Today, I had one of those ‘gone but not forgotten” moments. It involved my friend, Betty Ulius, who died many years ago. Like me, Betty was a writer. Unlike me, Betty’s home was Hollywood and her success had been in radio and television.

We met late in her career, after she had become fiction editor for a slick women’s magazine. I submitted one of my short stories to her. Betty rejected it.

I don’t know whether I was a glutton for punishment or a good judge of character, but I sent a friendly response to her rejection letter, she wrote me back, and out of that correspondence a friendship grew.

Being older and more successful that I, Betty often gave me writing advice. And it was always good. She had never bothered with books or stories, but she knew everything there was to know about characterization, balance, pacing, and plot. Whether it is a radio script, a novel, or a screenplay, the rules of making fiction credible and getting the listener/reader/viewer to care about the characters are all the same.

Our relationship changed, but only slightly, after my first novel, Julian Solo, was nominated by the Mystery Writers of American for an Edgar award. Then, probably for the first time, Betty looked at me as though maybe ... just maybe ... I might know something that she didn’t know.

Not about the craft of writing (nobody could teach Betty anything about that), but about the genres in which a writer might market his or her work.

So, Betty decided to do what I had done and write a novel.

It was her first. And it was her last.

When an author pays out of his own pocket to have his manuscript printed, rightly or wrongly, it is said that the book was published by a “vanity press.” The implication is that the book wasn’t good enough to make it in a commercial market, so the author had to publish it himself.

Clearly, this wasn’t the case for Betty. She was a tried and true professional. If she wrote a book, I knew that it would be good. I also knew it would be saleable. So why, I wondered, before she had even finished writing the last chapter, had she decided to self-publish?

That question still had not been answered when her book arrived in the mail. I touched it. I smelled it. I flipped through the pages. It looked great. It smelled great. It had a terrific book cover. Relishing what I knew what was going to be a rewarding experience, I sat down and read it straight through. It was even better than I had thought it would be, and I marveled at how someone who had never before written a novel could do such a flawless job.