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.” ~ Stephen King

We all have scars: some physical, some mental, some emotional. Some are deep and dark, others superficial, others in between, but most leave their mark in some way on the person we become (it’s how we respond to the events that caused those scars that often defines us).

I look at my knees and my shins and I know full well that I don’t remember every scar, not all the physical ones anyway (the others tend to be easier to remember, or harder to forget).

There was that one summer afternoon and the banana seat bike at my aunt’s house with its shiny chrome fenders, the bike I tried to hurdle (whatever might have inspired such an act is a mystery). The front fender turned bloody pretty fast and somehow that scar remains on my left shin.

There was the time when I was five or six and I plucked the discarded razor blade (which I was specifically told to stay away from because it was sharp, because it could hurt me) the same razor that had been hidden in a folded Kleenex and stuffed at the bottom of the trash, the razor I tested on my index finger.

Still got that scar to remind me of my youthful curiosity (meaning my flat out stupidity, that is).

I spent a lot of time on the ground as a boy (sometimes playing with my plastic troops and my hot wheels, sure, but most often the result of some outside force acting upon my body – you know, like gravity, or bigger stronger older boys).

I never really thought about it until today, but remembering scars isn’t always bad. Sometimes it can be a lot of fun. For one thing, it’s a chance to give my sister a hard time. And when is that not fun?!? Like now, for example, as I remember the events that led to my propensity for climbing, for being UP. Those events are finding their way into my writing. So, you could say, they’re scars well spent.

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