Though she was terrified of being caught up in a bar raid, her time in New York was a respite from her marriage and influenced her later novels. There she caught glimpses of gay life in Greenwich Village. At this time she was living in Philadelphia and was able to escape to New York City on the weekends. Weldy chose the surname “Bannon” simply because she liked the fact that it contained her first name. The result was Odd Girl Out, published in 1957, and Ann Bannon was born. She followed his advice and gave Carroll a finished manuscript in just a few months' time. Bannon took the rough draft to her editor, Dick Carroll, was promptly handed back to her with the admonition that she cut it by half and pursue the strong storyline, which involved two women. With surprising and welcome help from author Vin Packer, to whom Bannon had written for advice, the manuscript found its way to Dick Carroll, editor-in-chief of Gold Medal Books. The book sparked a fire in Bannon, only a year out of college herself, and eventually led to her own lesbian narrative. She found the book that became the inspiration for her own writing on a drugstore shelf: it was Vin Packer’s Spring Fire, a story of two college sorority sisters who have an intense affair. When she started writing in 1955, Bannon was a twenty-two-year-old housewife living in Philadelphia. Ann Bannon read their books and decided that she wanted to do this too. Ann Bannon's early role models were lesbian fiction authors such as Claire Morgan, Vin Packer, and Tereska Torres.
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