WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK: The care and feeding of authors

Authors and editors frequently become good friends. Both know that the professional relationship may not last forever–either can change publishing houses–but I’ve learned never to say a final goodbye, because the winds of change can bring people back together just as easily as it parted them. So has it been with me and Elizabeth Moon, whose Paksenarrion series (The Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, Divided Allegiance, and Oath of Gold) I edited at Baen Books lo these many moons ago.

These days Elizabeth is a Del Rey author, and recently she spent several days in Brooklyn with my husband and me. Elizabeth lives in a small town in central Texas, so New York was one big chocolate box to her. When she wasn’t running around the city, we talked. Aside from fine-tuning her new novel, which returns readers to the Paksenarrion universe (Oath of Fealty, coming next March), we discussed, and certainly not in this order: baking bread, Greek food, adoption, the New York subway system, attack squirrels, prairie management, restoring old houses, and visions from God.
And horses! Lots about horses! Take a look at this quick flick in which she tells us a bit about her own horse, Mac, and some of the horses that will appear in Oath of Fealty.