Well, who could resist the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest, anyway? $50,000—or at least $15,000 and a trip to Seattle, which is a lovely city, with fine coffee. So, I entered The Wandering Duke. The Second Round 400 were announced on February 13. My book wasn’t one of them. Which is fine by me. I’m ready to bring The Wandering Duke out through CreateSpace as soon as I paint the cover painting. It’s suddenly begun selling on Amazon, and just got its first review! If the point of the contest is to promote CreateSpace, it’s not aimed at authors already comfortable using the platform. My emotional devastation lasted maybe five seconds. But I did click on one of the discussions, and saw a really disturbing post from a writer ready to give up because her book wasn’t chosen. She was ready to give up, give in, felt worthless because she would never find a publisher, or an agent, or be a writer.

Within an hour, there were probably 25 posts telling her not to give up. I added mine, with the detail that being published is no guarantee once sales drop off, and an agent may love your work but still be unable to sell it. I told her to take her own good hand and publish herself—Kindle and CreateSpace need cost you nothing, except for proofs and copies. But what she really needs is a writer’s support group.

Ours came together when I stopped teaching writers workshops and the students wanted to stay together for mutual support. It was years before I hooked up with them again, but the experience has been invaluable. We meet once a month in a book store. We share—experiences, tips, heartaches, technical expertise. The group pointed me toward e-publishing, indie-publishing, setting up a website and doing a blog. Members have written books together, done promotions, book fairs, signings. A traditional photographer became a digital cover designer, and is now working internationally. We’ve gone from support to cross-fertilization!

We have no dues, no officers, no name to put on t-shirts, and no rules except to support one another. Guys, I would not be where I am without you, and I wish every writer out there in this lonely world had such a group to belong to!

Every year, the Youngstown Ohio Vindicator offers Valentine Love Story Writing Contest. I’ve entered a couple of times. This year’s theme is “Sliding Into Love”, and I thought the beginning was fairly uninspiring—but then this wacky notion struck and stuck. No I didn’t win. But here it is:
           Jennifer Simon is watching a snowfall in Youngstown Ohio from her apartment window. She remembers sledding as a child, decides to recapture the memory, suits up and heads for the sled hill—without a sled. She’s loaned one, sits down and …

The harsh wind during her trip down also made her eyes water, and she was suddenly trying to blink away the moisture. Within seconds, she started to shriek as she found herself on a guaranteed collision course with another sledder.
    They intersected like two high-speed cars, and sleds went tumbling through the air.
    Getting up a few seconds later, Jennifer’s first reaction was anger. She’d come here to enjoy a perfect, worry-free moment.
    “Hey!” she yelled acidly, poking a mitten-covered finger into the stranger’s chest after they both rose from their crash. (And I have to say, do I not write better than this?)
    But then she saw…

