A History of My Writing in Nauseating Detail
By Steve Lazarowitz

The Beginning (1962-1990)

The first of January 1962 was a great day for me even if I don’t remember it. On that fateful day, I was squeezed into the real world having successfully completed my pre-birth schooling. I wouldn’t call entering the real world from a mother’s womb a graduation, though the analogy isn’t inappropriate, for once you leave the protected environment of school, it is unlikely you’ve been well prepared for the life outside.

I was born seven months to the day after my parents married. I had been told I was premature and for years believed it, until I saw my birth certificate, saw my birth weight, and did the math. My mom denies I was conceived out of wedlock, a pointless exercise she’ll continue for the rest of her life. I only chide her about it because I know it annoys her.

You might wonder why I bring up the whole sordid affair. What could my birth possibly have to do with my writing career? Well, I’ll tell you.

I’m half convinced even at the moment of birth, I had already been writing. I can almost picture my first story scribed on the wall of my mother’s womb in amniotic fluid... prenatal hieroglyphics. As I was not the first to pass through that area, I can picture the illegible scrawlings of the siblings who came before me--hacks both of them. Neither have my flair for the written word, if I don’t say so myself.

I was born into a family of girls. I often tell people I have three sisters, which is only partially true. I actually have four half-sisters, and one “full” sister. As I see it, four halves equal two and adding in the full sister makes three; therefore, I have three sisters, QED. However those three sisters exist in five bodies, which means at some point I lived in a house with six women (five sisters and my mom)... and one toilet. Even today, so many years later, I am happiest when I’m in the bathroom for any length of time.

But you haven’t come to this place to hear about my bladder--at least I hope not. You’re (hopefully) interested in my writing, which began, of course, with reading. I don’t know any writer who didn’t start by reading and, as I had many older sisters, I was read to constantly. I memorized many books before I was old enough to read them and read a fair amount of books as soon as I was able.

In the second grade, my poem “Fall” was published in the “Bent Twig”, the P.S. 272 poetry magazine. I reproduce it here, mostly because I can’t believe I still remember it.

FALL

Leaves are falling off the trees
Changing color in the breeze
Red, yellow, orange and brown
Falling down on the ground

Not bad for a seven year old. In third grade I wrote my first short story (started it anyway, I never finished it) in which the Loch Ness monster was really a Russian submarine. The major plot flaw (what the hell would Russia want with Scotland?) was something an eight-year old wasn’t equipped to answer, but looking back, that seemed a pretty creative idea for a child.

Here are some of the early childhood books I remember fondly... Fox in Socks, Curious George Gets a Medal, Amelia Bedelia, The Baseball Life of Mickey Mantle, Helen Keller, How to Care for Your Monster (and keep him healthy happy and howling), Dinosaurs and other Prehistoric Reptiles, 101 Elephant Jokes, The Phantom Tollbooth and Where the Wild Things Are. Not a comprehensive list, but these are the books I loved, and read again and again.

I don’t know what happened, but somewhere along the way I lost the urge to read. Perhaps I had outgrown baby food, but had yet to taste adult fare. That changed one summer when I was bored. Why are kids always bored? I had more to do than anyone could imagine, but I was bored. A paraphrased conversation from memory...

“Dad, I’m bored.”

“Why don’t you read a book?”

“Yeah, right. Summer vacation and you expect me to read.”

I was in sixth grade at the time, and had read Flowers for Algernon and The Mouse that Roared in school, both of which I enjoyed. I can’t imagine why I thought books I read over the summer I wouldn’t enjoy. Then again, I was skirting the edge of my teenage years, and therefore contrary.

“Tell you what, Steve. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take you to the library, I’ll pick out a book for you, and if you don’t like it, I won’t ask you to read a book ever again.”

This was the type of thing at which my father excelled. The deals always sounded great when he said them, but they never seemed to work out how I thought they would. I mean, how cool was that? All I had to do was say I didn’t like it, and I was home free. I was game.

