WINSTON: “Yes!”

JEAN (to Winston):  “Well, you remember how you ended up in a pro novel — I started with a title.”

PAT:  “A title?”

WINSTON (laughing with Jean):  “Yeah, I’m winding up as a character in one of her novels . . . More than that, the novel became a series!*  It started off as one novel, and I’m reading the outline to this thing, so she would let me approve the character . . . that was about a year and a half ago, at a FebCon.  And then at Mos Eastly Con** she let me read the final draft of the book, and I said, ‘Wait a minute!  This is not the way the outline went!  Hold it!’”  (Laughter)

JEAN (laughing):  “I had to cut the book in half . . .”

WINSTON:  “Ah hah!”

JEAN (to audience):  “You are going to hear this story from all authors!  You have to cut your book in half because it’s too large.”

WINSTON:  “You didn’t start out with a series, and neither did I.  (to audience) I started researching African culture, because I wanted to put some Swahili into the stories, I mean, Nichelle Nichols spoke a little Swahili in episodes like ‘Man Trap’ and ‘The Changeling’, though they always cut that part out of the syndicated version of the ‘Changling’ episode in New York.  So I started trying to figure out what she was saying, to begin with, and then I started going into what happens to the language and the culture.  And then I started falling in love with African poetry, not just Swahili, but all different types.  And little things began to inspire larger things, like justification for using the poetry.

“And when you start getting involved with a universe, just in dealing with your one central character, there are a number of questions you have to start asking yourself . . . What’s the size of his family?  . . .  What’s his religion?  . . .  What is his overall philosophy about life?  . . .  What is the most traumatic thing that ever happened to him as a child?  . . .  What is the happiest thing that happened to him? . . .

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* The Savage Empire Series

** May, 1980 at the LaGuardia Sheraton Hotel in New York City