I walked into Lori’s office with, “So what am I supposed to be doing?” She smiled. It occurred to me that when it came to DIC, Lori knew just about everything that was happening or that would happen.

Her phone constantly buzzed whenever I visited. She’d glance at the lighted buttons and unless the call was from Jean, Andy or VP of Production Kevin O’Donnell’s extension, she’d ignore it. I liked how, also unless it was Jean, Andy or Kevin, she’d hold up a hand to stop anyone approaching her office while she was with me.

It made me feel like I was important to Lori. I wasn’t sure why I was important to her. Years ago, when I’d first arrived in L.A., I visited film studio exec Sherry Lansing at her Columbia Pictures offices. Sherry had bought the film rights to my first novel, No Place Like Home. We were in the middle of a meeting when her phone buzzed. She answered it and then said, “Tell Warren I’ll call him back.” When she hung up, I asked who the call was from. When answered, “Warren Beatty” I thought I was gonna die.

Now I’d written a handful of television scripts, but other writers had written more. I decided not to think about it, to just do a ‘Zen thing’ and let it go. I was, after all, in L.A. and Zen was big in L.A. It was said “Zen could lessen the tension in your body, relax tightened muscles and that by ‘letting go’ you could open your awareness beyond yourself.” Well, I’d begun feeling my tension lessening and my muscles were relaxing. I hoped, eventually, I’d “open my awareness beyond myself”. But at the moment that wasn’t important because I was doing what

I wanted to do – writing for television…and I was going to be paid fifteen hundred bucks a week for doing it.