Five things you might not know about Roslyn (and one thing you do), by Roslyn's wife
I met Roslyn years before she met me.
Like many of you, I discovered her first as Telanu; once I did I read everything I could find under that name, leaving the occasional fic comment in which I tried not to embarrass myself. As Tumblr mutuals, we brushed up against each other briefly here and there across the years, although we never shared a fandom until March 2017, when she messaged me, with many exclamation points, to ask if I’d seen the third season of Grace and Frankie. I was thrilled—and not a little starstruck—that my favorite writer actually wanted to talk to me! More than five years later, she still wants to talk to me. In fact, this past March she stood up with me in front of our closest family and friends, looking more beautiful than any woman ever has in the history of the universe, and promised to talk to me for the rest of our lives.
Roslyn (L) and me (R)
If you’ve followed Roslyn for any amount of time, you might have noticed that she’s pretty private about her personal life. (Case in point: despite messaging daily, I didn’t know her given name until we’d been talking for almost a year!) Some of that stems from her understandable desire to keep her Roslyn/Telanu identities separate; some of it is just a natural tendency on her part towards introversion and reserve. The thing is, though, she married a loquacious extrovert who takes literally any opportunity she can to talk about her incredible, hilarious, brilliant, and stunning wife. So I convinced her to let me share with you five things you probably don’t know about Roslyn—and one you definitely do—because she’s worth knowing better.
She hates nature.
Okay, maybe “hates” is a little excessive. And her antipathy isn’t so much aimed at “nature” as it is “being out in nature for hours on end without any creature comforts.” But Roslyn’s nightmare weekend would consist of mountain hiking, camping on said mountain without running water, and the total absence of WiFi. She prefers to experience nature by looking out the window of a gorgeous AirBnB with climate control. Ideally with a nice drink in hand. As an outdoorsy person, this is virtually the one area where our interests don’t overlap! At least I’m able to get her to go kayaking with me during the summer.
She has romance novel protagonist eyes.
Honestly, if Roslyn gave her exact eyes to one of her MCs, more than a few readers would roll their own in disbelief. They’re ice-gray, with little flecks of gold raying out from her pupils. I know! It’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t believe it either. And yes, I take every opportunity I can to gaze into them like the lovestruck wife I am.
She’s a former college professor.
Before a recent transition into the administration side of academia, Roslyn was an English professor who specialized in world literatures. She taught everything from Dante to Samuel Beckett to ancient Egyptian poetry. I was never lucky enough to see her in front of a classroom—although RateMyProfessor says that her lectures were hilarious, no surprise to me—but I’ve learned a lot about my own pedagogy from her lesson plans. And while I know admin was the right move for Roslyn, whenever I learn something new from her I’m a little sad that she’s not still teaching, because she’s just that good at it.
She’s fascinated by perfume.
In Above All Things, Vivian Carlisle gives her girlfriend a birthday present: a bottle of perfume. “Like everything in fashion,” Vivian tells Jules, “perfume either has intelligence or it doesn’t.” That observation is pure Roslyn, who knows perfume like she knows Dante: thoroughly, holistically, deeply. It’s thanks to Roslyn that I know anything about scent, and how it layers, and how it relies on time and movement as much as it does skin and cloth. On my very first visit to see Roslyn in person, back when we were “just friends” living a thousand miles apart, one of the very first things she shared with me was her substantial perfume collection! It was, unsurprisingly, eclectic.
She writes so much more than she publishes.
One of our favorite couple activities is storytelling. Many evenings and some weekends, Roslyn and I will sit on the couch with our laptops, and she’ll tell me a story over several hours through iMessage, a few lines at a time, often impromptu. (I’m much less prolific than she is, but sometimes I write for her, too.) These stories are for our eyes only, with characters and worlds we’ve co-created, tailored exactly to our likes and interests. I don’t know anyone else who can improvise an entire coherent and compelling narrative on the spot! And honestly, even though we’ve been doing this for years, I sometimes still can’t believe my favorite writer crafts stories just for me.
Her writing is brilliant.
If you’ve read anything Roslyn’s ever written, either as Roslyn or Telanu, you know this already. Obviously, I’m biased, but it was Roslyn’s writing that I knew first, and I loved her words a long, long time before I loved her. From the beginning, I’ve been amazed by Roslyn’s intuitive sense of pacing, her economy of language, her tension building, her characterization, her believable dialogue, her ability to take critique and improve. She writes the best sex scenes I’ve ever read, in any genre. Most on-page sex is either too florid, superfluous, or repetitive, but Roslyn writes sex that helps us understand her characters, that moves the plot forward, and—yes—that’s scorchingly hot.
Even beyond all that, she has a remarkable nose for what a story needs in order to work. I had a front-row seat to the two years she spent reworking and re-writing Truth and Measure, a task that required her to: 1) excise 70,000 words from the original fanfic, an entire book-length amount; 2) divide one very long work into two separate and cohesive novels; 3) satisfy fans of the original fic, many of whom had extremely high expectations; 4) engage new readers who weren’t familiar with the original; 5) update and change aspects of the original that really didn’t work anymore; and 6) make Vivian and Jules their own characters, not just carbon copies of Miranda and Andy. And she did it! She did all of that brilliantly, with a tremendous amount of work and just as much talent.
If the above hasn’t made it clear, I am proud beyond words of Roslyn, and I can’t wait to see what she’s got in store for us next. Thanks for letting me commandeer your blog, my love. To you, and to that look in your gray-gold eyes when you get a new idea.