Okay, since I can't remember what else I asked you this morning, I just wanted to let you know I'm nearly finished the profile blog on you. I sent you a question earlier about how you said your early writing jobs were "forced upon me". Could you elaborate?

I don’t literally mean ‘forced upon me.’

But I was very reluctant to consider the possibility of writing professionally. It was a dream I had not thought possible. I was living in the boonies, I had a hair salon, I’d never been to a real con, and many people in my family had discouraged the idea of doing something like writing for a living as unrealistic.

So, I thought it was unrealistic. My writing was for fun, no different than those of you who write fanfic or do little funny posts for friends. I posted some things as jokes, they became oddly popular with editors at comics companies, and a website, You’ll All Be Sorry offered to hire me to write a weekly column. I did that, and then editors started offering me work. I turned them down, it just seemed too impossible, AND I was obsessed by the idea that if I took a writing job, that meant a ‘real’ writer would get less work and it would be my fault.

A lot of people helped me get over it, but I was definitely my own biggest stumbling block. Adam Hughes was a fan of my column and he told me, “Gail, almost everyone worth a damn in this industry is drafted,” meaning they didn’t come up through submitting for some editor’s slush pile, but were recruited. That helped a lot.

But the biggest thing was, Emmy-winning artist Scott Shaw liked my columns and told me that Matt Groening’s company was looking for funny writers who knew comics, and that I should try out. I put him off for the same reasons mentioned before. Finally, Scott just said, “It’s too late, I already told them about you, they’re calling tomorrow.”

So I thought about it, and when they called, I asked if I could have a day to think about it. I hadn’t even told my family I was doing any of this, because I was so sure it would all go away. When I told my husband, we realized that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that a lot of people would kill to have, and it would likely never happen again. Being offered a chance to write the Simpsons?

So when they called back, I said I would try. And it was such a great, fun experience, it made me very happy. And I haven’t stopped since.

But just as an aside, I was so sure it was all going to end like waking up from a nice dream that I kept my salon for a couple years even after I was writing full time.