DCML Digest Issue 11

[Don Rosa]

> From: "Matthew Williams" <kingofduckburg at apptechnc.net>
> Subject: Yet More Universe Talk/Reply to Don Rosa
>  Now that I've heard that you set all of your
> stories in the fifties, references to the time period really jump
> out at me.
> Sometimes that enhances a story for me; sometimes it doesn't.  Honestly,
> aside from "The Life of Scrooge" stories, I believe "The Treasure
> of the Ten
> Avatars" is the only one of your stories that I read and thought, "This
> wouldn't work in the nineties."

Heh heh... you don't know the haffuvvit. I recall when I wrote that story, I
had a scene where somebody mentions the exchange rate between dollars and
rupees. To get that correct for the time period of my story, I consulted a
1950's encyclopedia yearbook! Now WHO would know I did that?!?! Nobody! But
this is one of the many (*many*!) extra bits of labor (unpaid!) that I go to
on my stories simply for my own personal, private amusement. I enjoy
thinking about all the hidden secrets there are in my stories waiting to be
discovered, or possibly *never* discovered.
Another incident -- at a big book signing at a shopping mall in Helsinki, a
man (not wanting to stand in line for 4 hours) passed me a note (I think
I've told this story here before?); when I later read it, it said he was a
botanist who had read my "The Last Lord of Eldorado" story which took place
on the Bolivian plateau... and he was amazed to see in the corner of a panel
an orchid of the type that only grows in that region in all the world.
Yeah... he was the one guy I put that detail there for. I love it.

> From: "Anthony Vuono" <avuono at UDel.Edu>
> Subject: Concerning the Rosa debate

No... no specific comments. Just thank you for one of the most level-headed
(and flattering!) comments on the matter thus far.
(But please don't say things like you've been reading my stories since the
third grade. I can't monkey with my own timeline like I can with $crooge's!)
(Creeeeaaaaaakkkkk...)