Read Letters to Jenny for Free Online

to my last letter? Ouch—I hope I didn’t say anything naughty!) that there wasn’t time for that. I understand you are doing so well that they may move you out of Cute Care. All those nurses there will be so lonely when you go! Anyway, Jenny and Che and the cat do make it to the raft on the With-a-Cookee River, but mean Fracto drives them back to shore and the goblins capture them. Tune in next week, when maybe I will have written the next Jenny chapter and saved her from a fate worse than a flu shot.
    I’m enclosing a comic strip, “Curtis.” I don’t read comics much these days, except for “Calvin and Hobbes,” but the newspaper is just now starting this one up, so that they can have a black comic to go with all the white comics they have. I think I’m going to like it, and you can see why. We vegetarians can get obnoxious when we try.
    Last night I looked out back, and there were dozens of fireflies flashing green. That’s the first time I’ve seen them here. Maybe the freshly mowed lawn attracted them. Folk who hate bugs should try watching fireflies some time.
    Remember Elsie the Bored Cow? Then I saw another one, Hownow Brown, and my wife saw a third, and we realized that there must be a hole in the fence. Those cows belong to the sheriff, and he checked and found that the air-boats had shoved a hole in his fence where it’s at the pond, and the cows were getting through. So they weren’t lost, they were just heading for the farthest and greenest pastures.
    Tell your mother that I got her letter of Marsh 29 and I hope she’s well enough this week to come in and see you. Maybe she’ll be able to read this letter to you. Of course that means I can’t say things about her, the way I have in other letters; she might be listening. She asked about the article I wrote for THE WRITER that mentioned you, so I’m enclosing one of the messed-up copies my computer ran off. You are mentioned on page 7; tell her she doesn’t need to bother reading the rest of it, which is mostly about technicalities of writing. I don’t know when it will be published, but at least this will let you folk know what I said.
    Keep getting better, Jenny! I understand you even waved to your daddy the other day. I guess that’s better than wiggling a toe at him.
    Apull 9, 1989
    [This letter was addressed to Jenny at Warp 7-A, Sick Bay,
Enterprise.]
    Dear Jenny
,
    What’s that? You don’t recognize the pun? It relates to Star Trek, where they are always zooming into space at Warp Factor 7 or something. When I heard you had moved to—oh,
Ward?
Sorry, I misheard. And they have a barrier up to block off the nerds—what? Oh, nerves. I thought you said—well, never mind.
    I have some good news, which you may already have heard. I wrote to Richard Pini, and he phoned me and said it was fine to use an Elfquest elf in Xanth. In fact, he said they would send you a note. I gave him your address; I thought it was all right. So if the one thing you wanted more than a note from Xanth was one from Elfquest, now maybe you have it.
    Remember how your mother wrote me a four page letter when you smiled, and six pages when you laughed? When you got better enough to leave Cute Care, she called me and talked for seven pages. I think she’s having trouble keeping up with you.
    I’m still working on Isle of View. I am now in Chapter 5, “Chex’s Checks,” and right now Chex is trying to get past the evil cloud Fracto, who naturally wants to stop her from getting wherever she’s going. Grundy Golem is with her, yelling insults at Fracto, so it’s getting pretty stormy. I’ll be back with Jenny Elf in the next chapter, but first I have to get through this one. Writing a novel can be almost as much work as recovering from a coma, I think. Well, maybe not that much. Some day maybe you’ll write a novel, and you can let me know then. Chex is going to fly so high, trying to get over Fracto, that she winds up on the moon, and not the honey side of it