Emma Straub

My only previous job had been

like an assistant in publishing, which I had been terrible at.

And I just adored him.

So I remember feeling like I had to be very careful.

But that really didn't last very long because we sat down and we talked for a few minutes and then Claudia just started reading me Stephen's to-do list.

Oh, well, I guess I got the job.

Okay, so I started working for him in 2002.

And one of my big tasks was making a complete lyric book because everything was scattered all over the place.

You know, he had like 500 moleskin notebooks.

And so I, you know, organized those and typed everything up and actually made it so he had all of his lyrics in one place, things like that.

Oh, for everything.

For everything.

Well, sure.

There's the Future Bible Heroes.

There's the Gothic Archies.

And then he's done some things just under his own name.

Oh, yes.

What I found most exciting was that there were all these different voices.

There are men, but there are women, but there are... Like, how many people are there?

It was this whole sort of panoply.