I've been lucky...

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...

Bob Asprin, R.I.P.

The news is going around the internet and various writing e-mail groups that Bob Asprin has died. I certainly knew of Bob, though I didn't know him much at all personally. However, without Bob and Thieves World, the WILD CARDS series might never have happened and a large part of my writing career and many good friends would thus be missing. For having pioneered and blazed the way for the shared world anthologies that followed, I'll always be grateful to him.

Thanks, Bob. We'll tip a glass in your memory.