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Coming up for air momentarily, Sue Watkins says that it looks as though  she might actually make deadline in January for delivering her memoir of Jane Roberts to Moment Point Press.

Speaking of Jane Roberts: Remembering the Author of the Seth Material combines Sue's recollections of her friend and mentor with the memories, dreams, and reflections of others who knew Jane under a variety of circumstances, from her childhood through the days of The Seth Material and ESP class to her last days in the hospital before her death in 1984.

"Some of the material has been very difficult to revisit, let alone write about," Sue says. "Jane and I were not girlfriends in the usual sense of the word; our relationship definitely had its rough edges. We shared some very interesting dissimilarities. For example, food beliefs - you want to talk about looking across a virtual crevasse? One time Jane suggested that maybe she and I ought to exchange diets. I replied that I'd probably manage to stay fat on peanut butter sandwiches and black coffee and she'd stay thin noshing ice cream and jelly beans all day, so what was the use? She saw the point. 'Goddamned beliefs anyway,' she said, in that wry way of hers.

"However," Sue says, "it's been more than a little humiliating to have to look back at how often I went whining to Jane about personal problems. I had to face the fact that I had little regard for the difficulties she was facing in those days. She was pretty disgusted with me sometimes. Still, we shared a world view, actually more so than we understood at the time. Reading her journals in preparation for this book was among other things an overwhelming exercise in the regret of What-If.

"The most aggravating thing people ask me about Jane is, 'Where did Seth go now that Jane's dead?' Just once I'd like to hear somebody wonder where the hell Jane went now that Jane's dead." It's that question that motivated Sue to collect memories of Jane the person, rather than memories of Sethian encounters—Jane the person who, after all, authored the Seth material as well as poetry, novels, her "aspect psychology" trilogy, and dozens of other works, all of which reside in the Sterling Memorial Archives at Yale University.

The resulting materials for this memoir are diverse and multi-layered, and include some poignant and remarkable reminiscence from Jane's first husband; an interview with A.J. Budrys, the science fiction writer who knew Jane as the author of "Red Wagon" and other SF stories; humorous and tender moments recalled by people who knew her as fans, friends, and ESP class members; dreams about Jane both before and after she died; excerpts from the journals of Debbie Harris, who met Jane in 1980 and visited her almost daily during Jane's last hospital stay; excerpts from interviews and conversations with Jane talking informally about her early life; and much more.

"But this isn't a book about Saint Jane," Sue says. "There are memories and observations, including some of my own, that are, let us say, less than 100% laudatory. She was, after all, a complex human being. That complexity was the source of her art."

Moment Point Press will be publishing the memoir in the fall of 2000. Visit their web site at www.momentpoint.com for updates on this and other titles.