stephbg | Look! Behind you! It's stephen

stephen_dedman's first appearance in my universe actually pre-dates university. The year is circa 1986. This may come as a bit of a surprise to Stephen, for I doubt he had reason to notice me at the time.

No, we did not go to primary school together. No, he was not my babysitter. He was doing what he does now, sometimes: he worked in a shop. Possibly. Or he hung around one, a subterranean gaming shop in the city that was a precursor to Tactics. Or possibly it was Tactics. I'm not sure I actually met him then per se, but I was told of him by my roleplaying boyfriend of the time.

"That's Stephen Dedman. His middle name is Mephistopholes!"

And that's about it for that decade. Why so vague? I was a 16-year-old girl dragged into the gaming world by a misplaced desire to spend time with my boyfriend. I really wasn't paying that much attention to my environment. (Although I believe I used to make the other guy that worked there a bit nervous - hey, I was 16, female, breathing, and had killer legs back then).

Cut ahead. A lot of years. More than 12, less than 20. There was a bad stretch of Swancon guests that I had no interest in, but I'd started to read Stephen's work here and there, so I started to buy his anthologies at cons. He was generally selling them himself, so I collected signed ones. I was much more excited about meeting a writer who's work I respected, than someone who'd sold a lot of books to a lot of people who's taste didn't match mine. (Screw you, Silverberg)

Years ticked by. We talked of fannish things here and there. Last year he joined me on a Detective/genre crossover panel "Murder by Death", and I greatly enjoyed the conversations leading up to it and the panel itself.

He kept writing, I kept reading, although usually only the stuff that made it to print rather than the net. His work got, er, saucier, until I reached that moment that I'm sure happens to every horror or erotica writer. Having recently read some of his blush-making fic on the train, I Looked At Him Funny for a while. Fortunately I got over it. I'm not sure if he noticed, but I'm sure he understands the phase.

Thanks to his retail imprisonment at Fantastic Planet I've enjoyed the pleasure of talking with him many times in the last 6 months or so, and enjoy the continued association through lj and life.