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jimhinesSix years ago, February 2003, I was inching past the middle of my term as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc.
The Tomorrow Log had just been published by Meisha Merlin. My brain went off-line about February, and it took a while to get the diagnosis of an underachieving thyroid and fix the correct dosage of Synthroid. We had by then published four books with Meisha Merlin, and a handful of short stories, in Absolute Magnitude,
Such a Pretty Face, 3SF, and
Stars. We had contracts for books through 2006, and had started to feel like we could make this coming-back-from-the-dead thing stick.
Twelve years ago, in August 1997, I left my job as secretary and woman-of-all-work at Wastewater Services Corporation/Walden Inc., a position I had held for five years, to become the Executive Director of SFWA. At that point, our last novel publication was
Carpe Diem, in October 1989; last short story "Candlelight" in Pulphouse, 1995. During 1997
Plan B got rejected by Every Science Fiction House on the face of the earth; "Balance of Trade" was accepted by Absolute Magnitude, and published the next year.
Eighteen years ago, in 1991, I was employed as a copy editor on night-side news at the Central Maine Morning Sentinel, and writing a book which might have been
The Tomorrow Log. "Spell for the Lost" was written and sent out to garner rejections. Steve and I started the process of buying a house through what was then called The Rural Housing Authority. I was laid off from the paper in 1992, a week after our loan was finalized.
Twenty-four years ago, in 1985, I was employed as a secretary in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County Campus. "A Day at the Races" was written; the "short story" that some years later became
Local Custom was written; "King of the Cats" was written;
Agent of Change was rejected by Ace and by DAW, and picked up by Del Rey as the last act of the Fairy Godmother Department before New York went into the Long Silence between Christmas and February.
Thirty years ago, in 1979, I met Steve Miller for the third time. In April, we moved in together; in May, I quit my well-paying job as administrative assistant to the Dean of the University of Maryland Graduate School of Social Work in order to open a bookstore, and Be A Writer.
Thirty-six years ago, in 1973, I was working at the above-mentioned well-paying job and struggling with a very bad human relationship. It was, I believe, about this time that my first cat, Archie McGee, acquired my services, whereupon matters improved immensely.
Forty-two years ago, in 1967, I was in my first year of high school -- see the tall, skinny, dorky girl with the glasses over there in the corner reading a book? Yeah, her.
Forty-eight years ago, in 1961 --
junior high school elementary school. See previous entry.
Fifty-three years ago, Christmas, 1956, I scared the heck out of a neighbor who believed, as did most of the neighbors and at least half of my parents, that I couldn't talk, by addressing her abruptly in complete sentences, demanding to know what her husband did for a living and where my mother had gone. My mother, alas, had gone to the hospital to be with my grandfather, possibly the only person on earth who not only knew that I could speak, but considered me a brilliant conversationalist. He'd had a stroke, and never came home. My grandmother spent most of 1957 trying to convince me that he had gone "to church". Even at a tender age I knew better than
that, and in the end she gave it up as a bad job, took me to the cemetery and showed me the stone. The fact that Grandpa was living in the cemetery made slightly more sense to me, especially as the grounds came equipped with ducks, an avian form for which we shared a common passion.
Fifty-seven years ago, 1952. Why, look! A baby.
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