Now I Am The Master

One of the stories I've never put out to sell was "You've Got A Friend," which I wrote twenty or so years back, in major part to prompt Big Anklevich into writing me back.  

He was busy with work and family and covering up those unfortunate test subjects who mixed spider venom and Red Bull outside of Oakland at the time (suffice it to say that we wouldn't have those freeway signs that tell you what air quality is [not to mention Hepatitis-C] without his contributions), and he kept not answering my emails (this was before texting effectively eliminated both letter-writing and human interaction).  I sent him hopefully-disturbing messages such as "wHy dONt yOu aNSwEr mE, fRieND dARreLL?" and "wHy dONt yOu wANt tO pLaY wiTH mE?"* and eventually, I wrote him an entire scene of a robot forcing a well-endowed man to play boardgames with it, clearly inspired by my friend.

Eventually, he started writing me again, but one day, I took the scene fragments and crafted a story around it, and that story became "You've Got A Friend," which we ran on the 'steef once as an incentive episode.  It's the last story in my upcoming audio collection (the one that's now three years overdue), and it's probably the one I had to work hardest on, trying to make the robot voice convincingly robotic, yet still clear and understandable.

And at the very end, there's a dedication to Big, with the note "who should have written more."

But oh, how the tables have turned.  

As you know, Obi-Wan, Big Anklevich has had his most productive year ever, and has, incredibly, managed to make his word count even on days when he feels tired, unmotivated, ill, and uninspired.  He reached his yearly goal a full four months before his deadline, and even then, he kept on writing.

Me, I can see that somebody somewhere has a head cold (or just hear the mere mention of the name George R.R. Martin), and use that as an excuse not to write.

Once upon a time, Big was my junior . . . but now he has left me far behind, writing more in the past six months than I have in two years.  It's like a movie I once saw, where this dude in black armor says, "I was but a learner; now I am the master."

I think it might have been The Black Hole?

"A wolf remains a wolf, even if it has not eaten your sheep."

*Which had the Sacramento P.D. in quite an uproar before they too discovered texting, and shut down half the department.