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I never would have expected it, but the most common question I get about Harper's world is "why doesn't she have a cell phone in Greywalker?" For some readers it's been a point of unreality that threw them out of the book so badly, they abandoned the story altogether. Kind of an odd point, isn't it? But it shows you never know what's going to work for some readers and what won't.

One of the difficulties for any Science Fiction or Fantasy writer is creating a world that's believable and compelling without getting so detailed that you spend all your time setting up or explaining things. You have to just take some things as read. As a writer, you have to strike a balance between showing the world in action and explaining it that doesn't make the whole experience fall apart like a stage flat falling over. And it's not the same for all writers or for all readers. No writer can satisfy all possible readers. Some will just not buy in, no matter how hard you try.

So... about this pager....

Back in May of 2000 I started on the first draft of Greywalker. At the time, my husband and I were the only people I knew who had cell phones as their primary telecommunications device. It's not that they were still very expensive, but rather that they were such a huge pain to keep in service. Coverage with any one company was terrible and patchy and the phones themselves were delicate and temperamental. But, living on a boat, we found that a traditional landline was not making the grade for us. We still had the line--we used it for our computer modem (124k baud, a veritable Niagra of information at the time)--but we were destined to drop it very soon. So I didn't consider giving my protagonist such an ill-tempered, unpredictable instrument. Instead, I tried to stick closer to the reality of the time--one I thought would prevail a little longer.