Author's Note for "Third Time Lucky"
I wrote the first draft of this story while I was on vacation in Cuba. Now this was almost thirty years ago so even the main tourist areas weren't as, well, touristy as they currently are, but that didn't really matter because we were nowhere near the main tourist areas. We were in a re-purposed resort for workers in the sugar industry at the other end of the island. Isolated. Gorgeous. Significantly cheaper. Slight danger of being electrocuted in the shower but, hey, nothing's perfect.
While exploring the property, I found a set of hidden concrete stairs that lead down into a tiny cove, and every day after that I sat on the top step for a couple of hours with an old spiral bound notebook and an assortment of pens and wrote a story about what happens when the most powerful wizard in the world is also the laziest wizard in the world. The small, friendly lizards who watched me work became a part of not only this story but of all the Magdelene stories to follow, along with a representative of the semi-feral cats who dined on them. (Pregnant cat, dead lizard; true story.)
The first friend who read "Third Time Lucky" moved all my commas one word to the left. That still happens, but now professionals do it.
I sent the story first to Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress. She rejected it. Then to Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. They rejected it. Then I sent it to Amazing Stories and George Scithers, the editor at the time, called me making suggestions for improvements. (It was a simpler time.) A little confused, I asked if this meant that he wanted to see it again after I implemented his suggestions. He sighed and said, "Yes." So I did. And he did. And he bought the story. I got the letter the day before I left on a trip to NYC where I met Sheila Gilbert and passed over the manuscript for Child of the Grove. (Again, simpler time.) And when Sheila asked me if I had any professional credits, I told her, "I just sold a story to George Scithers at Amazing." Maybe that meant she took the manuscript more seriously? Who knows.... but talk about third time lucky.
Excluding the two poems I had published in the Picton Gazette when I was ten (although they paid me five dollars each, I usually do exclude them) "Third Time Lucky" was my first professional sale – the contract is dated 13th September 1985 and it appeared in the November 1986 edition of Amazing Stories. Because of publishing schedules, it was the second story to come out – the first was "What Little Girls are Made Of" in Magic in Ithkar III – but this, this is where it all started.