Lynn Willis

[shannon_a]

Last week, Chaosium posted a news item saying that RPG editor, Lynn Willis is suffering from Parkinson's Disease and for the most part is no longer working.

I first got to know Lynn when I was working on my earliest(?) book for Chaosium, Taint of Madness. To that point my only experiences with professional editors had been with White Wolf, and to be honest, I hadn't been impressed. The folks then at WW either didn't change my writing at all or they changed it, in my opinion, for the worst.

Lynn is a totally different type of editor. When I got back Taint of Madness, it was obvious that he'd worked it over pretty thoroughly, but the difference was that Lynn had polished my prose until it shone like a brilliant diamond. He's the best editor that I've ever worked with, and the one that I'm forever going to hold the rest up to as a standard. He wasn't afraid to change text, like many editors are, and he was right in his confidence, because he's exceedingly good with words.

The year after that book was published, Chaosium was flush with money from Mythos and I queried whether they were interested in hiring me. Greg (the President) talked to me, but it was ultimately Lynn who decided to hire me, and so I worked under him for the next two and a half years.

For those couple of years that I knew him, Lynn was a very private person, and so I never really got to know him beyond the job, but I enjoyed working with him, and I was even more proud of the trust he put in me. I was hired to do layout, but within a year he was letting me edit too. Only the best and the worst authors, mind you, because it was Lynn alone who could accomplish wonders on the run of the mill writer, but for those he trusted me, and didn't second guess a single thing I did. When times got hard and the majority of Chaosium's staff was laid off, I was the one person Lynn chose to keep around, over others who had been there longer.

Sadly, I couldn't stick around. Toward the end of 1998, I had a stack of a half-dozen manuscripts that I'd prepared for the printer, but which we couldn't afford to send. I was also very quickly becoming the only person taking a paycheck (late though it always was). Reluctantly, I told Lynn that I couldn't stick around. It was totally the right choice for me, as I can now see I would have been out of a job pretty soon in any case, but Lynn took it very badly. He told me Chaosium wouldn't survive if I left, and he's given me the cold shoulder ever since. I really looked up to Lynn, and it really hurt that he shut me out so totally because I wasn't willing to keep working until the paychecks stopped coming in entirely, or moreso, I think, because I wasn't willing to put Chaosium ahead of my own life, as I think he and others there had for years.

Nonetheless, I've devastated to hear that Lynn has such a debilitating illness. I wish I could offer my best to him, but there's little point in that. Clearly, Chaosium could survive without me, but without Lynn ... I'm less convinced.

Comments

[mylescorcoran]

That's awful news. I hope both his professional medical support and the support of his friends and family are good and strong.

I can understand why you were hurt too, but you're obviously right to be concerned for a friend even if time and history have made that friendship complicated.

[raconteurx.livejournal.com]

That's a damn shame. Lynn has been the backbone of Chaosium throughout its history and the quality of Chaosium products is a tangible legacy. Definitely one of the best editors in the industry, if not the best. Don't let ten years of distance stand in the way, talk to the man. Relationships don't repair themselves.