I've been lucky...

[sleigh]

For record-keeping purposes, I was looking back through some of the ancient magazine publication for some of my earliest stories. In looking at the Tables of Content from back in the mid-to-late 70s, I was struck that, hey, I've been lucky in being able to sustain a writing career for so long, even if as a midlist author rather than one of the 'stars'. There are so many names of 'up-and-coming' authors who were starting out with me, or who were further along in their career at the time. Maybe they'd sold a novel or two already. I'd see them at conventions or appearing in the magazines or even in award nominations and mentions, and I'd think "Man, I hope one day I'll be where they are..."

But they've vanished somewhere along the line. I wonder about them: did they lose the urge to write? Did they find that they couldn't sell their stories? What happened?

Yeah, a bit of judicious googling and I might be able to find out. But just looking at all the names I once knew and who appear to have disappeared into a fog of long silence makes me feel lucky to still be doing this...