John M Ford, Vale

I was going to post on writing the next story today. It'll have to wait. We lost John M Ford last night. I didn't know him well, but we often exchanged greetings and chatted over the years at WisCon and other events. He was a hell of a writer and I find that I'll miss him much more than I'd have expected to if you'd asked me about it yesterday. I read his book The Dragon Waiting many years ago and loved it and what he did with Richard III, and that book is a small but significant part of the reason I wrote my own Richard III book, Winter of Discontent. So it seems terribly appropriate that I post a quote from another Shakespeare play, Richard II, in his memory:

"of comfort no man speak: let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; make dust our paper and with rainy eyes write sorrow on the bosom of the earth..."

The world is a darker place for his passing, and I am the poorer for not having known him better. Sometimes, life hurts.