Darkover Grand Council 9

(Don - 43rd)(Thomas - 30th)

1986: 28-30 November

Radisson Hotel, Wilmington, DE

GOH: Anne McCaffrey


Lisa and Melissa surrendered to Don & Thomas' blandishments and came to Darkover this year. They quickly became as enchanted as the boys were.

Don doesn't remember being on any panels at Darkover 9, and the pocket program offers nothing to indicate that he was.

Three things stand out in Don's mind at this Darkover. The first was a panel with MZB, Anne McCaffrey, and someone else -- the rest of us were in the audience -- and MZB started going off on how terrible romance fiction was, and how any writer who did it was perverting her talent and being nothing better than a whore. At which point Don stuck up his hand and said, "Why don't we get some reaction from Ms. McCaffrey, who has written some wonderful romance fiction that isn't hackwork at all?" Later, Don showed up at MZB's autograph table with a copy of Souvenir of Monique . . . a decidedly trashy romance that MZB had written at the beginning of her career -- and released under her own name.

The second thing Don remembers is going to Anne McCaffrey's autograph table and handing her his copy of Cooking Out of This World. As she signed it, she said, "Do you know how rare this is?" Don twinkled and answered, "You've just made it a lot rarer."

The third thing happened at a Barbara Michaels panel. Lisa, you see, had gotten ahold of an obscure book called The Lustful Turk, which Michaels makes reference to in at least one of her books. Our friend Marilyn (also a Barbara Michaels fan) learned of this and couldn't restrain herself. Up went her hand, and when Michaels called on her, Marilyn pointed to Lisa and blurted, "She has a copy of The Lustful Turk." "I've never seen one," Michaels said. "Where on earth did you get it?"

As we recall, Lisa (as always) did the classy thing and gave the book to Michaels.


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