The Story of Weis & Hickman

Margaret and I met while we were both working at TSR, Inc. (the then publishers of the Dungeons & Dragons game). I was working as a game designer trying to corale resources in the company to produce a little dream called Dragonlance. Margaret had just been hired as an editor for TSR's brand-new Book Department -- the new branch that worked in published books.

Part of the overall plan for the Dragonlance games was to include other products under the brand name. There were many proposals ... mechanical wind-up Takhisis, game miniatures and beach towels. One among them was to do an actual fantasy novel.

The criteria for selecting an author for this novel were two fold: first, it had to be a recognizable name author with an established audience and, second, he had to work for very little money on a project he could not own. Eventually the actually settled on someone ... and their pages started coming in. Margaret, who was to be the editor of the book and I were both not happy with those pages. The author did not seem to understand what we were looking for the story.

Finally, Margaret and I got together in her office-cubicle. "This is our story," Margaret said. "We have to be the ones to write it." So, that weekend (on top of our regular work) we wrote the prologue and first five chapters of what is now known as the first Dragonlance novel: "Dragons of Autumn Twilight." We submitted them the following Monday and waited anxiously for an hour to hear what the Senior Editor thought of it.

She emerged from her office and said that THIS was exactly what she was looking for. We would right the Dragonlance novel ...

...Which is how a partnership and friendship of over twenty years all began.

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Copyright by Tracy Raye Hickman / All Rights Reserved.