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Paying It Forward -- Thanks to Holly Lisle
Sep. 6th, 2024 05:53 pmSad to hear about the passing of author Holly Lisle the other day. She was one of my first inspirations in the SFF genre, having read The Secret Texts trilogy in the late 90s, right about the same time that I was writing and revising The Phoenix Effect, which of course morphed into the Bridgetown Trilogy.
I remember seeing something in the acknowledgement pages of those books that intrigued me: she'd created what was essentially a BBS forum called Forward Motion, a smallish but very active online writing community. They -- including Holly -- helped me figure out what I was trying to do with the Mendaihu Universe, even had a few people beta read some of it at the time. She stepped away from FM sometime in the early 00s if I'm not mistaken to focus on writing and teaching, but I never forgot how much that community helped me.
It wasn't just about the help, though -- one of Holly's mottos was 'paying it forward' and I certainly did that over the years, offering to beta read for others, and later on giving what information and suggestions I could about self-publishing during local conventions. I never forgot that either.
I remember seeing something in the acknowledgement pages of those books that intrigued me: she'd created what was essentially a BBS forum called Forward Motion, a smallish but very active online writing community. They -- including Holly -- helped me figure out what I was trying to do with the Mendaihu Universe, even had a few people beta read some of it at the time. She stepped away from FM sometime in the early 00s if I'm not mistaken to focus on writing and teaching, but I never forgot how much that community helped me.
It wasn't just about the help, though -- one of Holly's mottos was 'paying it forward' and I certainly did that over the years, offering to beta read for others, and later on giving what information and suggestions I could about self-publishing during local conventions. I never forgot that either.
