Spring Fire

I became friendly with the editor, Dick Carroll, and he said, if you had a story to write, what would you write about? And I said, well, I just came from college. And before that I was in boarding school, and I had a lesbian experience in boarding school. And I think I would write about that. And he said, oh, that's a wonderful idea, but make it college. Because he said, grade-school people don't read our books. Make it college. And so then I wrote Spring Fire. He called it Spring Fire because James Michener had a novel out called The Fires Of Spring. And Dick thought, maybe people will confuse this with Michener and we'll have doubled the sales because nobody really thought a book about lesbians was going to sell anything.

MARIJANE MEAKER