RIP Ann Crispin, Who Fought for the Writers

Above is the title of this blog post that came into my inbox. I read it casually and then perked up, and a big penny dropped and I had an “a-ha” moment. Ann Crispin was A.C. Crispin. A name seared into my brain. Someone who gave me many hours of pleasure as a young reader.

First of all, as the above post mentions, and as any of you will know who have ever visited Writer Beware (you really should), there is a great, big-picture debt owed to Ann Crispin.

But my debt to her is a more personal one.

Sylvester is a movie that came along at just the right time (1985 – I was 13) to fuel my horse obsession and story obsession and, let’s admit it, Michael Schoeffling obsession (Jake Ryan, Sixteen Candles, anybody?). Also, it didn’t hurt that Richard Farnsworth was in the movie. Although he was great, and utterly believable as a tough, bitter old man in this story, I knew he was good underneath because he was Matthew Cuthbert, and Matthew was all that was good and sweet.

You know, re-reading that paragraph, I realize Sylvester was IT for a teenage girl – it was an underdog story (the girl, the horse, the town – pretty much every character – all underdogs!), it had horses, it had romance. It had Melissa Gilbert in a grown-up, but very similar role to her plucky Little House on the Prairie self. It was heavenly.

As I recall my friend Virginia, who I used to ride with, had won passes to the movie in a radio station contest. I seem to remember we had been riding first and my mittens smelled like horse and I inhaled them while I watched the movie. (I also think it’s possible the horse-smelling-mittens thing happened in a different movie, but I like having it in this story).

Anyway, of course, after watching the movie I wanted more. I wanted to be able to stay in that story a little longer. In the pre-Google, pre-Amazon world, I’m not sure how, but I somehow got wind that there was a book of Sylvester. And I somehow bought it. And, guess what; it was written by A.C. Crispin.

I now see this was mostly out-of-character for her. She was known as a Science Fiction and Fantasy author. On the biographical sites I’ve visited about her, Sylvester is never mentioned. But, in another way, it’s not surprising she wrote the novelization of this movie. She did many media tie-in projects, notably Star Trek and Star Wars novels. She said, about her media tie-in work: “I put my full efforts into both my media tie-ins and my original novels.”

I’m so, so glad she wrote this novel, and did such a wonderful job. I can look back on a certain few books and feel they were truly formative in making me write the way I do now. Jean Slaughter Doty’s The Monday Horses. The early Black Stallion books. Dick Francis’ amazing horse-centred mysteries. And, definitely, Sylvester.

So, thank you A.C. Crispin, and you will be remembered.

Oh, and, apparently she wrote an entire Han Solo trilogy … might need to read some more A.C. Crispin. Definitely a little Han obsession in my past as well.