Piers Anthony, his "Author's Notes," and a Sad Story
Reposted from my social media:
In my early teens, I read a lot of Piers Anthony. For fantasy fans of my age group, most of us did. A Spell for Chameleon was the first "adult" novel I ever read, and I would have been 11 or so at the time. Even by the time I outgrew his novels a few years later, though, I retained a lingering affection for the "Author's Notes" that would conclude most of his books. They were, for the most part, honest and chatty commentaries on Anthony's own life, and I enjoyed them.
Sometimes, since he mostly just discussed his life in these Author's Notes, he would occasionally mention his daughters. The oldest, Penny, was about a decade older than me. I then forgot all about Piers Anthony and his books for 20-some years, until very recently, when I was browsing through his biography, I saw that his daughter Penny had died in 2009 from complications from skin cancer. Anthony himself remained alive and well, which means that he had significantly outlived his oldest child. She was only 41.
Why this should strike me as hard as it did, I'm not sure. Some of it, I suppose, is that when Anthony had written those Author's Notes, his daughters were still only teenagers -- my age then, maybe a little older. But then I saw that Anthony had been keeping a monthy/bimonthly newsletter since the 1997. So I turned to his entry for the month she died, and it was one of the saddest thing I've read in a very long time:
In my early teens, I read a lot of Piers Anthony. For fantasy fans of my age group, most of us did. A Spell for Chameleon was the first "adult" novel I ever read, and I would have been 11 or so at the time. Even by the time I outgrew his novels a few years later, though, I retained a lingering affection for the "Author's Notes" that would conclude most of his books. They were, for the most part, honest and chatty commentaries on Anthony's own life, and I enjoyed them.
Sometimes, since he mostly just discussed his life in these Author's Notes, he would occasionally mention his daughters. The oldest, Penny, was about a decade older than me. I then forgot all about Piers Anthony and his books for 20-some years, until very recently, when I was browsing through his biography, I saw that his daughter Penny had died in 2009 from complications from skin cancer. Anthony himself remained alive and well, which means that he had significantly outlived his oldest child. She was only 41.
Why this should strike me as hard as it did, I'm not sure. Some of it, I suppose, is that when Anthony had written those Author's Notes, his daughters were still only teenagers -- my age then, maybe a little older. But then I saw that Anthony had been keeping a monthy/bimonthly newsletter since the 1997. So I turned to his entry for the month she died, and it was one of the saddest thing I've read in a very long time:
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