The Ring

About the Book

About the Author

PIERS ANTHONY: Autobiographical Sketch I was born in Oxford, England, in AwGhost, 1934. My parents both have graduated from the University of Oxford, but I was slow from the outset. I spent time with relatives and a nanny while my parents went to do relief work in Spain during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-9. They were helping to feed the children rendered hungry by the devastation of the war. When that ended, my sister and I joined them in Spain. I left my native country at the age of four - and never returned. The new government of General Franco in Spain, evidently error-prone and suspicious of foreigners doing good works, arrested my father in 1940. They refused to admit that they had done so, making him in effect a "disappeared" person, but he was able to smuggle out a note. Then rather than admit error, they let him out on condition that he leave the country. World War II was then in progress, so instead of returning to England, we went to my father's country. In this manner I came to America at age six, on what I believe was the last ship out. Though I was too young to understand what was going on, in time I learned, and I retain, an abiding hostility to dictatorships.  My parents' marriage grew strained and finally foundered. Suffering the consequences of separation from my first country and my second country as well as the stress of a family going wrong, I showed an assortment of complications such as nervous tics of head and hands, bed-wetting, and inability to learn. It required three years and five schools to get me through first grade. I later gained intellectual ground, but lost physical ground. When I entered my ninth school in ninth grade I was at the proper level but not the proper size, being the smallest person, male or female, in my class. However, boarding school, and later college, became a better home for me than what I had had, and I managed to grow almost another foot by the time I got my BA in Writing at Goddard College, Vermont, in 1956. This was just as well, because I married a tall girl I met in college; I had to grow, literally, to meet the challenge.  I had the hodgepodge of employments typical of writers. Of about fifteen types of work I tried, ranging from aide at a mental hospital to technical writer at an electronics company, only one truly appealed: the least successful. But the dream remained. Finally in 1962 my wife agreed to go to work for a year, so that I could stay home and try to write fiction full time. The agreement was that if I did not manage to sell anything, I would give up the dream and focus on supporting my family. As it happened, I sold two stories, earning $160. But such success seemed inadequate to earn a living. So I became an English teacher, didn't like that either, and in 1966 retired again to writing. This time I wrote novels instead of stories, and with them I was able to earn a living. As with the rest of my life, progress was slow, but a decade later I got into light fantasy with the first of my ongoing Xanth series of novels, A Spell For Chameleon, and that proved to be the golden ring. My sales and income soared, and I became one of the most successful writers of the genre, with twenty-one New York Times paperback bestsellers in the space of a decade. This enabled me to send our two daughters to college, and drove the wolf quite far from our door. We now live on a tree farm, and would love to have a wolf by our door, but do have deer and wild cat and other wildlife. I am an environmentalist. My autobiography to age 50, Bio of An Ogre, is now in print; there may be a sequel, How Precious Was That While, in due course. At that time I had had 50 books published, now it is over 100.  But a writer does not live by frivolous fantasy alone. Today I am turning back to serious writing with direct comment on sexual abuse in Firefly, and on history in novels like Tatham Mound, which relates to the fate of American Indians, and my GEODYSSEY series, covering man's past three and a half million years to the present, and Volk, which shows love and death in Civil War Spain and World War II Germany. So I close the circle, returning in my writing to the realm I left as a child. My literary personality is splitting, with the fantasy paying my way in Caesar's coin, and the historical research addressing the god of this agnostic. There has always been a serious side to my writing, even in my fantasy, and my readers respond to it. I answer a hundred to two hundred letters a month, so remain in close touch with them. They tell me that I have taught many of them to read, by showing them that reading could be fun, and that I have saved the lives of some, by addressing concerns such as suicide. So I date my letters with my fantasy months, such as "AwGhost," "OctOgre," and "FeBlueberry," but take my readers as seriously as I take my writing. A number of them are now becoming collaborators, in a series of joint novels I am doing. In fact I am a workaholic, and I love my profession. I have, of course, an ongoing battle with critics, who choose to see only the frivolous level; it is doubtful whether my work will ever in my lifetime receive much critical applause, but I believe in its validity for the longer haul. So do my readers.   BOOKS BY  PIERS ANTHONY The Magic of Xanth A Spell for Chameleon  The Source of Magic  Castle Roogna  Centaur Aisle  Ogre, Ogre  Night Mare  Dragon On A Pedestal  Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn  Golem in the Gears  Vale of the Vole  Heaven Cent The Man from Mundania  Isle of View Question Quest The Color of her Panties Demons Don't Dream Harpy Thyme Geis of the Gargoyle Roc and a Hard Place Visual Guide to Xanth With Jody Lynn Nye  The Apprentice Adept Book One: Split Infinity Book Two: Blue Adept  Book Three: Juxtaposition Book Four: Out of Phaze Book Five: Robot Adept Book Six: Unicorn Point Book Seven: Phaze Doubt The Incarnations of Immortality Book One: On A Pale Horse  Book Two: Bearing an Hourglass Book Three: With a Tangled Skein Book Four: Wielding a Red Sword Book Five: Being a Green Mother Book Six: For Love of Evil Book Seven: And Eternity Short Story Collections Anthonology  Alien Plot The Mode Series Virtual Mode Fractal Mode Chaos Mode  Bio of a Space Tyrant Refugee Mercenary Politician Executive Statesman Tarot Series God of Tarot Vision of Tarot Faith of Tarot Tarot - omnibus of the three The Cluster Series Cluster Chaining the Lady Kirlian Quest Thousandstar Viscous Circle Of Man and Manta Omnivore Orn Ox Battle Circle Sos the Rope Var the Stick Neq the Sword Historical Novels Tatham Mound Volk Geodyssey Series Isle of Woman Shame of Man Hope of Earth Other Books Chthon Phthor Macroscope Prostho Plus Race Against Time Rings of Ice Triple Detente Steppe But What of Earth Hasan Mute Shade of the Tree Ghost Balook Total Recall Pornucopia Firefly Hard Sell Mercycle Killobyte Nonfiction Letters to Jenny Bio of an Ogre Collaborations The Ring with Robert E. Margroff The E.S.P. Worm with Robert E. Margroff Dragon's Gold with Robert E. Margroff Serpent's Silver with Robert E. Margroff Chimacra's Copper with Robert E. Margroff Orc's Opal with Robert E. Margroff Mouvar's Magic with Robert E. Margroff Pretender with Frances T. Hall Kiai! with Roberto Fuentes Mistress of Death with Roberto Fuentes Bamboo Bloodbath with Roberto Fuentes Ninja's Revenge with Roberto Fuentes Amazon Slaughter with Roberto Fuentes Dead Morn with Roberto Fuentes Uncollected Stars with Malzberg/Greenberg/Waugh - anthology Through the Ice with Robert Kornwise Caterpillar's Question with Philip Jose Farmer If I Pay Thee Not In Gold with Mercedes Lackey Tales from the Great Turtle with Richard Gilliam - anthology Spider Legs with Clifford Pickover The Willing Spirit with Alfred Tella The Secret of Spring with Jo Anne Taeusch (coming) Dream A Little Dream with Julie Brady (coming) The Gutbucket Quest with