So off to the library we went. I sat at a table and watched my dad patiently (he seemed to do everything patiently) go through shelf after shelf of books, until he finally found what he was looking for. I never found out if he’d had that book in mind the whole time, or if he just stumbled onto it. He brought it over and placed it on the table in front of me.

“The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas,” I read aloud.

I didn’t have a library card of my own, so we used my dad’s. He was such a voracious reader, I was surprised his card didn’t have skid marks. And home we went.

I read the book in two days, then read it again. I’d never read a book quite like it and had to admit I was hooked. Which is when I realized, we had a houseful of books I hadn’t yet read. My dad had a huge collection of science fiction novels and a smaller collection of westerns. I never did get into the westerns, but I started going through the SF books at light speed. I started with The Expendables series by Richard Avery, the Family D’Lambert books by Stephen Goldin, the Doc Savage books by Kenneth Robeson and quite a few others.

I never again claimed to be bored during school holidays. Well, that’s not entirely true. Once, when I was fourteen, I did it again.

“Dad, I’m bored.”

“Why don’t you make a scrapbook?

“A scrapbook? Of what?”

“Whatever you like? How about Star Trek ?”

A Star Trek scrapbook. Brilliant. For years I worked on it, and might even have it somewhere but I’m no longer certain I didn’t give it away along with the rest of my Star Trek stuff. I’m no longer a Star Trek fan, you see. It’s not that I don’t like Star Trek , I simply don’t have the time go get into all the new series. My knowledge of Gene Roddenberry’s creation is so dated I’d need to take a four year course at a University to catch up. I mean I had only just figured out who the Ferengi are, and suddenly the Borg show up. What’s up with that? Exactly what is a seven of nine? I don’t get it. Screw this, it’s too much work. It was so nice when I only had one series to follow.

When I was in intermediate school, I discovered fantasy and started adding authors like JRR Tolkien, John Varley and Fred Saberhagen to my rapidly growing library (and yes, I know Saberhagen is best known for his Beserker books which are SF, but I started with the Book of Swords Trilogy and Empire of the East, both of which I loved).

I started writing not only science fiction stories, but Star Trek satires. Some were pretty good. My biggest problem in those early years of writing was that I’d begin story after story, but never managed to finish them. I always had great ideas, but didn’t have the attention span to see them through to the end.

Another thing I need to mention are the Star Trek Conventions. I went to quite a few of these, starting when I was fifteen. I met the first girl I ever slept with at a Star Trek convention, and we dated for over a year, quite a feat for a fifteen year old. She was a couple of years older than me. My mother thought she was a tramp. I thought I was in love. Happily, once my mother actually got to know her, her misconceptions dissipated rather quickly. My own, however, lingered on for considerably longer.

I met most of the original Star Trek cast back at those cons, and a few other people who weren’t cast members, but were memorable nonetheless. Two events stand out above all others.

One incident occurred while getting Walter Koenig’s (Checkov's) autograph. He asked my name and I answered Nagennif, my then alter ego. Walter said to me it was a very unusual name. I told him it was contrived... Finnegan spelled backwards. He laughed and signed his name on a black and white photo. A short time later I realized he’d signed it backwards. If I still have that Star Trek scrapbook, that picture is going to be worth money!

Another time, I was standing near the dealer’s room, trying to figure out what I was going to do next, when a middle-aged man looked at me and said: “You want my autograph, right?” He snatched a picture from my hands, signed it, and vanished into the crowd. I was astonished when I looked down, only to find I had been standing right next to Isaac Asimov, who’d signed his name on a picture of Nichelle Nicholls, who you might know as Lt. Uhura. Those were the days.

There are, of course, huge numbers of stories from conventions. Everyone who regularly attends cons has dozens, but these two will have to suffice, for anyone who hasn’t attended a con is already bored.

