My friend and colleague, writer Jay Lake, lost a bitter battle with cancer yesterday. I dipped into my memories and wrote a memorial for him – and it starts, like everything with Jay did because he loved life so much, with laughter:
I may have seen Jay Lake before this moment which I call “first”, the
moment in which he entered my consciousness directly, but my first real
(official as it were) memory of him was… laughter. It was almost
painful watching a panel with him and Ellen Klages on it, because they
fed off each other, and by the time the panel ended most of us in the
audience were doubled over and weeping with laughter. I told Jay, later,
that there ought to be a law against him and Ellen on the same stage at
the same time because it was dangerous to people’s health. ANd again,
there was laughter….
You can read the rest of it at my other blog.
I was GoH at Radcon in 2009, together with Beth Meacham of Tor – Jay did the GoH interview, in his own inimitable style:
His memory lives on in people like me who called him friend – and we are legion – and in the legacy of his work. If you have never read anything by Jay, today might be a good day to begin. If you have… go back and pick up an old favorite and give it another read. And remember him.
Recent Comments