okay, not ALL the links

Despite my efforts last night, I missed not one but two of the links I meant to post.

First, a bit belated, the usual link to my monthly SF Novelists post. This time, it's Worldbuilding, from the ground up, as I talk about the interesting challenges I'm encountering as I work on A Natural History of Dragons. (Comment over there, not here; you don't need to register, but there will be a slight delay while I fish the comments of newcomers out of the moderation queue.)

Second, Sideshow Freaks has a background post on how I came to write "Love, Cayce" (aka the "letters from a D&D adventurer's kid" story).

. . . I think that's it. But just you wait, I'm sure I'll trip over more I forgot as soon as I turn around.

The DWJ Project: Witch's Business

Originally published as Wilkins' Tooth. I don't know why the title got changed, unless it was because some marketing person thought the original might be mistaken for a mundane story about Wilkins going to the dentist.

This was Diana Wynne Jones' first fantasy novel for children (her second novel at all, after Changeover, which I can't find for less than eighty dollars and may never end up reading.) In it, a pair of children whose pocket-money has been stopped set up a revenge business -- Own Back, Ltd. -- but run into trouble when the local crackpot turns out to be a witch who feels they're intruding on her territory.

The premise feels pretty standard for a children's book, whether fantastical or otherwise -- much moreso than her later novels do. The protagonists sort of hope somebody will hire them to get revenge on the local bully, but instead the bully hires/blackmails them to get revenge on his behalf. Their efforts to carry out the job lead to more trouble, things snowball, the kids hit a point where they owe too much to too many people, etc. It's pleasant reading, but not memorable; I'm not surprised that I've never gone back to re-read this one.

The one almost-memorable part has to do with the witch and the Adams family (not to be confused with the Addams family). Another author might have stayed with the simple plot of escalating problems, but DWJ hints at a deeper layer that created many of those problems in the first place. Unfortunately, she only hints: we never get much detail about why the Adamses were cursed, etc. I wish there had been more of that, to underpin the fun with something a little more substantial. But I'll have more thoughts about that when I report back on The Ogre Downstairs.