Yesterday morning, I thought about my former fiction editor, Kate Duffy, and wondered how she was doing. I considered dropping her an email, but didn’t. Then this morning, I learned that Kate died yesterday. Not a welcome synchronicity.
She was an original, an Aquarian with a Cancer moon who had a biting wit and a raucous laugh. She rescued my fiction career in February 1997, when she bought one of my paranormal thrillers, Hanged Man. We did a total of 12 books together and during that time, I came to appreciate how rare she was as an editor. She understood that novelists do their best work when they write about what they love and always gave me complete creative freedom. She was also a relentless cheerleader for my books.
But more than this, Kate understood the terrain of the human heart. When my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimers and my dad moved in with us, she called frequently to find out how we were doing. In May of 2000, Kate called when I was sitting at my desk, sobbing, and I told her I would have to call her back. She wouldn’t let me get off the phone until I told her what had happened. I had just been told by my mother’s doctor that she wasn’t a candidate for hip replacement surgery because of the Alzheimer’s and that she was now doomed to live out the remainder of her life on morphine. Kate talked me through it. When my mother died, when my father passed on several years later, she was there to talk.
When her dad was ill, I remember looking at her birth chart – and his – and telling her about a challenging period that was coming up. A few months later, I felt something had happened to her and called her cell – which I’d never done before. She was on the train, her father had just died.
During a trip to New York, Kate took Megan and I out to lunch and asked Megan, then 15, about the time travel novel she was writing. She listened as though Megan were one of her authors and then gave her some advice about it. This is the kind of person she was.
Her time and expertise were always available to me and I used both liberally. I could give her a single paragraph of an idea and she would know immediately whether it would work. When I was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe award, Kate sent roses. When I won, I sent roses to her.
At a romance conference in Orlando in 2005, the last time I saw Kate, she and I stole away at nine PM one night to watch Lost, a show we both loved. We drank wine and laughed, talked life and politics. On my way home the next day, I had a weird feeling that I wouldn’t ever see Kate again. Fifteen minutes later, I got a flat tire. At the time, I didn’t associate the thought with the flat tire.
The relationship between novelists and their editors is often complex. You may be friends, but you’re always aware the editor has the final say on what you write. So in April 2008, when I learned from my agent that Kensington wouldn’t be renewing my contract, I was hurt. I had sensed it might happen,but here it was. Real. Kate called me later that afternoon – something she certainly didn’t have to do – and told me how much she had enjoyed working with me. I understood it was business, so it didn’t feel like a dismissal. It felt like what it was – Kate reaching out one last time to offer encouragement, options.
We were both big Obama supporters, so it seems fitting that the last email we exchanged was right after Obama had won the election.
Me: We’re watching the birth of a whole new paradigm! Yahoo!!!
Kate: Went to bed in tears.
I’d say, rest in peace, Kate, except that you probably aren’t. I figure you’re starting your own publishing house on the other side and writers are already flocking to you. I’m sure I’ll see you around or hear that booming laugh in some unexpected place. Take care, Kate, and thanks for everything.
