by Sharon Lee
"I'll do that," she told him, and tipped her head. "Cheever," she said.
"Yeah?"
"I wonder – do you like cats?"
– end –
AUTHORS' COMMENTARY
STORIES ARE STRANGE, wild things, the way we see them, sometimes peeking at us from the distant deep brush and sometimes tracking us down relentlessly, prowling behind our days with the occasional purposeful growl to let us know they are there, waiting, in pursuit of our attention and time. Storytellers know that the story has to be ready to be written, right? They also know that sometimes stories leap out without warning, and must be recounted that way: breathless and sudden.
In the case of "The Gate that Locks the Tree" we'd been hearing the mutterings from the wild for sometime, knowing that yes, sooner or later, we’d need to deal with some of these questions, and some of these characters – after all, had we not seen them drive by in their taxis? Had we not heard them dropping seed pods? Did we not know?
And of course, that’s what happens with wild things: being wild, they have their own lives. In this case, we knew approximately where the story took place, but not the exact path to get there; we knew some of the habits of the creatures and people involved but not when we might be expected to find them in close proximity, or, in fact, together.
As it happens, the project that became the books Accepting the Lance and the still forthcoming Trader’s Leap provided us with the range of the beast that became "The Gate that Locks the Tree," letting us know the season it would be most evident to us, and giving us the penetrating vision to see that it was time we shook these elements together: a Liaden’s first look at snow, a Tree’s memory of promises to a distant pet, the matter of necessity when it came to dealing with things set in motion years before, and of course, Surebleak’s tendency to bend burgeoning event to unanticipated outcome.
Let it be known that in this wild hunt when the first word was typed we knew only that Vertu, the Tree, and a promise were involved. Of a morning Vertu’s extensive Liaden backstory reminded us that while to most of Surebleak the Tree was a new and unusual thing, to Vertu it was something more – to her it was the commonplace oddity of her youth, a comfort as she’d driven on Liad and now, there again in her sky, a landmark.
And knowing the Tree was Vertu’s landmark meant it had to be such for other folk, too, and suddenly the wild hunt became something we had to write now (despite novels in progress at the time!) and the story tumbled out of the bush, with characters old and new, with storyteller insight that we needed to know this stuff so other things could happen, elsewhere and elsewhen.
This story comes to you then as an example of the ″And there we were!″ of a personal experience, as delivered over a glass, comfortably distant now that it's done. Consider it a telling of what happened on a cold and snowy day on Surebleak, to people with connections to a universe that’s both far away and immediate.
We hope you've enjoyed the story.
STEVE MILLER AND SHARON LEE
Cat Farm and Confusion Factory
February 2020
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
MAINE-BASED WRITERS Sharon Lee and Steve Miller teamed up in the late 1980s to bring the world the story of Kinzel, an inept wizard with a love of cats, a thirst for justice, and a staff of true power.
Since then, the husband-and-wife team have written dozens of short stories and twenty plus novels, most set in their star-spanning, nationally-bestselling, Liaden Universe®.
Before settling down to the serene and stable life of a science fiction and fantasy writer, Steve was a traveling poet, a rock-band reviewer, reporter, and editor of a string of community newspapers.
Sharon, less adventurous, has been an advertising copywriter, copy editor on night-side news at a small city newspaper, reporter, photographer, and book reviewer.
Both credit their newspaper experiences with teaching them the finer points of collaboration.
Steve and Sharon are jointly the recipients of the E. E. "Doc" Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (the Skylark), one of the oldest awards in science fiction. In addition, their work has won the much-coveted Prism Award (Mouse and Dragon and Local Custom), as well as the Hal Clement Award for Best Young Adult Science Fiction (Balance of Trade), and the Year's Best Military and Adventure SF Readers' Choice Award ("Wise Child").
Sharon and Steve passionately believe that reading fiction ought to be fun, and that stories are entertainment.
Steve and Sharon maintain a web presence at: http://korval.com
NOVELS BY SHARON LEE
AND STEVE MILLER
THE LIADEN UNIVERSE®
Fledgling
Saltation
Mouse and Dragon
Ghost Ship
Dragon Ship
Necessity’s Child
Trade Secret
Dragon in Exile
Alliance of Equals
The Gathering Edge
Neogenesis
Accepting the Lance
Trader's Leap
Omnibus Editions
The Dragon Variation
The Agent Gambit
Korval’s Game
The Crystal Variation
Story Collections
A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 1
A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 2
A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 3
A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 4
The Fey Duology
Duainfey
Longeye
Gem ser'Edreth
The Tomorrow Log
NOVELS BY SHARON LEE
The Carousel Trilogy
Carousel Tides
Carousel Sun
Carousel Seas
Jennifer Pierce Maine Mysteries
Barnburner
Gunshy
THANK YOU
Thank you for your support of our work.
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller