On Spec

Claire Eddy, an editor at Tor, treated me and Rob Stauffer and Mary Turzillo and Terry McGarry to dinner at ConAdian in 93. I was overwhelmed to be enjoying a meal on a Real New York Editor’s expense account.

Over dinner, Rob Stauffer recounted a hilarious episode from Daniel Pinkwater’s Chicago Days/Hoboken Nights where Pinkwater licks a sarcophagus. Nonsensically, I said, “It’s all fun and games until someone licks the sarcophagus,” and Claire said, “I’d buy a story that had that as its first line.”

Well, I couldn’t make it the first line, and I couldn’t make it into a novel, but I did manage to sell it.
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