PAT: “Well, actually, I’ve revised it, and everything in the story is all put together and answered, and I think I might actually have it finished in a couple of months.”
WINSTON: “That’s a shame. If the last issue of PROBE wasn’t already tight, I would ask to print it.”
PAT: “Well, I’ve had a number of people ask for that story if I tell them about it.”
WINSTON: “Yes, it was a very good story, and based on a gag. You can start off with anything. Either you’re angry about something, you’re in love with a character . . . but it always starts out small. Tolkein (sic RBW Tolkien) didn’t plan to start out as his life’s work doing ‘Lord of the Rings’. You can tell by reading ‘The Tolkien Reader’ that he was just interested in doing those types of fantasies. And he started out doing one little piece, and it got larger, and larger, and larger.”
PAT: “Actually, it started out with him telling his little kids bedtime stories. That was ‘The Hobbit.’”
JEAN: “Well, that’s what happened with THE NIGHT OF THE TWIN MOONS I thought I had a brilliant—”
AUDIENCE MEMBER: “You weren’t telling any of that as bedtime stories!” (Laughter)
WINSTON: “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no . . . .”
JEAN: “I started what I thought was going to be another TREK short story. I’d only written four or five short stories . . . I’d started writing TREK as a non-fiction writer. I wrote articles at first. And then I wrote a few stories, and some of the early ones are in that little pamphlet, ‘Parted From Me and Other Stories.’ And when I started writing THE NIGHT OF THE TWIN MOONS, I didn’t know the title of the book or anything. I didn’t even know that it was a novel. I thought I had a brilliant line with which to start a short story. ‘My husband, attend.’, which is the first line of NTM. I didn’t know what the situation was, I didn’t know what—”
WINSTON: “You’re kidding!”
JEAN, “No, I wrote that . . .”
WINSTON: “You started out with a line?!”
JEAN: “Yes . . .”
WINSTON (points to Pat): “That beats his joke!”
PAT: “The winner!”
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