The book I want to talk about is Friends and Winners, by Raymond L. Nelson.
To be honest, it is not a great book. If not for my part in its story I would have read it, enjoyed it, and moved on without a thought. It's clever and thoughtful, but not preachy; its "messages" will settle somewhere in your brain, but not stand up and scream about themselves. Reading it will make you a better person, but not enough to demand or particularly deserve credit. The story of the book, however, makes this book special, at least for a few people.
Raymond "Buzz" Nelson was an excellent historian, with a flair for details and connections. Had he not been a technophobe he could well have been a ubiquitous name on acknowledgment pages throughout fantasy and science fiction. This is not false generosity; he was well known and respected. But instead he wanted to write himself. He had much to say, some of it important, some clever and entertaining.
One day Buzz came to a meeting of the Ad-Hoc Writers' Group with a handful of CDs and declared that his book was finished. Sadly, not only was it not finished, we had to tell him it was "unreadable". Buzz was very ill at the time, and it was affecting his ability to focus.
Fortunately I'd had advance warning. (I'd been given one of the discs a few days before at dinner with another group) and had read further than those at Ad-Hoc. I saw a story there - a good one. I took the first chapter, stripped out the confusing stuff, and tightened up the grammar. And they liked it. I tried to explain what I'd done, but Buzz was stubborn. Nothing came of it.
Then Buzz died. His mother came to me and said that she'd promised to publish his book, but was unable to find the manuscript. Now, Buzz had been my closest friend for 26 years, and I'd just spent nine months watching him slowly die. I had to do it. I lied.
I told his mother that the manuscript had been lost in a hard drive crash (essentially true) but that I had "an earlier draft that I could use to recreate it". (the aforementioned CD)
I corrected the spelling and grammar. I fixed some continuity errors. I stripped out some clever ideas that he'd dropped without either deleting or explaining. I fear I'm making this sound like some herculean effort - it wasn't. It took time because I had to clean up his writing while retaining his style - William Goldman would have taken a few days; I took six months. I wrote a couple of chapters with the primary villain on screen because I felt it was necessary, but those chapters were taken from stories Buzz had told me in other times. I had to rewrite the ending because Buzz had planned a trilogy, and the second and third books would never be written, but that ending is as close to what Buzz would have written as I could make it.
I know I could not have completely succeeded in effacing myself, but if it's me and not him it's the part of me that was inspired by him. The only part that I'll admit is my writing is the epilogue - it's a eulogy, and I cried writing it. Buzz deserved it.