In Aaron Sorkin’s still partially excellent The West Wing, the President tells someone who wants to make the impossible happen for the sake of his boss “You don’t want to be the guy, you wanna be the guy the guy relies on!” I’m having that translated into Latin as my family motto: when it comes to writing, if someone tells me they need a good story pronto there is nothing I like more than being the person who can help them out.
The first time I heard about Stewart Sheargold’s Locked in Space it was because one of the writers Stewart had commissioned for the book had to withdraw, and there was a 10,000 word hole where their story was meant to be. Stewart asked Obverse Books supremo Stuart Douglas if he knew anyone who might be able to turn a replacement in to a reasonably tight deadline. And Stuart thought of me.