When I was sixteen I started my first novel based on a Dungeons and Dragons game I’d played. I wrote this in three notebooks over the period of a year and a half, on more than three hundred hand-written pages. I’ve rewritten the novel so many times, it’s barely recognizable in its current form, but it finally did become available under the name A Leaf in the Wind (Double Dragon Publications). This is my “baby” (I think most writers have one), but how could it not be? I lived with it for twenty-six years before it finally became a reality. The two sequels, Consigned to Darkness and the Price of Freedom are forthcoming, neither of which has anything to do with that long ago role-playing game, though many of the same characters appear.

Looking back, I can see the origins of my writing style already peeking through, but a sixteen year old doesn’t have the maturity or perspective to write something deep, particularly because you could take everything I knew about women back then, put it in a thimble, and still have room for everything else I knew. The women in that early version were solely present to gratify a teenager’s lust, nothing more. As I grew older, I took advice from women I knew and painted those lovely ladies in a more favorable light. They became stronger, but in some ways more tragic. Yet I prefer these new versions to their prehistoric counterparts, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

My writing schedule made something of a dent in my reading schedule, but nothing could tame that beast completely. Here are some of the books I read in high school that have stayed with me all this time; the Amber Series by Roger Zelazny, the Incarnations of Immorality series by Piers Anthony, the Soul Rider series by Jack Chalker, the Best Short Stories of Frederick Brown, the Skaith Trilogy by Leigh Brackett, The Eternity Brigade by Stephen Goldin, Illusions by Richard Bach and of course, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by the dearly departed Douglas Adams.

After I finished my first novel, I turned my attention to short stories, some of which actually got printed in non-paying print zines.

My story The Inner War appeared in “Antares”, the Stuyvesant High School science fiction magazine. It had been heavily edited by my friend Alex (I have no idea if it was improved or not, since he did it on his own and I never had a chance to compare the two versions). I was listed under staff in the magazine as bouncer, having thrown an undesirable out of one of our club meetings. I had real anger-management issues back then, which remain with me in some form to this day, though nothing like I had in high school.

The other experience was working on a science fiction fanzine with my friend Larry, who published it with the help of the 92nd Street YMHA. I came up with the name as well... “esrevnI” (which is the inverse of Inverse). I was trying to be clever. Larry was the editor and I had three stories in it, two solo pieces and one I wrote with Larry that was just awful, but funny as hell. Anyway, in the introduction to that fanzine, Larry wrote words I’d never forget... “To those of you whose work I ripped to shreds and pasted back again according to my own standards, I apologize. And to those of you whose work I should have but didn’t, I also apologize. This means you Steve.” I laughed for a long time after I read that, assuming it had been a joke. I am now just as certain it wasn’t.

When I was nineteen, I submitted a story to "Asimov’s Science Fiction" magazine. I received a form letter rejection (the kind I deserved, the story was dreadful), after which I found myself locked into a retail job at a chain of electronic stores that kept me busy for the next six years. Thus my writing career had ended, or so I thought.

The last bit of writing I can lay claim to in those long ago days, appeared when that company for which I worked went out of business and I found myself working in a local computer store for a fraction of the salary. That transition hit me hard and I sat down and wrote the Doublestar Player’s Handbook, an instruction book for a pen and paper based role-playing game of my own creation.

The amount of work I did on that 118 page Player’s Handbook was absolutely staggering. I discarded all the things I hated about other game systems and made an RPG somewhat more realistic and quite a bit easier to play from a player’s point of view. I printed fifty copies on my own and sold most of them at the computer store I worked in. Everyone who bought a copy loved it. Who knows what would have happened with it had my first marriage not fallen apart at that crucial juncture?

In her separation agreement my estranged wife alleged that during our marriage, we both worked on a fantasy role playing game system, which she claimed she was entitled to half of. What actually had happened was I wrote a game system and she edited the manuscript for typos, but the damage was done. Angry at that particular betrayal, I shelved Doublestar and never sold another copy again.

I consider that betrayal and my reaction to it the end of this period of my writing, but the story has only just started. I hope you return to read the next installment, affectionately subtitled, What the Hell Have I Gotten Myself Into?

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