Donald Duck & Co # 7 - 2000

[Gerstein, David DK - ECN]

	Hey Jørgen,

	My thanks are long overdue for the kind words you gave me about my
recent Pegleg Pete birthday story. I'm damn glad you enjoyed it - you'll
never know how I secretly burned the midnight oil, frantically trying to
finish the story after-hours and get it done by the day Byron was to start
editing it (Oops! Now you know! :-).

>Once you told me 
>(jokingly) that you put the characters into the story, and then let 
>their personalities run the story. It does show that this is what you've 
>been doing here.

Thanks for noticing this! When plotting the story, I spent quite a while
deadlocked. The opening and climax of the story were the first parts of the
story that came to my mind, so there was no question that I knew what was
going to happen there. But the lengthy gag sequence of Pete's second
childhood - with everyone trying to teach him things - was obviously going
to be the tough part. Try as I might, it was difficult to figure out what
would really work in this segment.
	Then, finally, one Sunday I sorta knew it was do or die; I forced
myself to relax totally, eating, reading, listening to music and sitting
around my flat doing nothing really active. At last, around eight o' clock,
I looked back at the outline for Page 3 of the story. 
	Suddenly, it was like Clarabelle - blabbermouth that she is -
started to write the story for me, offering to teach Pete how to drive and
then launching (for no particular reason at all) into a cranky speech about
how bad she thought today's drivers were.
	And in about five minutes, everything sort of developed from there.

>I hope we'll see more of this.

I haven't written a lot of stories lately, but I did do a story with Mickey
versus Eli Squinch last year. It will eventually turn up. I also did a short
Cousin Fethry story that was published last week. But while I do write a
story now and then, it's right now most important that I do my duty as an
*editor* around here!
	One story that I edited last summer, by the way, was Andreas Pihl's
three-parter "The Rise and Fall of Donald Duck," which he and I are both
very glad you enjoyed. The unusual panel layout and staging that you liked
so much are Andreas' own work, by the way; Mr. Colomer followed Andreas'
page layouts just about precisely, and I agree that the results came out
great!
	If you want to see more of Andreas' work, by the way, cast your eyes
toward our pocketbooks. His numerous stories for it include one ("The Rehabs
of Bounty," D 97394) that pits Mickey against Sylvester Shyster for the
first time in some while.

	David Gerstein
	<dge at ecn.egmont.com>