Some of you may have noticed that my husband, Tim Pratt, has had increasing success since I started dating him back in 2001.

Coincidence? I think not!

Let's consider the evidence. He never does any work. Haven't you noticed that according to his blog all he does is watch horror movies while I'm not around and play video games? And yet he's ridculously productive? And meanwhile I'm so busy I don't even have time to update my own blog?

There's a reason for this, oh yes. The simple fact is that I have written all of Tim Pratt's fiction for him since the spring of 2001.

Why did I let him publish it under his name instead of my own? What good would that have done? Once glance at this year's Hugo ballot, with only one female fiction nominee, would tell you what chance those very same stories would have had at publication had I put my own, very girly, name upon them. Using Tim's name (and, thanks to me, growing success) allowed my prose to reach an increasingly wider audience and bring more money into our household.

But today, between Tim's egotistical declarion of movementhood, the distinct dearth of women on the Hugo ballot and the fact that his (my) writing is now so appealing to women that they're making him publish his (my) next novel under the gender-neutral "T.A. Pratt", I can take no more! Henceforth, whenever you read a story by "Tim Pratt" just know that no, it's not astonishing that a man can write such convincing female characters, because a woman actually wrote the story you're reading!

I have no illusions that this declaration will make work that I try to publish under "Heather Shaw" any more saleable. Sure, I could pick my *own* male nom de plume a la Tiptree, but why, when Tim's popularity is skyrocketing? No, I'll continue to write his stuff and still pathetically try to publish a few, choice pieces under my own name. But now, dear readers, now you'll know the truth!