Author: Sharon

So!  What on earth has the woman been doing?

Sorting through photographs, and Steve’s papers, and making some decisions thereby.  Fanac.org was kind enough to take the box of fanzines I gathered, and will be digitizing and putting them on the site as time and volunteers allow.

Steve’s papers include some correspondence with interesting people in the field, and a file drawer of handwritten, unpublished poetry.  Steve had been a traveling poet before I knew him, and he wrote poems like you and I doodle.  By contrast, his fiction is — surprisingly sparse, mostly seeming to be many iterations of the same five or six stories, along with a couple that I dimly recall seeing, that had apparently been pitched in a box in frustration after gathering too many rejections.

The majority of what he left, though, are photographs.  Steve was very rarely without a camera, and thus I am left with many (unsorted) glimpses of cats, daily life, cats, moments from the Liaden Universe® World Tour, time spent with the Friends of Liad, cats, and, err, me, along with pictures of us, and pictures of Steve, because he insisted that I have a camera, too, that being one of the markers of a civilized person to him, though I was never as prolific on film as he was.  Oh, and pictures of cats.

Because of a combination of things — the sparseness of his papers, the convention badges and program books that I had no idea what to do with, the proliferation of personal letters, cards, and photographs, gave me the idea of making what I first conceived of as “a scrapbook,” but which will probably be three, or four, scrapbooks by the time I’m done.  I’m thinking that there will be narrative, written by me, because the pictures are jogging my memory — never robust — and of course Steve left no notes of his own.

I have already sorted some of the photos into the existing album, which is what opened my eyes to the fact that a single album, with dividers, was Just Not Going to Do the Job, and I spent what was probably a stupidly long time looking at how many pictures there are of me, and questioning their part in this project.  In the end, I came to the conclusion that, yes, the pictures of me are part of the narrative; after all, the photographer considered the pictures worth taking.

In addition to the above, I’ve been writing — not as quickly as I’d like, but that’s usually the case — and going to gym, and mostly keeping up with daily life, in this vastly changed environment.  The coon cats are keeping a very close eye on me, which I can hardly blame them for, considering the number of A-List players we’re lost lately.

One thing I haven’t done is an InfoDump, and I really ought to.  Some people will have missed the news about Steve, and there’s the Ribbon Dance eARC to promote, and the upcoming Salvage Right mass market because Life Does Go On, and books are in a very literal sense, my life.

Well.  Maybe this weekend for the InfoDump.

I think that catches us up for right now.

Thank you all for your patience, and for your support down many years through many stories.

It’s a funny thing, how life goes on.  Until it doesn’t, of course, but we’re very good as a species about ignoring that.

So — life.  Much changed, but still moving, still demanding attention, response, thought, and action.

My short-term goal is to find all of Steve’s papers — which is not as easy as you might think — and get them into boxes to send to the archive at Northern Illinois University.  My brother-in-law and nephew are coming up from mid-Coast in a few days to help me, literally, with the heavy lifting, and a Dumpster has been engaged to receive such things as no longer have utility.

My longer-term goals are to finish the sequel to Ribbon Dance — the deadline having been moved from September to November — and start work on the book after that.

In-between all that, there’s the Ordinary:  Litter pans do not clean themselves, after all (well, OK; apparently some litter pans clean themselves); bills still need to be paid; meals eaten; dishes washed; cats scrubbled, groomed, and played with.  Credit where it’s earned:  the coon cats are keeping me to a Tight Schedule, demanding tools down at precisely 7:11 pm, so that Happy Hour may commence (Happy Hour starting with a shared can of gooshy food, after which we — by which I mean, three cats and a woman — make a pile on the sofa for an hour, until it’s time for me to get my meal.)

In the planning stages are a return to the gym (I had cancelled my membership, because the cash, it was not flowing), which is in the Community Center, where  there are people.  I’m also going to have to look around me for a book, lunch, or sewing club.  I score pretty high as an Introvert, not to mention a tendency toward Black Knighthood, but even I need some human contact.

Under Ordinary:  I believe that the eARC of Ribbon Dance is due to drop on March 15 — so, yanno, Watch the Skies.

I do want to mention that people had asked for a place to write about Steve and how he touched their lives.  I’ve set up a page here for that purpose.  If you choose to contribute, please understand that you are not required to be Solemn.  Steve loved to laugh, and was rarely solemn himself.

And I think that catches us up.  Everybody stay safe.

Today’s blog title brought to you by William Blake, The Tiger.*

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*Steve was born in a Year of the Tiger