I named my rewrite of TTOTR "The Black Temple." This seems to be an appropriately Lovecraftian/Howardesque title...

I gave my wife a printout of the first draft. Now, normally you'd expect empty attaboy praise from a close family member. My wife's always been one of my toughest critics. In fact, she told me (years later) when I first showed her an early draft of my novel, she wondered if I might have a serious learning disability. She's harsh.

So, imagine my surprise when she absolutely loved this story. She even wanted to read TTOTR to see if I'd wantonly plagiarized, and was shocked to see I hadn't. She was so excited about "The Black Temple" I got all uncomfortable.

Then she asked me, "If you can take a bad story and make it good, doesn't that mean you'll never run out of story ideas?"

I guess it does. Ulp.