I got SUPREMELY lucky to get to interview AC2011's Guest of honour, Mister Peter S. Beagle - the author of, amongst other things, the novel, 'The last Unicorn'.

TECHNICAL NOTES:
The recording was made using my Samsung Fascinate "phone", so the original quality was not NEARLY as good as I would have liked in the first place, so please forgive me. I kept the recording going the whole time I was with him, so you will hear some fade out/ins where he was busy with customers and visitors. I've cleaned it up as much as I can without screwing up the audio quality worse than what it already is.

PERSONAL NOTES:
Mister Beagle and Connor were immensely wonderful and gracious with me, allowing me the time to sit next to him and continue the interview between signings and visitors. I cannot tell you all how wonderful I felt, how comfortable he made me feel. I felt VERY lucky and privileged to have had this chance.

Sometimes, it is good to ask.

And now... the transcription of the audio. There are a couple spots I have been unable to correct due to the audio being buddied, but I have 99% in here correctly.
ShujinTribble: I am ShujinTribble... and I am over in the halls of AnthroCon in the Dealer's Den with Mister Peter Beagle who, most of you would remember, has penned, among other things, The story for The Last Unicorn. And the most recent book of which that just came out is-s-s.....?

Peter Beagle: Sleight of Hand, a collection of short stories.

S: Now i was VERY-very fortunate because he is over here on the end right in front of the doors as you first came into the Dealer's room. ahh... First off, thank you SO much for coming out. Great pleasure!

P: I've had a marvelous time and the extra.. apart from the delight of furrydom, The kicker is that I went to school at the University of Pittsburgh. So, it's a pleasure to be back in old surroundings, even if they aren't the old surrounds I knew. Because it's changed - I graduated more than 50 years ago. It's changed alot.

S: Always does. So, on the, on the table over here, there was an interesting story that, ah, your cohort in crime over here, auhm... oh, GOD! I forgot what his name was!

P: Connor

S: CONNOR! Right... That one of the- one of the collections- one of the books over here- one of the prints, went through a little bit of an interesting life cycle. Something about it being 'missing' for some years?

P: Which one is that? uhm...

S: One of them went into storage, accidentally...

P: OH, uhm... you're thinking of Unicorn Sonata, I think, which.... It wasn't so much that it went into storage, it was that the publishing company went out of business. And James Gurney, uhm, lucked out ahead of me because the same company that published Dynotopia. But just after MY book had been published Turner, uhm... Turner press merged with TimeWarner and dissapeared. So my book had a rather short shelf life and dissapeared into a warehouse where it sat for 8 years before we finally pried it loose and bought up all the remaining copies, and... we've been selling them off steadily at conventions. We're down to, I don't know, perhapse 150. That gave rise to something I'll do when I have a free moment to, which is, expanding that particular book into a four-book series, very different in aim from the original. It's had a checkered history, certainly.

S: But, at least it's gotten an opportunity to live all over again!

P: Yes! And, of course, writers are never satisfied,.........but always like another shot at it.

S: Very much so. Now, of course, most of the folks that would be listening and, throughout the world at this point, mostly remember you, of course, from Last Unicorn. How long did it take from time that the-- hold on.

(Connor: We have a signing.)
(S: Go ahead.... No worries.)
(P: Sign this for you?)
(C: thanks for your patience.)
(S: No, no!)

(P: Take care! ..ok, go ahead.)

S: So, for a little while Mr. Beagle was over here signing books and DVDs and talking with the folks and just talking about, uhm... house sitting for a.... somebody who was housesitting for a friend with larger snakes.. you've... it's obvious that you've had alot of experience with, with animals, wether yourself or secondhand through folks....

P: One way or another I've spent a lot of times aroiund animals, especially after I grew out of my childhood... childhood asthma and comfortable with animals and .... more comfortable than others. As I was saying. I ....easy with wolves and cougars.... Bears make me nervouse. (*COUGH*) But... I just like animals without trying to make them be more like humans; they are who they are.

S: So the question I was going to ask you before; of course one of the things that MANY of us over here remember the most, of course, is The Last Unicorn. How long was it between when you actually finished writing it, it-it went to press, and-and-and got out, to when you were approached to, ah... to inquire about making the movie?

