summer and besides Clark wasn't meeting the other writers he'd hoped to find in the Vieux Carre. For one thing, he couldn't afford to hang out in the bars in the French Quarter where the writers congregated.
So they packed their things and took off for Taos, New Mexico, where they'd heard things were cheaper. They arrived almost broke but Jeannette was able to get a job in the Rexall Drug Store on the Taos plaza as fountain manager. They rented a house from Tom Wheaton for $350 a month.
And this is where their luck changed. Science fiction and mystery writers Fredric Brown and Walt Sheldon were also living in town and took Clark under their wings. They introduced him, by mail, to Harry Altshuler, their agent, and began criticizing his manuscripts.
Writing, like any other profession or art, takes a lot of learning but Fred and Walt were old pros and knew every trick of the game. They put Clark to work doing short stories for the pulps, the easiest market into which to break, and after three weeks he sold two stories to Sam Merwin who was at that time editing Thrilling Wonder Stories one of the popular science fiction magazines. And then, with the new agent, the sales began to come. Before the year was out Clark had sold just about every science fiction magazine in the field under the Clark Collins by-line and various pseudonyms.
Jeanette and Clark bought a house and settled down for almost four years in Taos before deciding that a writer owed it to himself to see the world and departed for other art colonies in other lands. The last time I saw Clark was in Torremolinos, Spain, where he was currently selling a great many tongue-in-cheek travel articles of the "sin-city" and "live-it-up" variety. If you're interested you can find his stuff in such men's magazines as "Mr." and "Men's Adventure/*
CASE HISTORY No. 3. Robert MacFarland of Riverside, California, was consumed with an urge to get rich when he got out of the army. The war had caught him when only eighteen years of age and as an infantry sergeant he participated in the Battle of the Bulge and later spent two years in the occupation.