So, I was straightening some shelves the other day, as one does, and a battered little tan pamphlet fell to the floor. I bent to pick it up, and smiled at The Naming of Kinzel, the very first Lee-and-Miller indie published chapbook, with a cover by Colleen Doran. Being unsure of this publication’s actual date — before or after Agent of Change? — I flipped it open to the copyright page, and found that this wasn’t just any random copy of …Kinzel, but my particular copy — #1 of a limited edition of 300 — signed to me by one of the authors.
Here’s the page in question:
As you can see, the chapbook was published in June 1987. A year before our first novel was published. Seven years after we married; a decade after we had declared to All Possible Universes that WE ARE US, and let the sparks fall where they may.
Several things drew Steve and me together: a love of irony and a keen sense of the ridiculous; a love of music, and of reading — and this idea that being a writer was a goal worth achieving. No, more than that: Writing was a shared dream, and a shared reality; it was the glue of our partnership, and what kept us together, tight, and committed to each other, for 46 years.
Over those years, people would sometimes ask how our marriage had survived the pressures, the competitiveness, of a two-writer household. And the answer was that marriage was — secondary to who we were. First, we were co-authors — companions — partners — in the adventure of creating. We were married, yes, for tax purposes and for the demands of so-called Real Life, but honestly, we dealt with Real Life as little as possible.
For Sharon, that inscription reads, the very first, with love — may we stay happily in print for a hundred years — Steve
And there it is — love and writing, and us, entwined and inseparable. That’s who we were, living a very rich, very fantastical, life, of our own devising.
Steve and I had many rituals, as I suppose that most partners do. One was the evening toast, “To the Plan!” or, as it came to be in later years, when ill health and threats of mortality began to assault our walls — “To the Plan — as it may be amended from time to time.”
But, you’re saying, what was this Plan?
The Plan was to stand together, to tell stories, and to have fun.
Not much of a Plan, in the scheme of things, but it was ours. We reveled in being grasshoppers, in living with and for the day, in not looking over our shoulders, to see what might be gaining. Carpe Diem, yes? And we had also agreed that we would keep on writing, as long as it was fun.
The Plan was not so much amended as destroyed, back in February. I was, thank Goddess, already well-invested as the lead writer for the next book when Reality came due. Against all odds, Diviner’s Bow was fun to write.
So, I’m getting ready, now, to write another book, set in the place we built together, out of love, and commitment, and joy. No question, I’m lead writer on this one, and I’m looking forward, and trying not to look over my shoulder.
