Blush

So I was Googling my name last night, looking for reviews of "Boon" (my story in Fantasy and Science Fiction. There is something a little weird about nosing about to see what others are saying about you or your work, but when the work you do involves creating something, sending it out, and getting the most infrequent notes home (in the form of royalties or something being picked up for an anthology, or a review somewhere) it's almost irresistable. And last night I found that I had made a list of The 12 Most Inspiring People I've Met in Comics.. The author, Valerie D'Orazio, was my assistant at Acclaim, a bright, funny, hardworking woman with a passion for comics and for good writing. We worked on the Classics Illustrated books, as well as some of the superhero comics, and shared that "down in the trenches" humor that comes of having too much to do and not quite enough time to get it done. We were there until the lights went out, so to speak, and there were times when it was hard to keep our enthusiasm and hope up when the business was so clearly not going well (despite a whole lot of smart work being done by smart people--too little too late to fix problems that had begun before either of us got there). I certainly wasn't thinking about being inspiring or exemplary, and there were moments when I had to hold on to good-boss behavior with both hands and a shovel, because we were all so stressed out. But it was a good time, and we did good work, and I am touched that I left this kind of mark. For what it's worth, Val, you were a peach to work with and an asset to the company, and you did that thing which all good assistants do: you made me look better than I was.