In this ongoing series, we ask SF/F authors to describe a specialty in their lives that has nothing (or very little) to do with writing. Join us as we discover what draws authors to their various hobbies, how they fit into their daily lives, and how and they inform the author’s literary identity!

I have a very clear memory of how my obsession with fancy started. I was about seven, and I decided to make a tapestry. It was to be a tapestry which depicted a star exploding, and from this star’s explosion would come a whole lot (Hundreds! Thousands! BILLIONS!) of little people in complex costumes, along with a rainbow and some witches. I was pretty sure that people would look at my tapestry and weep. It would be the Big Bang, but embroidered, beaded and glittered. Perhaps also feathered and painted. Maybe it would have mood lighting, and possibly, a dance sequence. It was a tapestry, but O, IT WAS THE FIRST OF ITS KIND.

I was, at this point (and fine, am still) the kind of fanatic who lost her shit when her motor skills weren’t those of a Renaissance master. Therefore, I lost my shit on the regular. My family had learned to pacify me with projects. Once they gave me a huge nest of knotted yarn to untangle. The detangling did not help the fact that I was apparently the reincarnation of Hieronymus Bosch. I was convinced that if people would only give me their most precious and beautiful bits of cloth, thread, and beads, not to mention paints, pigments, and brushes, man, I’d make some very important art. In this case, a creepy tapestry to rival those in the Cloisters. My family (sometimes some of us were antique dealers, sometimes just scavengers) had a subscription to a magazine called Connoisseur, which was full of antiques, art, and estate jewelry. I think I must have seen the Unicorn Tapestries there, and felt jealous of their maker.

[I knew I could do better.]