At last Jenny's mother, grasping at straws, wrote to me. She thought that maybe a letter from the author of Xanth would strike some spark and motivate Jenny to come out of the coma. Jenny had read the first ten Xanth novels; the accident had cut her off from the eleventh, published not long before. The things of Xanth were common in Jenny's house. The Spelling Bee was as balky as ever, forcing them to use the mundane dictionary; Agent Orange sometimes wilted their plants (that turned out to be their big orange cat, using the pots in lieu of kitty litter); the Gap Chasm had an extension past their backyard; the Forget Spell frequently caused things like homework and room tidying to be forgotten; the Monster Under the Bed made things disappear; and the hypnogourd-TV tended to trap her father after his hard day's work. So maybe Xanth would have the magic needed to wake Jenny from her long sleep.

Jenny's mother happened to know a novelist of the genre, Andrea Alton, whose novel Demon of Undoing featured civilized catlike creatures. She asked Andrea about this business of writing to me, and Andrea suggested that she ask me to name a character of Xanth after Jenny, as this could be done without reference to Jenny's real nature and might encourage Jenny to take notice. At worst, I would say no.

As it happened, when I received the letter in FeBlueberry 1989, I was about three weeks from starting this novel. I knew how it would begin and how it would end, and I knew about Che Centaur needing help. But much of the rest was inchoate; I would figure it out when I got there. So I wrote a letter to Jenny for her mother to read to her, and I told her of the novel and offered to put in a character with her name. Would she prefer an elf girl or an ogre girl? I asked whether she liked ElfQuest, the series of novels in comic form—many of my younger readers do—and mentioned that her Bed Monster had gotten lonely at home without her so had moved in under her hospital bed. But he was in danger there of having a nurse give him a loathsome shot in the rump. Monsters don't much like shots, for some reason.

I really had my doubts. I hoped my letter would help, for I have raised two daughters, and by an odd coincidence each of them was once twelve years old, and to me there is nothing more precious than a little girl. But by the time my letter could reach her, Jenny would be almost three months in her coma, and that was no positive sign. So I schooled myself not to hope too much, like Electra with Prince Dolph.