Back in the 80s I got some incredible rejection letters from Gardner Dozois ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardner_Dozois ), who was then editor of Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine. (Asimov's published 2 stories of mine and 1 poem.) On my wall right now is his rejection letter for "Vox Humana," the short story that became my Deviations series. It's single-spaced, typed (on a typewriter!), taking up just about all of a 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 piece of paper, with handwritten addenda in the margins. When I think of the sheer volume of stuff that must have bombarded his desk, letters like that (and I have more than one) boggle my mind. After I signed my contract for Covenant, the first book in the series, I sent him a thank-you letter.

Back in 1975 I got a rejection letter from Moshe Feder ( sandial.livejournal.com/profile ), then an assistant editor at Amazing/Fantastic (he's now at Tor), in which he'd also typed a long missive following the magazine's boilerplate text, both front and back. He'd underlined "Don't let rejection discourage you ... perseverance is a key" on the boilerplate. His typed letter began, "If you're really only 16 I'd say that you may well have a career in writing ahead of you." (I was.) He then followed with advice on story conception and ended with an invitation to join a NYC-based SF fan club called Fistfa. I lived in Brooklyn at the time, and my mother was instrumental in making me able to go to meetings where I met people like Andrew Porter (publisher of Locus, www.locusmag.com/ ).

Fistfa met every other Friday night as I recall. We spent the evening passing around prozines, semiprozines, fanzines, and in my case story manuscripts. At around 1AM we carpooled to Chinatown, where we descended on Wo Hop -- literally descended, because it was in a basement at the time. (It no longer is, and I was excited to see it shown briefly in the movie Miss Congeniality with Sandra Bullock.) We continued to pass literature around our large table at Wo Hop, along with Chinese food and glasses of tea that we gathered on large trays. I usually got home between 3 and 5 on Saturday morning.

To be honest, I was too young to realize what I'd become a part of. I lost track of the group while in college, but last year I wrote a thank-you letter to Moshe, too.

Robert Frazier ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frazier ), former editor of Star*Line (he'd passed the reins to me), is still very active in the Science Fiction Poetry Association, which I rejoined last year after a long absence -- www.sfpoetry.com/ He even went so far as to direct me away from Star*Line and toward publications with greater exposure, telling me he'd take a poem if they didn't. I am only beginning to get back in touch with people I'd lost track of in the speculative poetry field, including Marge Simon (current S*L editor, hometown.aol.com/margsimon/ ) and her husband Bruce Boston ( hometown.aol.com/bruboston/ ), plus I've begun meeting editors who began making their marks in the field after I basically fell off the face of the earth for a while.

I get a lot of good pointers from my workshop buddies at Inverness Writers (the lesser-known Inverness is the seat of Citrus County, FL, though its Cooter Festival garnered a spot on The Daily Show a while back). IW includes but is not limited to: (1) Nelson Williams, founding workshop member, retired lawyer, retired award-winning editor (at the newspaper at OSU-Bowling Green as I recall), now published regularly in local and national train-collecting magazines; (2) Belea Keeney, www.beleakeeney.com/ -- published regularly in multiple genres, and my consciousness-raiser in adverbitis and semicolonitis; and (3) Meredith West, who's published a couple of pieces in the St. Petersburg Times and is finishing up a terrific YA historical. A few years ago I also did extensive mutual workshopping with Loretta Rogers, www.lorettacrogersbooks.com/ -- who recently made her first novel sale.

I haven't workshopped poetry in a while because I've been concentrating on fiction, but I also have to include my workshop buddies in the Florida State Poets Association (Gingerbread chapter), and in particular Madelyn Eastlund. Lyn recently gave the keynote address at the conference of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies ( www.nfsps.com/index.htm )and was part of its Editors' Voices panel (she is a former NFSPS president and edits the Harp-Strings Poetry Journal and Poets' Forum Magazine, plus edits and produces the FSPA newsletter Of Poets And Poetry).

Lyn also lives around the corner from me and was very good friends with my mother, with whom she also workshopped until my mother's death in 1982. We have a kind of foster mother/foster daughter relationship that is very special to me. Every so often I'll stop by her place and we'll engage in shop-talk-plus for hours.