An old episode of This American Life was rebroadcast today on my local NPR station. Act One was a story about a person who had ran away from home as a teenager with the goal of meeting Piers Anthony. It was a cool piece and I was particularly interested in how Anthony leaves detailed author's notes at then end of his books. The notes aren't so much about his books, but often cover a wide range of topics from his "mundane" life.
I read a few of his novels as a teenager, but I wasn't really a fan. I had friends who read everything he wrote. After listening to the story today, I did a bit of Googling and came across Piers Anthony's personal website. He makes monthly newsletter posts that are his thoughts on just about everything. He's remarkably candid and the posts make for fascinating reading (to me anyway). There's an archive going back to 1997.
Whether you consider yourself a Piers Anthony fan or not, I recommend listening to the This American Life segment as well as checking out Piers Anthony's website.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/play_full.php?play=470 (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/play_full.php?play=470)
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/470/transcript (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/470/transcript)
http://www.hipiers.com/newsletter.html (http://www.hipiers.com/newsletter.html)
Believe it or not, I read a lot of his Xanth books when I was younger. Part of the reason I despise puns so much ;) I really dug his Incarnations of Immortality. At least the first five. And I usually read all the authors notes, too. Really interesting look into him and his views on lots of stuff.
I also read most of his Xanth stuff when younger (forget when I stopped...I think it was on the 3rd generation characters but I could be mistaken).
Also "On a Pale Horse" is still one of my all time favorites.
I'll have to give that a listen...I just found out recently (even though it's old news) he lost one of his daughters a couple of years ago. Sad to hear about that.