Easter Eggs

If you're a video gamer, regularly watch DVDs, or even just a user of computers (and who isn't at this point?), then you're probably familiar with "Easter Eggs." These are hidden bits of coding that reveal or unlock some special feature or joke: maybe an extra level in a game; a goofy message; an extra video clip; the names of the members of the development team. They don't necessarily add anything of real significance to the experience, but they are no doubt fun for the people making the product, and give the end users plenty to do as they seek them out.

He's even got Indy's trusty whip!

I remember the first Easter Egg I found was in the LucasArts produced game, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. While wandering through the game's last level, I took Indy down a long, dark corridor with a light at the end. As Indy stepped into the room, his appearance changed: he became Guybrush Threepwood, the hero of LucasArts' Monkey Island games; the room he came out in was a reproduction of a barbershop from one of those games, the walls lined with pictures of various LucasArts people. It was good fun, though it made me wonder what I may have missed in other games I've played over the years. When I was playing, however, I did not put a whole lot of time into trying to find these things. There were always other things to do.



Late last week, I found what I consider to be an Easter Egg in a book.

Technically I suppose it's not an Easter Egg. Books can't have Easter Eggs in the same way as so-called interactive media; what books can have are inside jokes and self references, spoofs and homages. Readers might get the literary references (when Stephen King and Peter Straub co-wrote The Talisman, you can be that naming their 12-year-old hero Jack Sawyer was a nod to Twain's Tom Sawyer), but they can't be expected to get the inside jokes--unless they know the author. In this case, I do, as she lives and works locally. More importantly, I know the person whose name she dropped, and while the way she used it didn't unlock any secret levels or hidden chapters, it did unlock a laugh from me. Right or wrong, I took it as a bit of a backhand at her boss.

When I write, I let bits of myself out into my characters. Places that are or were important to me often filter into it (I have a terrible habit of including ocean beaches as significant places in my writing), but I have not included names of people I know, or written directly about things that have happened to me or my friends and family. No Easter Eggs in my writing. What about yours? Do you include deliberate references to people, places and incidents from your life in your writing? Do you hide Easter Eggs?

A Question...

...for my writerly friends out there, specifically those of you who have been published, who have people reading your book(s), who might actually be receiving some form of fan mail:

What question is most frequently asked of you by your readers?

And when I say 'readers', I'm not talking about people like me, i.e., someone who is working on joining you on the 'published author' side of the line. I'm talking about actual readers, people who don't necessarily read with one eye on sentence structure or character development, people who aren't parsing your words because they're reading to improve their own writing even as they read for enjoyment. I'm talking about people who read for the sake of reading, goshdarnit, people who have no ulterior motive other than enjoying a good story. What is it they want to know?

Earlier this week, agent Rachelle Gardner did a post over at her agency's blog about privacy, and she talked a bit about the connection between reader and author. That made me ask a question in the comments section (one that she hasn't answered yet, though I've found her to be responsive in the past), which I'll repeat here:

  "Does the average reader really care that much about making connections with authors beyond what's on the page?"

I really wonder about this, hence I asked the question, and hence I asked the question of my published friends up top. See, here's the thing: when I finish a book that I really enjoyed, I don't immediately hop on to social media and seek the author out. I don't look for their website, or their twitter feed or stalk their facebook page. What do I do? I move on to the next thing in my To Be Read pile. If the book is by an author I've never read before, and that book is more than a couple of years old, I might go to the web to see if they have something newer--which will probably lead me to Amazon or Wikipedia, maybe an author's personal webpage. But even if I do go to said author's webpage, I'm not off to follow on twitter, etc.

Am I just a holdover from a bygone era, a dinosaur in a world of mammals? Am I totally off my rocker? Does the average reader really want something more than just a good book from a favorite author? I'm curious what you all think about this, and I'm curious about your experiences with actual readers (who are not writers).

Yeah, this could be me.

I'm looking forward to hearing what you think. Meanwhile, how are your NaNos or other projects going? I hit chapter 10 in BARTON'S WOMEN last night; it was a slow night due to other things happening, but I've shaved about 1500 words from the manuscript so far--and I still like it. Have a nice weekend, all.