Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Mattress Fund by Allan Rouselle


Allan Rouselle was the penultimate nada in our Clarion West class. When we all first got into Clarion West, a few of us were already published in pro markets. Those of us that weren't called ourselves the Nada Crew. After we finished the workshop, there was a flurry of story sales and the Nada Crew shrank fast, until it was just Allan and me.

Allan then sold the short story, Band of Sisters, to the anthology, Hags, Sirens, and other Bad Girls of Fantasy, which made me the lone and ultimate nada. He's also sold Everybody Stops at Boston's to Cosmic Cocktails and was a contributor and contributing editor for the upcoming Lunacy: the Best of the Cornell Lunatic. I believe "the Cornell Lunatic" is one of Allan's nicknames, am I right, Allan? He also wrote and stars in the video posted above.

At Clarion West, Allan drafted the best Campbell Award presentation speech of all time. It began with, "A lot of now famous writers have won the Campbell Award, but have you ever heard of..." followed by a list of obscure Campbell Award winners. I was impressed that he knew them all. He then lamented that no one had ever asked him to present the Award, and given the brilliance of that speech, I just can't imagine why. Allan was also one of the only other members of the class who knew Russian. Or, more accurately, he knows Russian and I had two years of it once. I could almost decipher what he wrote on his door notepad. If he was standing next to me and helping me, that is.

No comments:

Post a Comment