So, some people have asked some good questions/made comments, and I’m stopping the action here to answer a few of them.
First, we have the on-going hilarity regarding Liadens being thought “short” at what is more or less average height for USians.
I am a USian, as was Steve. In my youth, Science showed us that people were getting taller as time moved on. The average height for a man in 1900 was 5 feet 7 inches. In 1984, when Agent of Change was written, the average man was +/-5 feet 10 inches. Steve was of average height.
In 1900, 5 foot 2 inches was the average height for a woman. In 1984, that had increased to 5 foot 4 inches. I was a giantess at 6 foot even.
So, it seemed to us — extrapolating (i.e. If This Goes On) — that, if the trend among USians to get taller continued, by the time we got around to Agent of Change, 6 foot for an average Terran female wouldn’t be totally out of line. Liadens would then be short at what were average heights in the 1900s.
I note this totally ignores the fact that even here on our own planet, there are racial groups who tend to be taller and others who tend to be shorter.
Steve had thrown out the idea at one point that Liadens were smaller and “more efficient” because they had been space-going for a long time. Which gave rise to the notion that Loopers might be shorter than other sorts of Terrans. We may have mentioned Loopers as recognizable as a “type” once or twice, and if so, that’s where that came from.
* * * * * *
Second!
Yeah, the quickness of that bond forming between our heroes is really — wow. I think there are a couple of things at work there. Let me see if I can break them out:
1. In the stories I had been telling myself for years, in which Val Con and Miri were the main characters, they were always together — a team. So, starting out with them leading separate lives was a vary, which I now believe the characters were fighting to fix as fast as they could.
2. Today’s General Social Wisdom is that, not only does Love At First Sight not exist, but it’s a pernicious, dangerous, and potentially deadly fable created by men to keep women subservient. To which I say that anything can be weaponized, given a sufficiently ruthless person or system, but to say Love at First Sight does not exist is a fable just as dangerous to the happiness of human beings.
2a. Steve and I had an immediate connection. I kid you not, they probably heard us click in Towson, when we met. And the Fiction Writer’s Wisdom, misleading of course, as all good wisdoms are, is: Write what you know.
2b. On a surprising number of levels, Agent of Change is a story of Steve and Sharon, from Miri’s Baltimore street smarts and inferiority complex to Steve’s twisty creativity and panic attacks.
So, yeah, I think all that’s working together in these first chapters. Later, of course, we find that these people are, in fact, two halves of a whole, but I don’t think that the concept of “lifemates” as a “wizard’s match” came into its own until Carpe Diem, when Val Con looks inside his own head and realizes what he’s seeing (It was fitting; the Universe owed much — or something of that nature) — and that only happened because we wrote Conflict of Honors, more or less by accident, in-between.
Going just a little further — Agent of Change was the first novel either of us had written. We had written short stories, but characters are . . . different in short stories. This is not to say that they’re easier to push around. In fact, if there is one piece of Wisdom I would offer to my fellow writers it would be to never go into a fictional situation believing you can make your characters do what you want them to do. Do this and you will lose — either the characters will go on strike, or you’ll produce a broken story. The best thing you can hope for is that the characters will wrest the story from under your undeserving fingers and go on as they meant to do.
Anyway — error of inexperience. We were certainly aware enough to twig to the fact that something was wrong when Val Con flat out refused to do any more work. But we were definitely not up to the nuances of two people who were destined to work together, trying to fix An Error visited upon them by their writers.
Here endeth your auctorial handwaving for the day.
I also think battle adrenaline and being forced to work together in stressful circumstances can lead to rapidly developing trust and relationship. The hunch, and the degradation of the Loop both steered Val Con in that direction as well.
I am enjoying the paperback format, it’s much easier to hold than the omnibus I started with. The cover is great too. The author’s insights are fascinating, thank you for sharing with us!
Also, my husband and I both had a definite interest at first sight, and a strong click (he asked if I’d be interested in exploring a relationship based on our first meeting), so I guess I buy love at first sight and soul mates more now than I did previously.
The Clutch are fantastic. I was glad they came back in later books!
Thanks for the author commentary! This is just so fun to re-read these books with you by our side.
Love at first sight stumtuck friends of my mother’s parents. One if them wss angaged to someine else when the other saw the person snd ssid, ” thst”s the person I’m going to marry.”
I apologize for causing offense/irritation with my comment about Liadan heights.
Um. You called it as you saw it, and it’s not the first time since 1988 that someone has said that 5’3 isn’t short. I’m not offended.
