That was, “Write what you love reading.” I had long been passionate about fantasy and science fiction, but equally daunted at the prospect of trying to compare my work with the tales from the writers I lionized. But by my midtwenties, I was venturing out with submissions to “fanzines,” the small-press homemade magazines of the genre. Some were little more than mimeographed or Xeroxed pamphlets while others had ventured into glossy pages and illustrations. They were my proving ground as a writer, and I will forever owe a debt to magazines such as Space and Time, and editors such as Gordon Linzner.

When I began writing SF and fantasy for adults, I initially wrote as M. Lindholm. I was very happy with that sole initial in front of my surname. In 1978, I submitted a story to Jessica Amanda Salmonson that I hoped she would consider for her small-press magazine Fantasy and Terror. To my shocked delight, she wrote back saying that she would like to use it for her forthcoming feminist fantasy anthology, to be entitled Amazons! But she felt strongly that women writers needed to declare themselves as female. She urged me to put a name rather than an initial in my byline. I wrote back to her that I’d never been fond of my given name, Margaret, and that the nicknames such as Maggie, Peggy, Marge, and so on had never really felt like my own, either. I added, almost as an afterthought, that Megan was not so bad.

Months later, when the book came out, I was a bit astounded to see that I had a new byline. Megan Lindholm it was. I confess to having mixed feelings about it, then and still. A year or two later, when the first Ki and Vandien book, Harpy’s Flight, sold to Ace Books, I realized that without my intending to I’d made an important decision. Since the story in Harpy’s Flight featured the same characters as “Bones for Duluth,” the story in Amazons!, I would have to use the same byline. Without giving it much thought, I’d become Megan Lindholm.