The first sign that I was going to be in trouble was on our first anniversary, when I got the cover story in one of our local weekly newspapers. The two of us went to a poetry reading by a friend of hers, and all anyone wanted to ask at the reading was about my article. (This was because it was an April Fool’s article that almost everyone fell for.) It didn’t get bad until the middle of 1996: we’d just moved to Portland, and were staying in a hotel a couple of blocks away from the big Powell’s flagship store. Literally the day we walked in, the latest “Year’s Best Science Fiction” collection was out, and there I was mentioned in the Year In Review essay. Admittedly, it was Gardner Dozois whining about my making fun of Locus when I was a columnist for Tangent, but there was my name in a book by a real publisher, and it just ate out my ex’s heart.

What I dealt with over the next nearly five years is why I tell everyone with delusions of becoming a writer not to get involved with a fellow wannabe if you want the marriage to go well. The problem was that my ex wanted all of what she thought were the perks of being a writer without actually having to write and risk rejection. Therefore, she got an English Lit degree, she paid for multiple writing workshops, she worked for at least five bookstores or publishing-related companies in the time we were together, and started another bookstore after we divorced. It was bad enough when I started getting paid for my articles. It was worse when I was actually being invited to conventions and events because of those articles, because then she became determined that she should get the same level of respect and patronage for being the spouse of a writer. By 1999, her temper tantrums at conventions were so famous that the staff of one convention in New Orleans referred to her as “the Nancy Spungen of fandom.” (This was the convention where she literally went into a bawling fit because my admission badge was ready, but hers wasn’t. Never mind that she decided she wanted to go literally three days before the convention: she proceeded to tell everyone on staff for the entire weekend how unprofessional they were because her badge wasn’t ready, she didn’t get a discount in the dealer’s room, and the convention didn’t have someone at the airport waiting to pick us up.)

I’m not saying I was blameless in all of this: one of the reasons why I quit writing was because I realized how much emotional investment I was putting into work that was so ephemeral and pointless. Back in the day, since I’m a supremely nonpolitical animal, I would get myself worked up to no end about individuals in the genre who were getting recognition all out of proportion to their talent. (In my old age, I realized that the writing is what endures, and many of those shooting stars are now either gone or commonly recognized jokes.) I also realize now why I’m so happy these days: I’m in a much healthier relationship with someone with good self-esteem, and we’re too busy trying to buoy each other’s businesses instead of trying to horn in on it. I’ve realized this, and my biggest regret in life is that my ex will probably never understand why it’s important. Then again, she wasn’t happy until she’d gnawed at the people in her life until they turned on her, in which case she could milk the tragedy for as long as she could.