Andre Norton

[jpskewedthrone]

I was saddened to hear about Andre Norton passing away and finally decided the best way to honor her and her work was to simply tell my story:

When I was, like, 9, I was hooked on mysteries: Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew (an early sign of gaydom perhaps?), . . . and Mary Norton. I looked forward to going to the library with my Mom and finding a new mystery to read. However one day I couldn't go for some reason I don't remember and so my Mom said she'd pick up a Norton novel for me.

You see where this is going.

So she brought back Andre Norton by mistake. I don't remember which book it was, but once I stared reading I couldn't stop. I went back to the library, fascinated, and read every Andre Norton book there. I didn't read anything else, only Norton. After I'd exhausted the local library, I had them drag Norton books from the surrounding libraries to my library, waiting weeks for some of them to arrive, and I read all of those. And then I grew frustrated because I'd exhausted all of the surrounding libraries as well and I wanted more. It never crossed my mind that perhaps SOMEONE ELSE was writing essentially the same type of stuff. I wanted Andre.

Of course, I could never have enough Andre Norton and eventually I had to "settle" for something else. I wasn't really settling obviously, but I didn't know that at the time. Andre Norton opened up an entire world for me, and look where I am now: A three-book deal with DAW.

So you can all blame Andre. And my Mom of course.

Comments

[everyonesakitty.livejournal.com]

Hi Joshua. That's a great story. I'm not embarrassed to admit (though I should be) that the Star Wars books did that for me. They inspired silly stories about Luke and Leia (well, I at least changed the names haha).