SHERWOOD SMITH

I have made number mistakes - I have such bad number dyslexia that I can look at a number and see the wrong one. I can't remember them worth beans.

In my generation, if a man washes the dishes, the older women still tend to cluster around and coo and thank him and praise him. But if a woman washes the dishes, it's business as usual, even if both man and woman have tough office jobs.

When I turned thirteen and took a typing class, with typical early teen enthusiasm and total lack of critical ability, I started sending my stuff to publishers once I'd babysat long enough to earn the postage.

The history of fan fiction demonstrates how efficient, and effective, women have been at pooling together to get what they want out of their stories. It's been a largely female-driven world.

Female authors were still using male names when I was young, or they were neatly shoehorned into 'women's books' except for those few that men could always point at when the disparity was pointed out.

I was as eager a writer as I was a reader.

Like many science fiction lovers of my generation, I discovered Andre Norton on the shelves at the junior high's library.

As a kid, I pretty much got nothing but scorn, and occasionally active animus, for writing fantasy and squirreling it away in my closet and, later, under the mattress supports in my bed.

What is interesting to me is looking at how male and female writers depict men who, come in behind to fill those domestic duties, deal with personal and cultural lack of respect for doing what is lingeringly perceived as 'women's work.'

It would have been funny if I had been an observer and not a participant, an idea that gave me a disconcerting insight into gossip. As I walked beside the silent Tamara, I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.

When in doubt, be ridiculous.

Angry men with pointy things sent to secure a foreign city are pretty much alike anywhere. That's what I've heard. So far nothing's convinced me different.

I had seen ardency in men's eyes, but I had only felt it once. With Flauvic, false and therefore easy to dismiss. I suddenly wished that I could feel it now. No, I did feel it. I did have the same feeling, only I had masked it as restlessness, or as the exhortation to action, or as anger. I thought how wonderful it would be to see that spark now, in the right pair of eyes.

The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of humans.

They're safe,'' he said. "And you're not made of glass". He swept me up in his arms. I laughed. "And I'm not made of glass." He carried me into our room and kicked the door shut behind us.

We'll abduct Garian. Or Jason." "And—?" "And dump them into the ocean. Nobody would ever pay a ransom for them.

No, I don't think I could fall in love with him, handsome though he is, because I don't accept any of that huff he gives me about my great beauty and all that. I'd have to trust a man's words before I could love him. I think.

So let me end with the wish that you find the same kind of happyiness, and laughter, and love, that I have found, and that you have the wisdon to make them last.

If more people recognized the difference between friendship and mere attraction, or how love must partake of both to prosper, I expect there'd be more happy people." "And a lot fewer poems and plays," I said, laughing as I splashed about in the scented water.

Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.

Because you showed one face to all the rest of the world, and another to me.

When people first discover beauty, they tend to linger. Even if they don’t at first recognize it for what it is.

Despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.

A wager?" I repeated. "Yes," he said, and gave me a slow smile, bright with challenge. ... "Stake?" I asked cautiously. He was still smiling, an odd sort of smile, hard to define. "A kiss." My first reaction was outrage, but then I remembered that I was on my way to Court, and that had to be the kind of thing they did at Court. And if I win I don't have to collect. I hesitated only a moment longer, lured by the thought of open sky, and speed, and winning. "Done," I said.

Finally someone takes me seriously enough to ask for my word of honor, and it’s a villain.