Back when I was doing a lot of work for DC Comics, I had the good fortune of meeting editor emeritus Julie Schwartz, the man most responsible for the resurrection of superhero comics in the late fifties and early sixties.

Julie–short for Julius–was part of the original cadre of science fiction fans in America. He went on to become, among other things, the fledgling Ray Bradbury’s literary agent. But what he did most to shape my life was revive the popularity of the superhero in America, repackaging Golden Age favorites like Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the Atom for me and my contemporaries. Life without superhero comics…I can’t even imagine it. And it was Julie who made sure I didn’t have to.

Comic book writer Mark Waid told me to visit Julie whenever I was at DC and pry a story out of him. I took that advice as often as I could. It turned out that Adam Strange and Space Ranger were the results of a friendly competition to see who could come up with the best new space character. Ray Palmer, the Atom’s alter ego, was named after Julie’s friend, a vertically challenged pulp magazine editor. And so on.

But when I saw Julie standing in the hall at a Lunacon one evening, I didn’t approach him just to squeeze some more DC lore out of him. The guy was past eighty, after all, and it was after eleven o’clock, and I wanted to make sure he was all right. “Don’t worry about me,” he said, “I’m just waiting for my ride to say his goodnights.”

Still, I hung around to keep him company. “So where do you live?” I asked him. 

“Queens,” he told me.

“I grew up in Queens,” I said. “Whereabout?”

“Near Springfield Boulevard and Union Turnpike.”

“No way. I grew up near Springfield Boulevard and Union Turnpike. Where exactly?”

“An apartment building. It’s called Cambridge Hall.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “I used to deliver groceries to Cambridge Hall. Which building?”

He told me. I knew a half-dozen people who lived there. 

“Julie,” I said, “do you know how lucky you are?”

“Well,” he said, “I guess you could say I was fortunate. I’ve worked at things I’ve enjoyed, even loved, for most of my life. Not too many people can say that.”

“No,” I said, “that’s not what I mean. If I’d known Julie Schwartz lived in Cambridge Hall while I was growing up, I would have been knocking on your door every day. You never would have gotten rid of me. That’s what I mean when I say you were lucky.”

Which was right about the time Julie’s ride showed up to take him home.

Julie passed away a couple of years later at the age of 88. I went to a memorial service for him. He had selected the music himself.

I’ve met lots of inspiring people. Talented people. People to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for enriching my life. 

But none to whom I owed more than Julie Schwartz.

It was 10:00, maybe 10:30. I was sitting across a big metal desk from my editor at Warner Books and for a seriously painful twenty minutes he kept calling me “kid.”

As in “That’s a great idea, but we’re going to be able to do any more books together, kid. You know how it is, don’cha, kid? That’s the way it goes sometimes, kid.”

He was about five years younger than I was. Something about that made the “kid” thing sound more than a little irritating, and would have done so even if this editor wasn’t using the term to fire my behind.

(Since then, only one person has called me “kid” repeatedly, and that’s my dentist. Usually during root canal. There’s a certain resonance there.)

Anyway, I had written four novels for Warner, a trilogy and a standalone. None of them had been promoted real well. The first one, which was by far the most important as far as my career was concerned, never showed up in one of the biggest book store chains in the country. At all. Ever.

Whoops. That happens sometimes, kid.

So after four books’ worth of so-so sales, Warner was cutting me loose. Along with a bunch of other new and mid list authors, no doubt. Hey, publishing can be as cruel as any other business, sometimes more so, and nobody had told me I had to choose that way to make a living.

So it wasn’t a matter of my feeling sorry for myself. It was just so…what’s the opposite of  uplifting? It was that.

My first reaction was to beg. I could write better. I could take less money. I desperately didn’t want to stop being an author, especially so soon after I had begun.

Fortunately, I stopped short of the begging thing. Instead, I did something I never would have expected of myself. I got angry.

Screw you, I thought at the editor, though I didn’t say it out loud. Who are you to pass judgement on me? Because that’s the thing about writing: You can accept constructive criticism, sure, and you can actually learn something from pretty much anyone, but in the end the only one whose judgement counts is your own.

I’ve told my kids this a thousand times: Don’t let anyone else define you. That’s your job. Only you get the opportunity to tell yourself who you are.

So even before I walked out of that editor’s office, I was working on a very healthy anger. And it paid off. It helped me keep my head up through that long, grey subway ride home. And before terribly long, my agent called and asked me if I had ever thought about writing…well, Star Trek novels…which turned out to be a pretty good gig for me for a nice, long while.

Now, I’d be lying if I said there weren’t some dark days in there, days when I cursed God and man. Times when it looked like my best days were behind me, and maybe I was lucky to have had even that little taste of success.

But in the end, I think those times made me a stronger person and a stronger writer. They made me appreciate what I had even more. And when the next dark time came along, I was able to cope with it a little better.

Because that’s the writer’s portion, folks. It ain’t all roses. But when it is…boy, do those suckers smell sweet. And they make up plenty for the bad times.

So…you have time to watch TV? Really? How do you do that? Does it involve a deal with an infernal being? Because, I mean, that wouldn’t be a total deal-breaker.

When I was young, in fact all the way up through high school, I watched prime time TV with a singular devotion. Not just science fiction but everything. Have Gun, Will Travel. The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. Colonel Bleep. Coronet Blue. Candid Camera. The Smothers Brothers. Captain Nice. I’ve Got A Secret. If I missed a show it was only because it was on at the same time as a show I was already watching, and in those days you didn’t have the option of a DVR.

On Saturday mornings I watched cartoons with near-religious fervor. If I didn’t start my day with a heaping helping of Jonny Quest, Heckle and Jeckle, and the Herculoids, I just didn’t feel right.

In college, all that went away. Suddenly I didn’t have a TV nor did I feel the need for one. I don’t know if it was TV or me that changed, but we were no longer a couple. We would run into each other at parties, exchange a few awkward comments, and gratefully recall other engagements. We had grown apart.

It happens.

Sure, there were shows I watched and enjoyed later in life. In some cases, enjoyed immensely. All In The Family comes to mind. The Star Trek programs, of course. Beauty and The Beast. Cheers. Hill Street Blues. Seinfeld. More recently, Big Bang and Madmen and Fringe, and Game of Thrones.

But it ain’t destination TV for me because there are so many other places I have to be, some of them rather unexpectedly, and I hate missing the odd episode and coming in the following week in the middle of a crisis I don’t understand. In fact, these days I seldom watch a dramatic series until it’s over and available on Netflix.

So right now, I’m the wrong guy to ask about Sleepy Hollow and Dracula and SHIELD. A few years from now, sure.

But now, not so much.

Normally I wake up at 6:30. Today, I woke a little after 4:00. Why? Maybe I’d had too much coffee the day before. Maybe I hadn’t gotten enough exercise.

Or maybe I had a character issue I had to resolve.

I’m not sure about the coffee or the amount of exercise (I ran for twenty minutes, though I sometimes do twice that many). But the character issue? That I’m sure about. The character’s name is Uncle Mike. He’s a major player in the book I’m working on, for which I’ll shortly be initiating a Kickstarter campaign. It’s called I Am The Salamander and it’s one of the coolest stories I’ve ever written. But this one character…this one furshlugginer character…he didn’t like where I was going with him.

And he and I, we had to have a talk about it. A talk that couldn’t wait till morning, apparently. So we talked. We hashed things out. And he won, as characters always do. All’s well again in his world. In mine, I had to get up at 4:00. Uncle Mike is sleeping the sleep of the just. I’m writing this blog, watching the sun come up, knowing what kind of day follows a mercilessly abbreviated night.

Ah, the life of a writer.