I got interested in being a writer in the early 70s. Some friends took me to my first SF Convention, the first Rivercon, and I was mightily impressed. This was one glorious, weekend long party, with lots to eat and drink, and hundreds of interesting people to talk to! And they let you sing! They had a whole style of music called "filk", which I think is a contraction for "filched folk", plus stage presentations, talks, lectures, panels, art shows, masquerade balls (something to be seen, with knights in full armor, bug eyed monsters, dragons, and scantily clad maidens out there doing their thing. I'd found my true home!

At one point, I noticed a bunch of gray haired old fat men with a sizeable number of attractive young ladies hovering around them.

"So who are those guys," I asked somebody.

"Oh, those are the writers."

This interested me. At the time, I was the owner of a fairly prosperous engineering company. A great job, with good money, flexible hours, and lots of fringe benefits. I had a company car, an open expense account, and my own secretary. But company presidents don't get groupies. Credit cards, company paid vacations, and all the free lunches you want, yes, but no groupies. You have to be a rock star to get those, and I couldn't play a guitar.

So as soon as I got back, I bought a typewriter (which I couldn't play either), and went to work.

It's been an interesting career change, but the groupies still haven't arrived. For long years there, I could often be found looking wistfully out the window, waiting.

Copernick's Rebellion was the first book that I ever wrote. It started out as a series of short stories, mostly written in 1973, which I tried to sell to Analog Magazine. I had no success.

Ben Bova was the editor then, and keeping with John Campbell's polite program of always giving some feedback to rejected authors, he always sent a 'personal' reply. But computers were starting to become practical about then, so Ben had his loaded with a few standard paragraphs, which showed up again and again. Even the same typos showed up again and again.

One letter would say (Ah! Politely!) that my story line was great, but my characterization was terrible, so he had been regretfully forced to reject my submission. The next would say that my characterization was outstanding, but plotting was terrible, so he had to reject my submission. The third would say that my plotting was wonderful, but my story line was so bad that he had to reject my submission.

Sometimes I sent the same story back again, and got a totally different rejection letter. At the time, I was too ignorant to know that there were other editors out there. I eventually had a decent pile of these rejection letters, and used them to wallpaper my bathroom.

I gave up on writing, and went back to my engineering work, to the considerable relief of my staff.

Later Mr. Bova started writing novels of his own. I wasn't impressed with his work either. I was amazed that once, I had agonized so much over his opinion.

Then, I went to the library and did some research. It seemed that at the time, three times as many new novels were published in the US as short stories. And novels paid real money whereas short stories didn't pay for the postage you spent sending them in.

So, I Scotch Taped my pile of short stories together into a novel. I shipped it, and got it rejected four times.

I threw the manuscript up on a shelf.

Obviously, I wasn't intended to be a writer. Anyway, there was real money in engineering, and I had this addiction to food that had to be satisfied.

Years later, an old friend, Charles Oliver, told me about a writer's group that met on Saturday afternoons at a local library. Having nothing better to do before the bars got lively, I went. The Conrad Series grew out of that, but I'll tell that story later.

'The Cross Time Engineer' sold well, and the excellent Owen Lock, still a good friend, was willing to buy anything that I had. Owen was my editor then. He later headed up Del-Rey after Lester and Judy Lynn died, and was eventually kicked upstairs to a VP slot at Random House. He is now retired, and pursuing his first love, the translation of Ancient Chinese Manuscripts.