WINSTON (cont.):  “. . . ‘Last Skimmer to Jericho.’  I wanted to do a TREK story for my own zine, because my first issue of PROBE had no Trekfiction in it.  It had TREK articles, it had crossword puzzles, it had all kinds of nice things, but no Trekfiction.  So I decided for my second issue to cook up a quick Uhura story.  It started out as an adventure piece, it turned into a drama piece, and by the time I was through with it, I was very proud of it.  I’d wanted to do a throw-away, but the characters turned on me and said, ‘You’re going to write a good story, or else!’  So, I did.

“And then I decided to write a sequel to this story when somebody asked me to, so I wrote ‘A Plague of Dreams.’  But in going through the course of that, I got rid of Uhura saying (high voice) ‘Captain, I’m frightened!’  (Laughter) which I could not stand.  I killed that off and made her psychologically independent of Captain Kirk, so she’d never run to him any more whenever she needed help.  And when I ended that story, I said, ‘All right, where do I go from here?’  The whole thing was published as GODDESS UHURA, PROBE Special Number One.  That’s all it was.

“Then I started looking at some Paul Rivoche artwork at a convention, and I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got some great ideas for stories!’  just from looking at this artwork.  I said, ‘How about if I make Uhura the captain of her own ship?’  Because she was now independent of Kirk; she didn’t have to hang around and trail around behind him.  She could do anything she wanted now.  So I put together five stories for an episodic novel to make CAPTAIN UHURA.  And when I was through with that layout, I thought I was through with Uhura stories.  But two thirds of the way through the novel, I was informed that the book was way too long.  My editors — Fern Marder and Carol Walske — said, ‘You’ve got too much here.  You’re going to have to make two books out of this.’  (Jean chuckles) I said, ‘Okay, fine.  So now I’ve got three.’  But then I said, ‘No, wait a minute — I’ve got to go deal with that monster I created in GODDESS UHURA, so I’d better make it four.’

“And then, in amongst laying out parts of the novels, I started writing the short stories that filled in all the little gaps.  I said, ‘I’ve got a cute little one here . . . a funny one here . . . a serious one here . . . a dramatic one there . . .’ Ideas just started coming from all kinds of places.  I was in a pizza parlor in Manhattan.  The kid working there — the owner’s brother — was from Florida, and told me a story about a baby who was swallowed by a great white shark.  They managed to kill the shark, drag it ashore, cut it open and pull the baby out alive.  I said, ‘Wow’ That’s a great idea for a story!’  So I wrote it as an Uhura story*:  Uhura 

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* “A Cold Day in August”; FURAHA 6