10. Color pencil drawing on 11 x 15 drawing board. Appears on the cover of, "Famous Fantastic Classics, No.1," edited and published by Ted Dikty. Back in the late 1960s Ted was among the first editors to send me assignments on a regular basis, and that helped me to keep going on a full time schedule. Ted ran Starmont House and FAX, publishing stories that had originally appeared in magazines during 1930s and 1940s, the "Golden Age" of the pulps. Other small press houses like "Gnome Press," "Fantasy Press," "Shasta," Fantasy Publishing Co., Inc.," "Arkham House," all reprinted stories by the better pulp writers. They printed only a few thousand copies of each title, at best, never made much money and by the late 1960s they were all out of business, except for Arkham House, which is still publishing books today. I have illustrated 10 books for AH.

A few days after I had received letters from Galaxy and Amazing offering me work, I received a letter from editor-publisher Ted Dikty of Starmont House asking if I had time to do some artwork for his publishing ventures. This drawing is the first one I did for him. Unexpectedly, a few days later, I received word from my former employer offering to give me back my old job. But after thinking it over, I deduced that the offer was for a temporary return, I would be right back in the same situation in about another month or so. Just as unexpectedly, my wife announced that she had aquired a job in town. She had become a full-time mom when we had our first child 16 years ago, and I never thought of her going back to work. But, here we were, my wife was now going to have a steady weekly income, I was going to collect unemployment insurance for the next 39 weeks, I had receved a substatial severence payment from Simmonds Precision when I was layed-off, and solicitations for artwork were coming in weekly.