I'm older than dirt. Older than you can imagine. Old enough, not only to remember when Paul McCartney was in a group, not only to remember when he was in a group before Wings, not only to remember when he was in a group called 'The Beatles', but to actually have seen that group in concert!

Yeah. That old. You can stop sniggering now.

(By the way, I was about a million feet away in the old Stockyards Arena in Chicago. I had to stand on the back of my chair to get little teeny glimpses of little teeny people on stage and you couldn't hear anything over the screaming, so we never knew just what they were singing. They could have been lip-syncing for all we knew. At least these days with the mega-amps you can actually hear the group you've come to see.)

Okay, maybe I'm not older than dirt; I'm fifty-one, born June 24, 1950, one day before the Korean War was declared, thereby saving my Dad from getting called back up. I'm not sure how pleased he was at my incipient arrival before then, but boy was he grateful the next day!

I started out as an infant and immediately set about rectifying the situation; it was no fun lying around in a crib all day, I wanted to read, dammit! There was a brief setback when it was discovered that I was nearsighted, but from then on it was a straight shot to books.

And the inside of a book was where I 'lived' for most of my childhood and adolescence. I think I was about ten or eleven when I discovered my first science fiction book—my Dad read science fiction, and he'd left some lying around the house. Now, remember, this was back in the Dark Ages, when kids were often prevented from doing things that were good for them on the grounds that they 'weren't old enough yet.' I'd had to get special parental permission—actually bringing my Mom into the library in person (a note wouldn't do) to get a library card that allowed me to read in the 'adult' sections rather than the 'children's' library.' (Johnny Tremaine, now often assigned to kids in sixth or seventh grade, was considered 'adult' material, if that gives you any idea. And all SF was in the adult section, including Norton). Even then I was only allowed five books at a time, and this was not enough to get me through the week during summer vacation. So I asked if I could read one of Dad's books and got permission.

It was Agent of Vega by James Schmidt, and I was hooked. Psychic powers! Interstellar spies! Exotic worlds! The next time I got to the library I skipped right over all the biographies and historical novels and went straight for the science fiction section. I started with Andre Norton because her books had animals and psychic powers in them, so Beast Master and Lord of Thunder were my next two books, at which point I devoured all of Norton then went back to the beginning of the section with A for Anderson.

I wrote SF for myself, too, and illustrated it. I still have some of the drawings, though not the stories. I continued to write—mostly just for myself, although a couple of my things got published in the school 'literary' magazine—right up through college (B.Sci,, Purdue, 1972). Then real life kind of got in the way; I graduated from college right in the middle of the Nixon recession, got married, and trying to keep the bills paid was a teeny bit more important than amusing myself. I still read SF and fantasy though, like crazy (thank goodness for used book stores, which had only just gotten started about then). I also joined the SCA or Society for Creative Anachronism, which I often refer to (much to the wrath of the Authenticity Nazis) as 'the bunch of people that get dressed up like King Arthur and hit each other with sticks on weekends.' This was back in the equally Dark Ages before there were Renaissance Faires all over the country, so people weren't nearly as used to seeing folks in medieval garb in their parks of a Saturday. At the same time, roughly, since the two interests are very closely allied, I started going to science fiction conventions in the Midwest. Meanwhile I'd actually become Gainfully Employed as a computer programmer. Trust me, this is relevant.

Then came the next moment that changed everything—I got a job programming for American Airlines in Tulsa Oklahoma. Now, I didn't know anything about Tulsa. It took me a while to find the SCA down here, and the SCA events and SF Conventions were a lot farther apart and fewer than they were up North. So I had time on my hands and began to write again.

By this time I had discovered fanzines, and I had already started publishing costuming articles in them. So I decided to start submitting stories to some of the ones that were for fanfiction. Then I started writing original stuff and submitting it, and that started to see print.

Then (next pivotal moment) I discovered filk. Filk is science fiction folk music. There are entire websites devoted to filk, so I won't get into it here—but the point is that I started writing lyrics and hooked up with Teri Lee of the (then) Off Centaur Publications and started getting my song lyrics published. And it occurred to me that I might just be ready try getting my stories professionally published. I had a book in the works—one that later turned into the Arrows trilogy—but I knew that it was in no way ready to be seen. My first submission was to Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress anthology, which was rejected, but I got great advice from her, rewrote half the story and sold it to Fantasy Book Magazine. But not before I sold her my second submission, for her Friends of Darkover anthology, which was my first sale (although it was not my first published story, since the magazine came out before the book did).

About this time, C.J. Cherryh discovered filk, which is how I met her. She became my mentor and helped me whip that book—"commit trilogy," she said—into shape. And the rest, as they say, is history. And at that point, I stopped having a life for a while. I would get up, go to work, come home, and write until midnight or later, then go to bed and start all over again. There are entire sections of popular culture from that period that I know nothing about. Didn't go to movies, stopped doing SCA stuff, didn't watch TV. The only time I went to Science Fiction Conventions was to promote my own work. And the hard work started to pay off.

Along the way, Tony Lackey and I parted company, but it was an amicable divorce as such things go.

Meanwhile, I worked my butt off until I finally got to the point where I was able to make a living at writing. This is unusual; most writers—about ninety percent of them—have to keep their 'day job' and write in their spare time, unless they are lucky enough to have a partner working full-time to support them. Writing is a precarious business, and there is no magic way to figure out what is going to be popular and what isn't. Sacrificing all your free time to getting the words on the page, though, will help.

About this time I met and eventually married Larry Dixon, who has been my writing partner, not only on the books where he is the credited co-author, but on many others besides.

Now we live outside of Tulsa, and I have a life outside of writing again. We have a collection of very vocal parrots, we rehabilitate injured birds of prey, I do cross-stitch, beadwork, sewing, and costume dolls, often sending my work to charity auctions, especially one to benefit the Alex Foundation, Dr. Irene Pepperberg's nonprofit foundation to help support her research into parrot intelligence and learning, which has significant application in helping learning-disabled children. I must admit that it is very nice to be able to go see a movie or watch a TV show again! I still don't have a horse, odd as that might seem, but the birds do keep me busy, and it's seldom quiet around here.

I love what I'm doing; it's an extraordinary thing, to be able to do what you love for a living. I have absolutely no plans to stop, ever. I just hope that people continue wanting to read what I have to write for as long as I'm able to write it!

—Reprinted from The Valdemar Companion, edited by Denise Little and John Helfers by permission of DAW, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright 2001 by Mercedes R. Lackey and Tekno Books. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.