Q&A: From the Mail Bag

Late­ly, in this blog, I have been pro­vid­ing answers to the ques­tions I am most often asked about my books and writ­ing. I’ve also invit­ed read­ers to ask new questions.

Here are two recent­ly posed questions.

“Will the 4th book in the Crispin series ever be published?”

I rarely have a full sense of how the plots of my nov­els work out until a have a com­plete first draft.  The Crispin books were an excep­tion.  When I first thought of the book(s) I con­ceived of a four vol­ume saga, not so much as a series, but a con­tin­u­ing sto­ry.  Very ear­ly (before I began to write) I had a sense of how each book worked.  In that sense I knew (and still do) what the fourth vol­ume con­tained, where it went, and what would hap­pen. Odd­ly enough (for me) I even knew the very last line of the whole story.

The rea­son that last vol­ume was nev­er ful­ly written—it was begun—is com­plex, and is a pub­lish­ing sto­ry which involves a lot of “he said,” and ”she said,” not nec­es­sar­i­ly wor­thy enough to repli­cate here—even if I could.  That said, I’ve often thought of self-pub­lish­ing that last vol­ume, which would be the only way to bring it into exis­tence. Per­haps it will be my swan song.  But don’t hold your breath.

“Do you ever know what hap­pened to ‘Tony’ who was the inspi­ra­tion for your nov­el Some­times I Think I Hear My Name? Do you and or your son still keep in con­tact with him? How did things work out with his par­ents? I think it would be inter­est­ing to know what hap­pened to him.”

Not hav­ing any knowl­edge about “Tony,” or what hap­pened to him, I went to my son who, dur­ing high school, was “Tony’s” friend. Not very sur­pris­ing­ly, my son has lost con­tact with the fel­low, and has no real idea as to what became of him, only com­ment­ing that “‘Tony’ had a chaot­ic life.” It must be said, how­ev­er, that “Tony’s” sit­u­a­tion (and per­sona) was mere­ly the start­ing point for the nov­el I wrote.  What hap­pened to the boy in the book is entire­ly invent­ed. In fact, as I recall, the book had more to do with my mood at the time—the work was pub­lished in 1982. All this remind­ed me of an essay I read about the great writer (and lit­er­ary teacher) Wal­lace Steg­n­er. He is quot­ed as say­ing that “Real­i­ty waits to be civ­i­lized into fiction.”

Do keep these ques­tions coming.