Ron Collins -- "Moonlighting"

Artemis Magazine

Editor: Ian Randal Strock

Moonlighting by Linda J. Dunn and Ron Collins
Published in "Artemis Magazine" -- July, 1999

excerpt:

"That's bull, and you know it. You may be able to fool yourself, Brandt Karmandy, but I know you too well."

"What do you mean?"

"The money is secondary. You're just as sick of earth politics as everybody else up here. You don't want a thriving business nearly as much as you want to beat those idiots on Earth at their own game. Admit it, Brandt. You want to be in a position to tell them to kiss your ass."

Brandt gave a slanted smile and ran his hand through what was left of his hair. She was right, of course. He never could put anything past Karen for long. He didn't want to just stop the strike. No. That was just the short-term goal. Long-term, he wanted to put an end to the union's rip-off of both miners and management once and for all.

The smile died as he realized what he really wanted more than anything else: For the moon to break free from Earth control and form their own private government.

Since when did I become a revolutionary?

When a collaboration works well, it's really a pleasure to do. I've know Linda Dunn for about as long as I've been trying to write professionally, meeting her on-line on CompuServe back in the early 1990s, then finding we actually worked in the same building in Indianapolis. (Proving once again that the world is very small, really).

I don't specifically remember why we decided to collaborate, but we did. I do remember why we chose a few of the characters--which I'll get into in a moment. Linda and I got together and generally plotted a full story at the 10,000 foot level, and then (as I remember) I wrote the first scene and sent it to Linda. Linda took off in an interesting direction, and then I took it in "Tag, your it" style. Once the piece was done, we smoothed it several times apiece, and called it finished.

It was a good collaboration in that I think it resulted in a story that neither of us could have done by ourselves. Read it--I know it doesn't sound like most of my stuff, and it doesn't sound like most of Linda's stuff.

We sent it to Stan Schmidt first, because it seemed like a Stan kinda story, and we were right. Unfortunately, he wrote back kindly saying that he had already published something simliar recently (which he had), and didn't want to do it again.

So, enter Ian Randal Strock into this story's story for the second time.

You see, a year earlier, Linda, Josh Langston, Lisa and myself were sitting in a hotel lobby at DragonCon (NASFic), when Ian walked up. He made some comment linking me and a chippendale dancer. So, Linda thought we should include the dance troup we ended up using. Given this lineage, and given that Ian was editing a moon-based magazine, and given that the story is certainly moon-based, we decided to give Ian a shot. Two rewrites and a little time later, we had a deal.

I hope you enjoy it.