Things about me I don't talk about often.

So, one of the things I miss most about being married-- my now-ex-husband was seriously into roleplaying games, of the pen-and-paper or less variety. And he was an incredible game master, and story teller, and of all the things I miss about him, that's what I miss the most. I loved gaming, I loved living in another world part-time, especially with people I cared about.

(Ever lived on a world with an axial tilt like Uranus? I have. Everywhere is the land of the midnight sun. Ever stood on the city walls with one of your husbands, watching hours-long herds of wild animals passing around the city, migrating south for the long winter? I have. Worked with bureaucracy, assassins, demons, and an oathbound healers' society-- at once? I have. More to the point-- ever lived somewhere that people just like you weren't feared, discriminated against, and misunderstood? Ever had justice and understanding and love? I have.)

Fast forward to a couple of years ago. My sweetie introduces me to his sweetie from another country, tells me how this guy is so brilliant and has all these ideas in his head, "and I keep telling him he should write a book!" and when I meet him, and we start talking, I realize: it's not a book. Books have plots and themes and stuff like that. What he has, inside his head, is something more precious to me: a world stuffed full of characters and ideas and concepts.

So, I got up my courage, and asked him if there was room for two: author and editor, perhaps? And there was! And is, and shall be...

So I'm spending my day writing, and asking questions, and shoehorning my ideas in among his and making them fit together into a coherent whole, drafting it together so I can story-spin later. It's good to have a place to drag parts of myself out and turn them into mostly-whole people, with wants and needs of their own, and let them loose...