Oh, 5’3 is short, as I’m reminded every time I need something off the top shelf at the grocery store. We have a special short kitchen counter because the standard height is a little too high to be comfortable for any long project. Being Liaden sized just hits my funny bone for some reason. But it’s quite charming.
The Miri / Val Con arc is deeply appealing to me, from how they react to each other in thsee early stages, to the same pair years later in other books (trying to avoid spoilers).
Random thoughts: 1. My headcanon has always been Liadens 5′-5’6″, Terrans, 6′-7′, Yxtrang 7′-8′, Turtles 8’6″ and up.
2. I saw the term “competence porn” somewhere, it was meant as a compliment and I use it that way; the Liaden series showcases competence porn, and I enjoy it -intelligent people working out solutions to problems. I think thats why I like murder mysteries, too, and my favorite romances are those that are also murder/crime mysteries, like Lord Julian. 3. Speaking of which, elsewhere someone asked for recommended “comfort reads” and it struck me just now that so many of the books recommended therein were also “competence porn” – Nathan Lowell’s books, Murderbot, Miles vorKosigan, the above-mentioned Lord Julian… as a reader group, we seem to get our comfort from reading about people who solve their problems through intelligence. 4. Having read ahead – the Department of the Interior hits differently now than it did even a few years ago.
I didn’t fall in love with my partner at first site, but I went home from that first date excited and scared, because ‘this might work!’. And I did a lot of gut-checks and such on the next 2 dates, because 1) I wasn’t a young person by then, and 2) it was pretty darned fast. I was ‘sunk’ by date 4, and would have been in a world of hurt if he hadn’t also fallen.
No gun battles involved, though!
20 years now.
And the height thing? Oh yes. My mother was 3 inches taller than her mother & grandmother. I’m 5 inches taller than my mother (6 feet). And I see a lot more 6 foot female college students now than when I first started teaching. So that part made sense to me.
Thank you! My personal perspective was that humans evolve to their climates. You read about how people who were born and raised in certain climates have features that allow for improved survival in those climates. It wasn’t until I read the prequels to the Liaden universe that I came to a different conclusion.
But, again, thank you for a glimpse into the thought process occurring. It is amazing how many successful writers have spoken on “listening” to the characters has made their works successful.
I agree with these, my parent’s had one date in 1942, and six months later, despite the war and his orders for artillery school in Oklahoma, they got married. It last more than 54 years. My husband and I met on April 24, 1967 and were married on August 19, 1967. We celebrated our 58th anniversary this past August. It happens and it works. I believe that the force of the lifemate aura is too strong to avoid.
My parents met at a baseball game when Mom was 13 and Daddy was 15. Daddy went and told his mother that he had met The One. He lived on the wrong side of the tracks, and he already knew that he was going to drop out of school and join the Marines as soon as he turned 16. He didn’t have a car, but for most of a year he walked WAY across town to see Mom as often as her parents would allow.
After he joined the Marines, he spent every leave seeing her. A month before her high school graduation, they crossed the Alabama state line to Georgia to get married. (At 17, she could marry in Georgia without parental consent.) Then he took her home, where they broke the news to her father (her mother already knew). She had to keep the secret until graduation, because otherwise the school would have kicked her out. They were together from 1962 until 2024, when he died.
Miri and Val Con is one of the best “meet cutes” ever. It was not QUITE love at first sight from this reader’s perspective. They were each puzzled by their own reactions to each other and resisted the impulse at first. Trust did not come easy, but it came easier than either of them thought it really should. Val Con kept reacting unconsciously to Miri as a threat (thanks to his DOI conditioning). Miri kept thinking Val Con was crazy and that she should leave. Val Con wondered why he would speak in the “intimate mode” while Miri wondered why she felt safe (though she still kept her gun under her pillow and in the pocket of her robe, so not THAT safe). “Judgment call, Robertson. You trust him at your back or you don’t.” She began to see him as a potential friend and partner before she relaxed enough to start feeling lustful.
This resonates with me so much!
Love at first sight happens. My father saw my mom walking across stanfords quad and turned to his friend and said “That’s the girl I’m going to marry.”
Funnily enough my moms brother, home on leave following WWII, met my moms Stanford best friend and promptly fell in love (Grandma had ok’d her visit because it was “Jo”). Mom thought it was a bit strange when her brother insisted on sitting between them at the movies that night. Both couples got married in 1947.
It is lovely to have my moms day calendars from those years and can trace those relationships, including my parents 1st date.