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Sometimes a dream won’t let go |
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Copyright © 2008 Sally Jane Driscoll
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Some writers do more than dream Holly Lisle’s How to Think Sideways: Career Survival School for Writers Next class opens Sept. 1 to 8
2008 Awards Finalist Romancing the Tome Honorable Mention Spring into Romance |
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Once upon a time, I was a short story writer and playwright, and my tales were more hard-boiled than sweet. Nothing made me happier than having everyone dead on the floor by the end. That’s how a play of mine ended, though the audience that sawTwilight with Roses in the Baltimore Playwrights’ Festival had the impression it was romantic. Don’t know haw that happened! My first short story publications were in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the British science fiction journal, Interzone, but a couple of my newer stories found a home in the noir e-zine, Judas, whose editor seemed to like my voice. When Trudy Ziller popped into my mind, I thought she’d fit in Judas. Until I got to the part where the hero was supposed to die. I hesitated. Here was this great guy, and I was going to kill him off! “Uh, Sally?” I said to myself. “That is really perverse.” Or maybe it wasn’t me talking. It was Trudy. “Maybe, just maybe,” Trudy told me, hands on hips, “you can find Jason something better to do? Hmmm?” I took the hint. Trudy and Jason are in my notebooks, waiting to emerge in a romance of their own. So if, in the future, you should ever have a problem with any novels I may write, don’t come to me to complain. I didn’t want to write them in the first place. It’s all Trudy’s fault.
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