In the Club

The year was 1990 and I was in graduate school at Princeton University. I was just barely 20 years old and I felt very lost, coming from the rather isolated and innocent world of Mormon Utah. I had recently married my high school sweetheart and dragged him with me to New Jersey, where people were constantly asking us why we were married and why we were Mormons (in one guise or another).

I had been born in New Jersey, but my family had moved to Utah when I was ten so that my father could teach at Mormon church-owned Brigham Young University. My oldest brother Mark, however, had moved back to New Jersey when he married and got his first job. He had two children and invited us to come over almost any weekend we wanted. In addition to giving us free food, he also allowed me access to his vast paperback library of science fiction and fantasy. He even had a monthly budget of $100 to spend on any books he wanted, which seemed like the very definition of wealth to me.

It was in my brother’s library that I discovered Kate Elliott, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Tamora Pierce, three women writers who were telling stories that turned the world upside down for me. Women DID stuff in these books. Women had their own stories to tell. They changed the world. They didn’t give up their femininity, but they were like the male protagonists I had spent my whole life reading about and had assumed that if I were to become a writer, I would spend my life writing about. I had so far written a number of novels, all with male heroes who rescued damsels in distress, with backdrops borrowed from Star Trek, Perry Mason, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond.

I borrowed as many books as I could carry and took them back to my tiny apartment. During the day, I went to my grad school classes. I read complicated German novels, epics, Bildungsromane, and a lot of literary scholarship. I even took classes on German art and philosophy. I studied with Elaine Showalter and read about the secret pulp stories published by Louisa May Alcott under a pseudonym. I took a class in creative writing in the department that Toni Morrison taught in.

And when it was 6:00 p.m., my workday ended and I got out my own books. I read for hours on end, sucked into a world that could make me forget about dinner, about grad school papers, about a dissertation I had to figure out, about professors who told us that there were no qualified women on the PLANET they could hire nor were women writers appropriate material for dissertations or articles for tenure. I forgot about the assistant profs, all women, who wrote letters complaining about sexism to the university and then left, one by one, as I struggled to find a mentor for my work on women writers of the Enlightenment, where women had for the first time a voice of their own and actually an economy that encouraged them.

I loved Kate Elliott’s Jaran with the kind of passion you can only understand if you were one of those kids who read books on the way to school. And as you walked in between classes. And on a camping trip where it rained so badly during one night that you regretted bringing your favorite book with you because your parents would never allow you to buy a second copy, since you’d already read it once and why would anyone want to read a book more than that? The matriarchal society that was depicted seemed a cure to me to all those time travel books where the Larry Stu author goes back in time and gets to oppress women and minorities in the name of historical accuracy. The power struggle between the two characters in love felt like something that could only happen in a book, except that it was my life, too. My negotiation with my husband about where we lived when and who took care of the kids during what times of day so that we could both work jobs that were important to us.

I met Kate Elliott in person for the first time in 2012 at Sirens in Oregon. By then, I’d met a lot of favorite authors. Some meetings were just what you’d imagine they might be. Some were disappointments. Others disasters as I realized that loving a book isn’t the same as loving an author as a person. I followed Kate on facebook, on twitter, and tried to avoid being stalkerish. I brought all of my Jaran books to be signed once, those later editions that I bought after I’d worn out my brother’s copies and, since he had all that monthly money, let him replace on his own.

And then, she expressed interest in getting a copy of The Bishop’s Wife. I contacted my publisher and they sent one along. You learn not to hold your breath at these kinds of things. It’s not personal. People sometimes have deadlines or family events that make it impossible to read at all. And then there is the reality that not everyone will fall in love with your book, even if your book is good. Even if you loved their books. Even if you desperately want someone to love your book and see you hidden inside of all those words.

But today, I went to my amazon page

(http://www.amazon.com/Bishops-Wife-Mette-Ivie-Harrison/dp/1616954760/ref=sr_1_1_twi_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415632397&sr=8-1&keywords=mette+ivie+harrison+the+bishop%27s+wife)

and I saw this:

“Don’t be deceived by the unassuming heroine and quiet start of The Bishop’s Wife. In this gripping and contemplative mystery, a woman who most people would identify as living an ordinary life discovers she is the only one willing to pursue a dangerous puzzle. As she uncovers layers of deceit she struggles to remain true to her deeply courageous self.”
—Kate Elliott, bestselling author of the Spiritwalker Trilogy

I could just say that I feel like I’d won the lottery, but I think this is a lot better than that. The lottery is a prize that is completely impersonal, and unearned. And hearing a hero of yours loved your book is one of the sweetest rewards of becoming a writer. Really, I think that for me, all the prizes in the world, all the book sales, can not make a dent in the feeling of pride and satisfaction as a writer in being welcomed into the club.

Thanks Kate!