Mary Vettel passed away yesterday afternoon. None of you knew her. If you own any of my books, you'll find her on the “Acknowledgments” page of each. You'll find my last two novels dedicated to her as she dealt with pancreatic cancer.
From my perspective, she didn't battle cancer; she humored it. Of course, there was a fight, but she never mentioned it. Along with the chemo, she spoke of tests and procedures I'd never heard of, but she never complained, never a woe is me.
Mary Vettel was my best friend over the last 17 years. We never met in person. Never even talked over the phone. She lived in Hampton Bays, New York—I never even checked a map. Seems strange now, but I guess we just settled in as modern-day pen pals. Email seemed like our form of communication.
We met through a site called QueryTracker, devoted to assisting writers in their pursuit of a literary agent. I was finishing up my second novel, No Happier State, at the time, and Mary asked several times to read it before I took her seriously. She grudgingly agreed to let me read her novel Death at the Drive-In (Amazon: https://a.co/d/4hbesSG – buy it, it's terrific!). Since then, she read everything I've written, offering constructive criticism and suggestions, as did I with everything she sent me. We kept each other busy.
We talked about everything. We helped each other with life. It wasn't till a couple of weeks ago that we told each other how we really felt. Sometimes you don't have the luxury of time to tell someone how much you love them. I'm glad we were able to do that.
