The beginning of “Dragonlance” project April 26, 2019Zoltar When I was hired at TSR in 1983 as a book editor, Jean Black put me in charge of the book side of the new Dragonlance project. The game side was already hard at work on the adventure modules. The artists had done many of their fabulous paintings. The designers had chosen the main characters and given them names and stats. But nothing about them. That was my job. To flesh out the characters and provide their backgrounds. Then I had to take the story line that took up twelve modules and reduce it to fit into a trilogy. I was then supposed to give this synopsis to an author we were going to hire to write the books. (To be continued . . .)Continued from yesterday. The game design team gave me the stats for the characters. Raistlin was a third level mage. He wore red robes and he had golden skin and hour glass eyes. Raistlin’s twin, Caramon, was a normal looking hunky warrior. So I asked the design team. “Why does Raistlin have golden skin and hourglass eyes?” Their reply: “Because the artists thought it would look cool.” (To be continued.)Continued. I had to find a reason Raistlin had golden skin and hourglass eyes. I realized it must have something to do with his magic since Caramon wasn’t affected. I asked myself: what if Raistlin had to take a test to prove he was capable of handling such power? What if failure meant death? How would his over protective twin react? In those moments, I knew Raistlin. I knew he would willingly stake his life on achieving his ambition. I knew the codependent relationship between him and Caramon. I wrote their story, Test of the Twins, in 1984, Dragon Magazine, issue 83. (It should be noted that the editor, Kim Mohan, made me change the original ending, saying it was too dark.:))Continued. I began working on the story synopsis with Tracy Hickman. The plan was to give it to an author TSR was going to hire. As Tracy said, they weren’t going to pay the author very much and make up for it by not giving him the rights. We eventually chose one, paid him an advance and gave him a deadline. Ugh! He was terrible. (No, I don’t remember his name.) Tracy and I were so worried. We had fallen in love with this tale and these characters and he was ruining them. We finally took one weekend and wrote the intro and the first five chapters of Autumn Twilight. We gave those to our editor, Jean Black, and said we thought we should write this book. She told me years later she only read it so she wouldn’t hurt our feelings. But then she came out of her office and said, “Wow!” TSR fired the other author and hired us. But our problems were only starting.:)Continued. Spring 1984. Tracy and I were able to tell the story we loved. We had three months to write the book, as well as do our day jobs, so we wrote at nights and on weekends. The first game modules had come out and were being well received. Roger Elwood Moore wrote the second DL short story, A Stone’s Throw, about Tasslehoff, which appeared in Dragon Magazine, Issue 85, in May 1984. Letters came in, wanting more DL. I participated in my first play-test of DL at Tracy’s house. Terry Phillips played Raistlin using a husky, whispering voice which we loved and incorporated into the book. Tracy introduced the character of Bupu during that session and had her fall in love with Raistlin. Jean Black liked what we were doing with the book. Larry Elmore was painting an amazing cover. All going well, but clouds were on the horizon.Continued. In that time in 1984, TSR sold directly to the hobby. Their distributor, Random House, sold to the book trade (Barnes and Noble, etc.) Random House told management that our book would never sell. Who had ever heard of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman? So TSR decided to reduce its losses. We were told to cut the book so it would sell for $2.95. We had to put in a happy ending (wedding), because there would never be a book two. The company was in financial trouble and it was during this time period that they were laying off people, including many of our friends. Tracy and I were left to promote our book ourselves. DoAT was scheduled to come out in the fall of 1984. We only hoped the company would be around that long.Continued. In order to promote DL, Tracy and I decided to present a Reader’s Theater version of Dragons of Autumn Twilight for two nights at Gen Con, 1984, at Parkside University. We sent my daughter through the crowd wearing a sandwich board to give away free tickets. We were a hit! People came both nights to see it. We were building an audience for DL. Photo of the cast and the original script.Continued. DoAT was published in Nov 1984. As I said, TSR sold only to the hobby. Random House distributed to the book stores. The hobby carried the book, but that was a pretty small market. DoAT wasn’t in bookstores, which in those days were the big chains, B&N and B. Dalton. Jean Black began getting calls from customers who wanted to know where they could buy the book. She told me to call a random B&N store manager in Kansas City to see if I could find out what was going on. The manager said she’d been getting calls about the book. She told us she would love to carry it, but she had no idea who published it or where to find it. We were perplexed.Continued. So having talked to the manager at the Kansas City B&N, Jean decided we should send a copy of DoAT to B&N HQ. She asked me to call, find out the name of the fantasy buyer so we could mail a book. I called and got the central operator. She put me on hold. The next thing I knew, I was talking to the fantasy buyer himself! I kind of gulped and told him I was with TSR, the publishers of DoAT. He interrupted me to say that this was such a strange coincidence! He had just received a call from the manager in the Kansas City B&N asking about the book! I agreed it was strange.:) As it happened, Random House had “forgotten” to mention the book to the book store chains. They remedied this and in late 1984, DoAT hit the New York Times Best Seller list. Tracy and I were astounded. (So was TSR!) This led to the infamous tuna casserole incident.Continued. I received a call from someone at TSR that DoAT had hit the NY Times best seller list. I was stunned. Certainly neither Tracy nor I had ever expected this! In a daze, I fixed dinner for the kids–tuna casserole. When I was cleaning up, I found the can of Starkist on the counter. The can of cat tuna was missing. Yikes! What was funny is that the kids told me it was the best tuna casserole ever!</p> <p>So of course after DoAT hit the Times list, TSR wanted us to write more DL. We were able to tell our story! And that has always been for us what is most important. The End. 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