There are also frustrations of a different nature: in this period I had about four of my cards returned "Addressee unknown" though I had them exactly as given. If these are jokes, they are costing me valuable time; there are others who would have been glad to receive that wasted attention. I don't answer every letter I receive, but even so this year, like last year, comes to over twelve hundred I wrote. Most letters are about Xanth; next main topic is the Notes, overwhelmingly approved; it seems that the readers prefer a personal author to an impersonal one. Well, I don't claim to be a great man, but I am personal, just as my readers are. Then the ones that ask for things: contributions, mementoes for auctioning, requests for me to speak—I have to turn the great majority down. Only when the circumstances are special do I accept. For example, I have had a number of letters from prisoners. Now, I am a liberal, but I am not soft on crime; I dislike the death penalty, but I also abhor the notion of murderers going free to repeat their crimes. I suspect that there are far more guilty folk going free than there are innocent ones in prison. In addition, it is evident that prisoners have a lot more time for correspondence than I do. I can no more solve their problems than I can those of the suicides. So I tend to answer briefly and noncomittally. But one letter, in this period, made a reasonable case: the prison encourages reading as being of a rehabilitative nature, and I am a favored writer, but their budget is limited. Prisoners cannot go out and buy their own. So—I sent a package of thirteen of my recent books, paperback and hardcover. Please, don't deluge me with requests for free books; this was a one-shot deal, about which I have mixed emotions.

As Christmas approached, I received many cards. As a rule I don't answer these, and don't send cards of my own, because if I did I would lose another critical chunk of time, but I do appreciate the sentiment. I even received a Chanuka card; I understand that occasion is becoming much like Christmas, in America. I had a letter and a painting from my youngest fan yet: six-year-old Carlitos Castillo. I did unbend enough to"wish a number of correspondents