It probably shouldn’t surprise me that this year would have a final sting and take one of my mentors and friends as it ends.
Okay, I’m personifying the year and that’s stupid, but it is has been a bad one.
I first met David Drake because when I was sat down for a signing, I noticed the corner with the Baen (mostly) guys was the happiest, most cheerful bunch. The others sat at the tables, either in gloom or being “G-d or Shakespeare” as Diana Wynne Jones called it.
But the Baen people talked to each other and made jokes, and frankly, I wanted to be there. So I would sit with them, and they — in their defense — were very tolerant of the literary fantasy weirdo with the accent. And got used to me.
When my career crashed in 03 I needed to talk to someone, and Dave Drake was the only one who would agree to tell me the truth: had I done something to deserve it?
Of course I had not, it was just the field and how it then worked. He let me rage at him for 2 hours, away from the con, in a very cold park, and then we came back. And a few months later he recommended me to Baen, which led to selling Draw One In the Dark.
We remained friends over the years, though our correspondence tagged off of the last few years, between health and moving and you know how life goes.
It was still a shock to hear of his death. Yes, I knew he’s been ill and had retired from writing novels — I subscribe to the newsletter –but it was still somewhat shocking, because, well… he wasn’t that old, as we measure age these days.
I need to unpack the library and unearth Lord of the Isles.
All day, since yesterday night, memories have kept coming. Just silly things over a 20 year plus friendship: his sending me articles about painting my mailbox, after a long joke-conversation on how ugly my then-massive (so returned manuscripts didn’t get too folded and could be sent out again) mailbox. Visiting DMNS with him, and his admonitions on Ammonite shells. Because he didn’t visit in magic, but why tempt fate.
Getting lost when we both happened to go to the bathroom during a Baen dinner, and deciding to hang out in the nearest lit area until people found us. (Both of us had a tragic lack of sense of direction.)
His web mistress entrusting him to me to get him to the taxi (?) to the airport, (what was she thinking? I couldn’t find it either) but then Dan finding me and dragging me off to get our plane. I got home and was worried, so I emailed him asking him if he was all right. He answered with this multi-page adventure of getting lost, and ranging over the neighborhood, including the gas station, then fighting off a pack of werewolves and more or less by accident finding the airport and his gate. (I’m almost sure it was fictional. ALMOST.)
Or the time we’d both read a book on the fall of Troy and started talking to each other about it … at a very boring panel on… something. Over the head of the poor panelist stuck between us. (Well, you know the primary duty of a panelist is to be entertaining. We were failing before, but the people LOVED our discussion, and started shouting questions to us and– Eventually the other panelists gave up.)
Or the time he asked me, just before a panel started at World Fantasy, whether I colored my hair. For those not read in, yes I do. My hair has been white since the first pregnancy almost killed me. And it’s weird white. Colorless, like vinyls siding that’s been too long in the sun.
Anyway, at the time I was just turned forty, and there I am, at a panel, with the room filled with writers and editors (World Fantasy was then more of a convention for the pros) and David Drake shouts, “Sarah, do you color your hair?”
I had to turn it somehow. I mean, really. But he was perfectly innocent. It had just occurred to him to ask, so he asked. So I said “Dave, of course I do. I work with editors and publishers. I’ve been white haired for years.”
He immediately laughed and claimed the same cause for his salt-and-pepper hair.
I’m sure the memories, funny or sad or poignant will keep coming through the next few days. It’s hard to imagine that someone so alive, and who was such a part of my life is gone.
I’ll keep his family and closer friends in my thoughts. It must be that much more difficult for them.
Right now I remember him, after a World Fantasy banquet, showing me the paperback in his pocket — I think it was one of the World of Tiers — and telling me that he always kept it there, for when he could no longer endure the chitchat and the crowd.
I hope in that eternal convention bar where I’m convinced those of us who work between worlds end up (Too good for hell, and yet too ill for heaven) he’s found a nice corner table, from which he can quietly observe all our departed colleagues in their fun and their fights. And I hope he has a favorite paperback in his pocket. Just in case.
According To Hoyt 