I met Nancy Fulda when I was four years old and she was two days. I have a vague memory of thinking she was cute, but our mother assures me that I also exhibited significant signs of resentment at not being the baby of the family any more. These feelings were somewhat appeased by the present–From: Nancy To: Sandra–of a small stuffed rabbit. It was a golden orange color and the perfect size for hiding in a coat pocket and sneaking to school. So upon her entry into my life, Nancy gave me something I treasured. She still does. Often.
For many years Nancy was an ancillary character in my story of childhood, but anytime I looked around to check my progress, she was always closer on my heels than I thought she would be. I had to go faster just to stay ahead, though I never once acknowledged that keeping ahead had any importance to me. Years later, when she was pregnant with her first child and I with my fourth, we dropped our defenses enough to lament to each other how difficult it was to have a sister who seemed better at everything. We laughed together and from that time began to collaborate instead of competing. Nancy is one of my best critiquers for my writing. What a loss it would be if I had stayed too jealous to show it to her.
Nancy has a book for sale called Dead Men Don’t Cry. It is a book made out of the best stories she’s written in the past 10 years. These are all reprint stories which sold to various Science Fiction and Fantasy magazines. She’s collected them for convenience sake so that people like me can find them all in one place. You can buy it on the site she created called Anthology Builder. She writes. She runs a business. She has three kids. She supports her husband in his creative endeavors. She does all of this while also battling various personal challenges. She is amazing and she writes stories I love to read because they are about people with problems who happen to live in fantastical worlds. Can you see why I was intimidated all those years? You should take a look at her book and her website.