Nobody believes I'm shy.

This story should help. :)

I develop crushes on fellow writers' words all the time. Also, when fellow writers friend me on Facebook, I almost always reciprocate, since it's as much a pro space as a friends-and-family space for me.

So I got a friend request last June from a fellow writer whose words I really liked. Immediately accepted the request, went to look at his page...

And was immediately struck shy-silent by how freaking gorgeous he was. Like. If I could order someone from a catalog, appearancewise, this would be my exact order. Ridiculously so.

So of course I spent the next ten months wistfully sighing over his beauty and his writing and not. saying. a damn. thing. about it. I mean, yes, June was super-volatile for me. But at any point in the fall or winter, perhaps a less-shy person might have been able to say something other than "I like that story!" or click "like" on writing-related status updates. I am not that person. When someone is over a certain attractiveness threshold I just can't even. Hi.

I'm still a member of SFPA through sheer inertia, and it came time to nominate poems for the Dwarf Stars (speculative poetry under ten lines). I am rigorous about reading All The Things, and in my sweep through all the poetry markets, I kept seeing his work and kept loving it. So I shyly friended him on LJ; he friended me back with a wave hello. And I sent a Gchat request just so if I was feeling especially brave someday I could wave hi.

He accepted and chatted me within seconds, I believe.

At which point we fell into one of those deep and wonderful conversations that you have with the new best friend you just met that you stay up all night sharing stories with. It was instant and lovely and we were both terribly shy and affectionate...

Because oh yeah, he's shy, too.

And he had been doing the EXACT SAME THING I HAD for ten months.

We are ridiculous. <3

And I am incredibly thankful. Because I had that easy wonderful connection with him that I feared was dead after recent experiences, that instant affection. And because this happened when it did. I spent the few months post-breakup really centering myself, figuring out what I wanted in my life, and restructuring. So I am coming to this from a place of stability and security, as opposed to the last relationship, which I would just not have gotten into had I been in a stable place.

I realized early on that I didn't have to break any of my rules to love and date Mat. Which... is a welcome change. It had been a while. And that's an amazing feeling, to know that you don't have to compromise on things that are important to you in order to be with someone.

I was talking to minkrose today, and she mentioned that she hadn't wanted to pry about my new Person because I seemed to be keeping that private. But really it hasn't been that - it's been that, as I've partitioned out my time for the novel, for BARCC, for all the health stuff, for paying work and Elayna stuff, et cetera, and for both Adam and Mat, what's suffered has been posting to LJ! I've been meaning to set aside some time and do this!

So hi, yes, I have a Person. ashlyme on LJ, Damsonfox on Twitter, Mat Joiner to those of you who read short fiction and poetry. (This is how he writes. You see why I developed a crush on his brain.) We are both very happy and very, very good for each other in a lot of ways - including getting each other to write more and submit more work! We have had two love poems each out of each other already. <3

There's always a flaw. The only flaw here? Distance. But we are happy with what we have of each other. This is good. <3

EDIT: Oh also it's been nearly a month. I have been really busy!