| Interview: R.A. Salvatore |
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Page 2 of 5
A couple of months later, in February, 1978, New England got clobbered by the worst blizzard in history. Roads simply disappeared. I woke up that morning, hoping we wouldn’t have school (the weatherman said we might get a little snow). I looked out my bedroom window, down to the driveway and my treasured ‘69 Cougar, and low and behold, all I saw was a black spot! I thought my car had been stolen! Of course, when I got downstairs, I realized that the small black spot was the top of the car’s roof.So we had no school - for the rest of the week. Trapped inside, I pulled out the books my sister had given me, and “WHAM,” my life changed. All I could think while I was reading was “why didn’t someone give me this book to read in the 9th grade?” When I got back to school, I immediately changed my major to Communications/Media, specializing in technical writing/journalism. This meant I would still focus on the math courses that served as my comfort zone, but it allowed me to take all of my electives in the literature area. I suddenly found myself craving those old feelings I used to know in my room with Snoopy and Charlie Brown. I thought I would set the world on fire when I got out of college. I had done quite well in a field that was growing. Unfortunately, we got hit with a recession in 1981. Rather than working as a tech writer for a computer company, I found myself right back at my job in the factory, the job that had, along with bouncing in local nightclubs, had financed my college career. For eight-to-ten hours a day, I would stand on a metal bench beside a big metal table, loading lumps of scrap plastic into a grinder. It was honest work, certainly, but it was mindless. I was dying. To make things worse, I had run out of fantasy books to read. There was noAmazon.com at that time, no Internet at all where I might find suggestions for further reading. To save myself, I dug out that old short story from high school and spent my days losing myself in my imagination. Physically, I was working through the motions of grinding plastic, but mentally, I was far, far away. I was turning that old story into a world of my own, and a fantasy novel of my own. I never intended to be a professional writer; as the story developed, the one thing I had in my hopes was that this would be something tangible to separate me from the nameless, numbered masses. I would have something my grandkids could hold up to their kids and say, “Want to know more about your great-grandfather?” When I finished the book, some friends read it and told me I should send it out. I hired my sister to type it (when I was in high school, you were either on a college track or a business track - the college track ignored typing) and went to the library to learn about submitting books. I sent it to all the usual suspects and got all the usual, and often brutal, rejection letters. |
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