Footprints in Your Heart

This will be a scattered post, however I trust it will also be self explanatory. It ties in marginally with my post about fans and the relationship about authors and fans.

When I started out with Baen and was given my own conference, I had very few fans at first (my last book had come out years before, and the book with Baen was still due.) Among the first was John, who more or less single handedly harassed me about rewriting and starting to post Darkship Thieves which led to its being bought.

As I came to know John, I valued him for his insouciant sense of humor – he needled me on my occasional bottomless lack of self-confidence by calling me “dumbass” when I doubted myself, and referred to my Magical British Empire series (which has ONE gay shifter. Okay, two, but…) As the “Gay animal porn” series – sometimes sending me highly inappropriate but very funny videos when I was going through a rough patch. (This was not homophobia, their closest family friends and some of the very few trusted sitters for their daughter are a gay couple.  It was just his way of picking on me.) I also found there was a more serious man beneath the silliness: he was principal caretaker for his daughter who is an atypical angelman’s syndrome child, with other – as yet undiagnosed – complications. His choice to not intitutionalize the profoundly handicapped child cost him his opportunities of employment and caused serious financial hardship. And while I understood his reasons (he shuddered to think of what might happen to a non-verbal girl child in an institutional setting) I very much fear that in the same situation I couldn’t do what he did. In other words he is a far, far better person than I am.

John neglected his own health while caring for his daughter and when you’re in your fifties and have not coddled yourself, this is not a safe path to take. A few ignored issues have caught up with him and he’s right now in the hospital, struggling between life and death.

I’d like to beg everyone’s prayers – if you’re a believer – or good thoughts on behalf of John, known in my conference in the bar as Saint Basset. He’s battled long and well, but he can’t leave the field yet. Too many of us need him on this side.

Note – Dave Freer and I have talked to Baen about doing an anthology to benefit/set up a fund for John’s daughter. Unfortunately this kind of thing is very slow, and our intention to start a storyteller’s bowl on her behalf got sidetracked as the horrible economy and whatever is happening to our field (more on that later) put a terrible strain on our finances causing us to scramble for survival. So…. Everything is delayed and given how things are right now, I’m not sure that storyteller’s bowl is a good idea. I do know that both John and his wife would be loathe to accept handouts, but they would be all right with a project that provides their daughter with some income/security.  I just have to figure out what that might pay off short term.