Patrick Nielsen Hayden

And then two things happened.

One, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, an editor from Tor, John Scalzi's editor, just basically said, look, I know Mer's work.

It's really good.

She deserves to be here.

And I'm going to say something that's going to sound like a plug, but the company I'm going to mention is not a company I have any commercial relationship with.

One of the smartest, most autodidactic people I know is my novel editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden.

who just dropped out of high school to become a science fiction fan and ended up a vice president of Macmillan and just knows everything about everything because he's taught it himself.

And I was at his place in Arizona with his equally brilliant other didactic wife, Teresa, one day.