Someday I may let you touch it. But only if you're very, very good. Speaking of which, I learned years ago that I could judge fans up and down the East Coast by their opinions of Joe. Those who thought he was great were always good people themselves. Those who didn't like him were likely to be trouble.
Writing is a lonely vocation.
John's a nuclear physicist now, and Wes is a perfectly genuine Old Sea Dog. But Joseph T. Mayhew, the Disclave chair who asked me to be pro guest of honor in 1987, became my closest friend. My guess is that he was the closest friend of at least a dozen other people too that he was Ron Taylor's closest friend, Evan Phillip's closest friend, Walter Miles's closest friend, his brother Bill's closest friend, and on and on. I won't inflict the ugly details of his illness on you, but I do want to say that once before he died I sat with my ear glued to the phone for half an hour while he prayed, mostly in Latin. I was there.