“If You Can Ask The Question…It’s Not Too Late”

Many years ago, I met Leo and Diane Dillon, artist friends of and collaborators with the great Harlan Ellison, and TRUE masters of their craft:: where Diane stopped drawing a line, Leo picked it up, and vice versa. I was so pleased to meet them, and they extended an invitation to visit with them if I ever came to Greenwich Village. I eventually did take that invitation, with the intent to ask them about my 1st wife’s artistic ambitions. They were so pleasant and filled with life, such a natural blending of two souls that it really, deeply hit me that I was in the presence of something special.

It was another version of what I’ve experienced in the presence of creators like Ellison, Prince, Bradbury, Spielberg. Something…above my own level. And as I spoke to them, I realized I was not being honest. I wasn’t there to talk about Toni’s work. I was there because I was terrified about my own.

Someone once said that the problem with Hollywood is that it is like climbing a mountain of dung. That if you aren’t careful, by the time you get to the top you’ve lost your sense of smell.

Well…my journey in the publishing industry has been likened to pogo sticking through a mine field. There were many barriers I had to work around, in the company of people who denied there were any barriers at all. As I’ve said, one SF editor lost all my respect when they tried to tell me black people weren’t interested in SF, that that was why Octavia and I had been alone in the field for 20 years.