Regre, rez Caledi.

[ihrketayhl]

I just had a rather sobering and upsetting experience.

So back in high school I was trolling reading lists for any and all things gay (ya'll know this; it's how I found Flewelling) and one of the books I happened upon was The Still, by David Feintuch. Anyone who hung around me for the...eh, week or so that I was reading it, knows that I enjoyed it tremendously (and reread it, actually, IMMEDIATELY after finishing, which I never do). By happy coincidence I found the sequel, The King not a month later, whilst trolling the malls with one sailorpluto; it had just come out in paperback and I pretty much devoured it.

Well, I loved these books. I tried to make everyone read them and no one did, but such is life. Eventually I wound up lending my much dog-eared copy of The Still to a high school friend who, I believe, still has it; The King sat in my room for years under piles of junk, unread because 1) it's a sequel and the politics are very complex and I figured I wouldn't remember enough without re-reading The Still first and 2) honestly, I remembered not liking it as much, for various reasons.

Either way, the other day I was short up for something to read and I picked up The King again, expecting another experience like when I re-read Timothy Zahn: something I thought was AMAZING in high school turns out to be, well, not so good. I was pleasantly surprised--not only did I remember most of the politics within the first fifty pages, but the book was even better than I remembered; Feintuch's dialogue and his battle descriptions and his plotting and, of course, his characters, kinda grabbed me and dragged me in to the point where I ended up re-reading the first two-hundred pages without really meaning to. Oops.

Anyway, there's a plot twist about halfway through the book that I remembered being bothered by, and as I'm re-reading it I think to myself, "Ya know, Feintuch's said in interviews how he lets his characters do what they want, and sometimes they totally surprise him...I wonder if that twist was in the original outline?" And it starts eating at me, this question, to the point where, tonight, I finally decide "OKAY, that's it. I'm e-mailing him. I wanna know."

So I jump online. I do a quick Google search.

And I find out this guy, who has risen again to my list of favorite authors, whose books basically make me OBSESS every time I read them...died in March of this year.

I'm not really sure how to take this. This hasn't happened to me before; the authors I love aren't YOUNG but they're not, y'know, going to die anytime soon, and I guess I never realized that the man was in his early sixties.

I mean, the worst part is, I really WAS going to e-mail him; I really did want to know. And now I never will. And I'll never get to tell him how much I love these stupid, stupid books, or how much I appreciate his SKILL this time around, so much more than I did in high school. He's just gone. I'm reading the words of a dead man.

I mean--I didn't even know. And if I'd just been a year earlier--well. Then I'd probably be crying, y'know, more. ^_^;;;

It's very strange, being so upset over the death of someone who never even knew you existed. I'm not even sure I have the right.

Comments

[tehkiwidelight.livejournal.com]

Shmoo, you totally have the right. You admired him for what he did. You both share a love of writing and doing things with that. And for him to inspire you enough after reading his books years before and wanting to reread them now I'm sure would have made his day. Plus for you to email him and talk about his characters and the plotness would have made him happy to have a fangirl like you.

Hmm, I'm sure that didn't help in the least. We all know that I suck at this sort of thing and well, I tried. *hugs*