JOURNAL ENTRY #22

August 1, 2008

I just finished my last pass through The Devil's Eye. It's probably the seventh or eighth time I've gone through it, and if you're wondering why I can't get it right the first time, I can only hope you figure it out and let me know. Somebody said once that this sort of thing is the reason they lock the Louvre at night. I have never bought into Heinlein's injunction that you rewrite only at an editor's insistence. Although I suspect he wasn't talking about the number of passes through a manuscript, but about doing a rewrite after the submission.

The Devil's Eye will be the fourth outing for Chase and Alex. The plot line: Alex's home world, Rimway, is near the edge of the galaxy. But there's another human world, Salud Afar, 30,000 light years further out. It's still, of course, part of the Milky Way. But at that range, its skies are dark, except for a couple of planets, a single star that's even more distant, and the haze that is the galactic rim.

Vicki Greene is an eminent writer of horror novels, immensely popular, and a dazzling speaker at conventions and other events. She is based on Rimway. Chase and Alex are just returning from touring Atlantis with friends, when a message comes in from Greene: "Alex," she says, "God help me, they're all dead."

Neither Alex nor Chase has had any previous connection with her. They are several days away, and by the time they return home, they discover that Greene has undergone a mind wipe. Her memory is gone. Doctors have given her a new identity. She was suffering, one of them tells Alex. "We didn't want to do the procedure, but there seemed no alternative."

"She was suffering from what?"

"Emotional distress. >From something she knew. Or had imagined."

She has left an enormous amount of money for Alex, with no explanation and no additional information. Her editor explains that she had been vacationing on Salud Afar. Is there anything special about Salud Afar? "It's an ideal world for a horror writer," says the editor. "Lots of strange places. An unquiet grave. A time lab abandoned centuries before, but that may still be home to time travelers. A phantom aircraft." And a lot more. An ideal spot for her. But a quick investigation indicates that no one knows of any unusual incidents in which she was involved, either on Rimway or Salud Afar. And certainly nobody's dead.

Yet her family, her editor, her doctors, are all mystified. Greene had everything to live for. She was still young. The public loved her. She had never been known to suffer from mental or emotional problems. What then has happened? Ultimately, in their efforts to learn the truth, Chase and Alex will visit Salud Afar, and will also find themselves at ground zero as Confederates and Mutes face off again.

I've started =Bleak House=. It's been a good many years since I've read a Dickens novel, and I'd forgotten how effective he can be. I have the complete Oxford set. I've read some of the essays and short fiction, but am embarrassed to admit that my last novel was =Our Mutual Friend=, back when I was in the Navy. Once again, we're reminded how quickly the years pass.

And a book for leisure moments: =It Seemed Like a Good Idea=, edited by William R. Forstchen and Bill Fawcett. The subtitle is: A Compendium of Great Historical Fiascoes. Next time you feel confident about putting your life or your future in the hands of a general, a president, or whomever, take a look at this one and get your head down. Included are roughly fifty prize cases of military, political, and social blunders, botched jobs, and fumbles.

A good many people have inquired whether =Cauldron= is indeed the last Academy novel. In each case, I provided a firm response. I said I didn't know. (Okay, before anybody points the finger at me, I know the line is lifted from Mark Twain.) I started my career determined to do no sequels. I've no idea why. Eventually, I discovered I missed some of the characters. And that's not an exaggeration. You spend a lot of time inside someone's head, and you can't help feeling an attraction after a while. So I'll confess that, at the moment, anything's possible. I've even thought about doing a couple of prequels. Hutch in her twenties.

On another subject, a number of readers have offered plot ideas. I want to say here that I appreciate the effort. And some of the ideas have been pretty good. Pretty good to the extent that they would be usable. Unfortunately, I can't touch them. For one thing, you have to live with an idea, nurse it along, before you can really write a decent novel about it. (This is even true where a critical aspect comes from, say, a physicist.) More important, when a suggestion comes from someone I don't know, I can't be sure of the source. Is it original? Is it something the individual read long ago and possibly forgot? The truth is that I'm seldom really sure in my own case about the source of ideas. Sometimes you pick up a notion somewhere, and after a while you adopt it as your own. And come to believe it. Consequently any writer is very careful about other people's suggestions. My best reaction: The idea might indeed be a glorious one. Why give it away?

Jack

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