P: Well it came out in '78-- '68. The movie wasn't made until 1982. It didn;t really start until.. probebly approached about 10 years later, 1978. So it took a while. And.. and the... contract was a bit 'haphazard'. We're still sorting out wrinkles in the contract to this day, but it's getting better. But I made a stipulation that I get to do the screenplay, at least the first draft, and I am very grateful that I did! And barring the screenplay, the fact that I knew some of the actors, I really didn't have much to do with it. And I was VERY grateful when I first saw it that they'd done as well with it as they had, because I was braced--I never liked Rankin/Bass' work. Hated what they'd done with Return of the King and The Hobbit and I'm not even talking about Frosty the Snowman. The Last Unicorn was the best thing they ever did.
Hold on just a second.....

S: I love it when things like that happen.

P: Well if you notice, you know.. that's show business.

S: Yeah... So you had the chance to do the first draft for the screenplay...

P: Right.

S: --for The Last Unicorn. Uhhm... Did you get to to one of the early screenings or first showings to.. to be there as, like, a Guest of Honour for an opening or anything?

P: Uhm... Not really, but I did, as I say, get to see (Thank You!) ..get to see some of the recording like Christopher Lee, I saw him .....in English and in German. Christopher speaks several languages, and he'd told them when the question of dubbing the movie into German came up, that if they'd trust his German, he'd do it for expenses. Which was a mistake on their part because Christopher is the MASTER of the Expense Account. It was truly a Master Class that I absorbed a NUMBER of lessons from, but how.... How he got a side-trip to Yugoslavia, what was THEN Yugoslavia, out of a movie being dubbed into German, I still haven't figured.

S: --but he managed it!

P: But he managed it! And I saw Angela Lansbury record her part. And, you know neighbors and old friends, from a long-time back. Excuse me just a moment.....

S: So one of the things that Peter was just signing.... folks have said MANY-many-many times, remember it from so many years ago, little ones NOW are loving it so much. People occationally get asked, did you have any beliefe that it was going to be as BIG as it is now? Nobody could ever possibly know that then.... How has it been for you all these years later, DECADES even, where people are still saying it's still fun, it's still fresh, kids still love it, even 'till today, Twenty-First Century now.... How gratifying has that been for you?

P: Of course, it's EXTREMELY gratifying. There's no way to plan for it - none at all! At least I think often of the guy The Last Unicorn novel is dedicated to ... influenced me a great deal, named Robert Nathan. Robert called it: he warned me, 'This is goingt to be the book people know who don't know that you ever wrote anything else'. He said, 'You're going to be stuck with it, the way I'm stuck with "Portrait of Jennie" '. Which was one out of fourty novels that he wrote, that was made into a movie, and he said, "You watch! When I die, it's going to be the ONE thing they mention in the obituaries", and he called it. He was absolutly right. He said, "Sometimes I hate that book because it overshadowed everything else I ever did. And there are books of mine like babies. There are books you like better and people may NEVER know them, and that's just the way it is." That is to say, well, better to be remembered for something than not remembered at all. So you, you take a chance, as always, with art; you thow it up in the air and see what happens. And you never know, sometimes for years. I certainly didn't know that The Unicorn would have that kind of a life. I had NO idea. Just a bloody nightmare to write. I've often said looking around the table with merchandise, "There isn't anythying on this table that wasn't more fun to write than 'The Last Unicorn' ", and yet here it is and the Sequel Story. And I'm getting on to my third, fourth generation, of people who have been raised by it..
--Who Knew?

S: In the mean time, Mister Beagle, thank you so VERY much for taking the time out with me. Its great, Great appreciatioon.... did you have any last thing you'd like to say for all the folks that are the artistic type who maybe a little... not feeling like they can really make it?

P: In the words of one of my role modles, Lola Montez, who was a 19th century Countess(?) who passed herself off as a Spanish Dancer, when she was neither Spanish NOR a dancer, who was the mistress of a king, who could re-invent herself in five minutes notice, her motto, always, was, "Courgae, and shuffle the cards!"

S: Mister Beagle, thank you so VERY much for your time.

P: My pleasure.