        A short, solid man in a hooded silver snowsuit, with silver mittens that weren’t mittens. He was silver from head to toe, no zippers, no buttons, no fasteners of any kind visible. Sleek as a seal—or a spaceship.
      “I know you!” Jennifer cried. And in a rush, the years danced away like snowflakes in the wind. 
   It is you! he said, with that voice inside her head that twinkled like starlight shining on snow. The voice she had not heard since she was six years old.
   She had been six when she met the strange kid in the silver snowsuit. The kid who loved sledding as much as she did. The quiet kid who could ride a sled as fast as a rocket-ship, fearless. They had spent hours on the sled hill, until it was dark, until her mother intercepted her at the bottom of the hill and dragged her home half-frozen, for cocoa and supper with the family. She’d wanted to invite her new friend home too, because he didn’t seem to have a parent there. He’d been all alone. But when she looked back, he had vanished from the sled hill, and so had his silver saucer, the coolest sled she had ever seen. No trace of him. Jennifer never saw him again.
    Until now.
   “I’ve looked for you!” But not all winters were full of snow. Some were mild, and there was no sledding. And the kids on the hill changed. Too old for sledding, other pleasures calling, like ice hockey or cheering. And then college, and jobs. She had gone home to eat supper, and go to bed early, get good grades, get a job, find an apartment. And none of it—none of it—was as exciting as flying down the sled hill on a shining silver saucer, she realized.
   I looked for you too. Stars inside her head, sparkling like diamond dust. And a smile on his silver face, glittering in his dark almond-shaped eyes. Jennifer sensed that he had not forgotten her as quickly as she had forgotten him. And maybe for him, growing up was different. We do not always come here, he explained. He didn’t explain whether “here” was Youngstown, Ohio or planet earth. With her, that did not matter.
   He stretched out his hand, as silver as his voice, and cupped her face with it, his thumb under her chin. I looked for you every snow. Jennifer felt a tingle, like a zap of static electricity, only in every last cell of her body. His eyes were as dark as outer space. They captured her. She could not look away. Jennifer stepped closer, into his arms, into a kiss like nothing she had ever felt before.
   Come with me.
   The sparks in her head were more like fireworks, Chrysanthemums and Roman Candles and Zambelli Starbursts, pale blue and lavender and frosty white.
   “Yes,” Jennifer said. She knew what he meant. They climbed aboard his silver saucer-sled and shot back up the hill together. Snow and frost scattered around them like stars. The wind burned their faces, but it felt exciting, like drinking champagne. He spun the saucer about in a wave of ice crystals, and back down the hill they went, shrieking with delight, dodging trees and other sleds. They kept at it until there were no other sleds on the sled hill, and they were alone, the last two creatures in the universe.
   Come with me, he invited again. And Jennifer knew exactly what he meant, what he offered.
   “Yes,” Jennifer said again.
   And a little later a silver saucer rose into the night sky, trailing silver vapor that condensed into thousands of pale pink hearts, which vanished one by one by one, as the flying saucer passed the stars of Orion and kept on going into happily ever after.

So there you are: True Love and a clever ending in less than 750 words. And Teddi Black was kind enough to do the cover!

            Tristan is not, as some have suggested, named after the character in All Creatures Great and Small. (Tristan Farnon was named by a Wagnerian opera enthusiast.) I read the books long before BBC TV cast the actor who would later be tapped for Doctor Who. My Tristan is named for Tristan of Lyonesse, one of the last of Arthur’s knights that I became aware of. Edward Arlington Robinson wrote a book length poem about Tristan of Lyonesse, which I found incredibly romantic. Tristan of Lyonesse is really sort of attached to Arthur’s Round Table because his legends seem to be contemporaneous, but he’s rarely a part of the frequently chronicled adventures, he’s not mentioned in Camelot, and so the name was fresh to me. The illustration here is the British bookcover, hardback and paperback, and until I did my own cover paintings, the best depiction of Tristan I have seen. I have no idea who the artist is--Fontana gave no credit. (So if you know who painted it, please comment and tell me!)

            Elisena—I googled it by accident once, and found out elisena’s a plant species. (The spiderworts) I thought it was a variant of Elizabeth, which it may indeed be. I used to work in retail advertising, and looked at Women’s Wear Daily tear sheets for inspiration. Someone names Elizinha got photographed at some gala, and I lifted the name.

            Esdragon was supposed to be Estragon, the French name for tarragon. I spelled it wrong, and decided I liked it.  Calandra is Greek, it means “lark”. I used to read name dictionaries regularly, keeping lists of those I thought would work for my invented world. Allaire is certainly from a “What Shall We Name the Baby” book.

            Polassar is named for Nebuchadnezzar’s father, Narbopolassar. And any resemblance between the big guy and Yukon Cornelius (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)  is something I didn’t notice till years later—but I did begin writing The Ring of Allaire just after Christmas, in January 1978. Reynaud was probably inspired by a Thomas Canty pencil drawing titled “Reynardine”.

            Valadan is a name I thought I coined. Turns out it really is a surname. I was after something that I would like as much as Ursula LeGuin’s dragon-names in A Wizard of Earthsea, something that would echo “valiant” in the reader’s ear. So far as I know, I’m the first to use the name for a horse—and Valadan has been mentioned in an article in Horse Illustrated about how to choose a good name for your horse. A thoroughbred named Valadan also raced at Philadelphia Park—though he was a brown gelding and not a black stallion, he was foaled after Prince of Ill Luck appeared, and I feel strongly that there’s no coincidence involved. Someone once asked permission to name an Arabian filly Kessallia—I don’t know that it ever happened. That one could have been a handful!