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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JLowder" data-source="post: 9680023" data-attributes="member: 28003">TSR was very much a trial-by-fire sort of workplace, where you were challenged quickly and expected to step up and learn multiple jobs. Anything that might be connected to your formal role and then some, really. In Books, editors handled the usual proofing, copyediting, and story editing, but even there you held different roles on different books. An editor would proof one novel, copyedit another, do story edit on a third. We also would get called in to work on ad copy and ad campaigns, draft back cover copy, create art orders for the covers or maps or interior illos. The art orders meant working with the art directors, who never get nearly enough credit for what they did, and the artists, many of whom were in the building, up in the art room—so you could go up and talk with Brom or Caldwell or Easley as they were painting the cover for your project. You got assigned promo articles for Dragon and Polyhedron. At one point I ended up writing a translation routine/procedure to allow various flavors of PC and Apple machines in the building to access content files. (This was in '88 or very early '89; I do not have a programming background apart from one intro class as an undergrad.) I did some typesetting corrections here and there on the giant typesetting machine when the typesetters were jammed up and Books needed something turned around quickly. I handled the department presentations at the Random House sales conference one year. I did a lot of work with the slush (unsolicted manuscripts) and "discovered" Elaine Cunningham, Christie Golden, Mary Herbert, and others. We were a very small department so we wore a lot of different hats. That was true throughout the building.The Games folks came from varied backgrounds, with all sorts of different degrees or previous gigs. Books was a bit more uniform. Most of us had degrees in lib arts or journalism. I'm lib arts--double major in English and History, minor in Phil. I had other qualifications. I'd been a student publications editor and writer in high school, with workshops in editing at the Boston Globe and a writing class through the high school studies program at MIT. As an undergrad I was an editor on the university lit magazine for a couple years and also published some fiction with them, with one fantasy story being reprinted in a "best of" college lit collection. I was pursuing a Masters in English at the time I first interviewed at TSR and had experience teaching composition, film, and fantasy lit as a grad student. (Editing and teaching are related skill sets.) I'd volunteered for the local public TV channel magazine. (Proofing TV listings was great prep for editing game stat blocks). I'd already published a few reviews in genre film magazines and had sold an article about designing cities for superhero RPG campaigns to the hobby gaming magazine Gateways. I'd been a TTRPG gamer since the release of the Holmes box.I interviewed with TSR three different times, twice with Books, once for the job running Gen Con (which I came very close to getting, but am grateful I did not). They hired a different editor the first time I interviewed with Books because they were looking for a different skill set. But they made it pretty clear I would eventually do some editing and possibly writing for them, even if as a freelancer. At the time they hired me, Mary Kirchoff had just taken over the department and was looking for someone who would be able to handle fiction projects with heavy game crossover. (Mary knew games but was now management, and the other editors all had strengths but were not gamers.) I moved up quickly and within a year was story and eventually series editor, running projects that would turn out to be fairly important for the department and the company. I also got to do some editing and design work in Games, once I proved to Bruce Heard and the other editors up there I could meet their expectations. I was fortunate to start at TSR when I did and to get all those opportunities.</blockquote>

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