Marco Palmieri, who was my editor on 11 of my novels, three of my novelizations, two of my novellas, and four of my short stories, was laid off yesterday. It was part of a general bloodletting at Simon & Schuster, which canned 35 employees at the direction of their corporate masters.

Marco was responsible for the majority of the Star Trek fiction published over the past several years -- of the books published from 2005 through to what's scheduled to the end of 2009, Marco edited 65% of them -- and he also edited most of Pocket's novels based on videogames, including Resident Evil and the three Blizzard Games licenses (World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo).

Margaret Clark, who edited 40% of that same range of Trek fiction (four of the books were jointly edited by Margaret and Marco), will be taking over that line, and his other projects will be divvied among those who remain behind.

To add insult to injury, Marco is married with two boys. And he just got laid off out of the blue three weeks before Christmas. Nice.

I can also say that some of my best work has been under Marco's tutelage, in particular The Art of the Impossible, Articles of the Federation, and the forthcoming A Singular Destiny.

His presence at Pocket Books will be missed.

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: "You Took My Breath Away" by the Traveling Wilburys