"Egg Drop Soup"

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"Best Enterprise story in the book. Dr. Phlox is so well-written, and this is a sweet, but very emotional story about having hope."
-- D. Fisher, Amazon.com

"...unsappily written, very readable..."
-- Egghead and Ivory Tower

The most inspiring thing I've ever heard about something I've written comes from a convention report from one of the other authors in the book:

"You see, earlier this week, I'd read some more of the book myself. I read ‘Egg Drop Soup’ (and loved it, Robert). So I was passing the currently empty game room when I heard a very theatrical voice say something that sounded very much like the story.

"I went back and found that the child from the auction, his mother, and several other adults and children, were all sitting in a game room and the mother was reading the book. So I sat down -- I mean, how could I not!? It's my, our, the, book. The girl had just met Phlox, told him children were scared of her too. I listened and watched, as is a writer's nature. No one interrupted, everyone laughed at the right places, a few wet eyes appeared. Other people offered to read and before it was over Enterprise, Voyager and TNG were read through, ‘Concurrence’ was the last story read. During this people continued to gather, but I didn’t see anyone leave. And before someone came in to clear the room for a game, there was only standing room in a 50 (or was it 100? It wasn’t very big) person room. Our work was what drew the crowd. Perhaps the most touching thing about the reading of 'Egg Drop Soup' was this nine-year-old girl I'd met at another convention who loves Star Trek, she’s in love with Riker, and has leukemia. I heard her whisper to her mother, 'Do you think that writer knows me?' It was beautiful and heart-wrenching that a nine-year-old knew exactly what the story was about, but could be so thrilled that a writer might have been writing about her because he wrote about her illness. (I did not tell her he was from Canada, I thought she should keep her belief. Hope that was okay, Robert.)" Jolene Blaylock Shatner

Real life is always so much more amazing than fiction.

Related posts: Zen fiction, Interview with Susan S. McCrackin