Fans of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" will notice that there's a character named Kit Snicket who was named after Kit Reed. That was kind of the best thing I felt I could do for her, you know. I think, you know, other people who are lucky enough to be successful who have a mentor want to buy them a yacht or, you know, a case of champagne or something. And I know that Kit tickled pink to find her name in a book. And that was just - yeah, we just had a really, really wonderful time. I feel so lucky to have known her. Her husband, too, was kind of another kind of mentor for me. And sometimes I think it probably looked to some people that they were almost parental figures, but they weren't because they were friends of mine. They took me seriously at my age. They never indicated that I was tiresome in some undergraduate way, even though I was tiresome in every undergraduate way.
Heyho, you know I love TLPOE and I was wondering if you'd ever write a (whump) fic that sheds some light on how Roni and Kit met? I really like their dynamics and would love to read something set in the past or referring to their past...
This sat forever and it’s very short and I’m sorry about that, but I actually really love this prompt. I really love Kit and Roni, but I hadn’t previously put a whole lot of thought into how they met. this isn’t much, and it’s not really whumpy, just kind of two stressed-out gay disasters meeting in a library, lol :) thank you for this prompt and also for waiting so long for me to answer it!!
It takes place in 1992, with both Kit and Roni in college.
Kitty Reed was sleeping on her arms in the library for the fourth time that week, and it wasn’t even finals yet. She woke up to someone gently shaking her shoulder and startled a bit, blinking her eyes back into focus.
“Hey, you,” a young woman greeted, the tight ringlets of her black hair bouncing as she backed away from Kitty’s face. “I wanted to wake you and let you know that the library’s closing before Public Safety does it. Again.”
Kitty smiled. She recognized the girl as one of the student employees who reshelved the books and helped people find whatever they were looking for in the library—one she’d had to start intentionally avoiding because she was so distractingly cute that Kitty couldn’t focus on studying while she was walking around or talking to other students.
“Thanks,” she mumbled. “They’re not happy about having to walk me to my car every night.” It was university policy for the public safety officers to escort students to the dorms or their cars when they left school buildings after they closed, but that didn’t mean they were nice about it.
“I noticed,” the young woman smiled. “I see you in here every night; you study until midnight even though you’re clearly exhausted.” Kitty frowned at the accusatory tone.
“You’re here every night, too, working,” she shot back.”You’re a student, aren’t you?”
The woman hesitated, sighed, and sat in the chair next to Kitty to help her pack her books into her backpack. “Yeah,” she admitted, “you got me. I’m just as tired. But I get paid for it.”
“That’s true.” She shrugged into her green and purple sportswear jacket and looked the girl in the eyes. “Maybe we both need a break,” she suggested with a hopeful smile, which the other young woman met with an enthusiastic nod. “I’m Kitty, by the way.”
“Veronica,” she replied, “but most people call me Roni.”
“Maybe I could take you for a cup of coffee tomorrow?”
Roni seemed to think about it for a moment, but something about her facial expression told Kitty that she’d already made up her mind even before she took Kit’s notebook and wrote down her phone number.
“Text me,” she said, ushering her out the back door of the library before the public safety officer could scold her for being out past campus curfew. “And go get some sleep!”
Roni had managed to, while she was barely awake and not coherent, gather her supplies in her backpack, put it on her shoulders, and set her on her way without her even noticing that she’d done anything. Kitty gave a tired, slightly-dazed, elated smile as she waved goodbye. “You too,” she called over her shoulder.
If you have walked into a museum recently - whether you did so to attend an art exhibition or to escape from the police - you may have noticed a type of painting known as a triptych. A triptych has three panels, with something different painted on each of the panels. For instance, my friend Professor Reed made a triptych for me, and he painted fire on one panel, a typewriter on another, and the face of a beautiful, intelligent woman on the third. The triptych is entitled What Happened to Beatrice and I cannot look upon it without weeping.
I am a writer, and not a painter, but if I were to try and paint a triptych entitled The Baudelaire Orphans' Miserable Experiences at Prufrock Prep, I would paint Mr. Remora on one panel, Mrs. Brass on another, and a box of staples on the third, and the results would make me so sad that between the Beatrice triptych and the Baudelaire triptych I would scarcely stop weeping all day.
Read an excerpt from Mormama, a supernatural southern gothic tale from Kit Reed.
Dell Duval has been living on the street since his accident. He can't remember who he was or where he came from. All he has is a tattered note in his pocket with an address for the Ellis house, a sprawling, ancient residence in Jacksonville. He doesn't know why he's been sent here.
In the house, Lane and her son Theo have returned to the ancient family home—their last resort. The old house is ruled by an equally ancient trio of tyrannical aunts, who want to preserve everything. Nothing should ever leave the house, including Lane.
Something about the house isn't right. Things happen to the men and boys living there. There are forces at work one of which visits Theo each night—Mormama, one mama too many.
Daniel Handler talking about Kit Reed, in his recent interview
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I think there's such a mythology attached to writing, and to being a writer, that it can get in the way of so many people's experience of trying to write or wanting to be a writer or wanting to be just involved with literature. And it feels like a cliché to complain that some of it is about creative writing classes, but some of it really is.
And when I arrived at Wesleyan, there was a very famous writer whom I won't name, who's not at Wesleyan anymore. And you could take her class, and you had to have submit materials and have a meeting with her. And I had a meeting with her and she was very harsh. First of all, she told me - we were supposed to bring our - anything we published anyplace, and she told me my credentials were really bad. And I was 18 years old. You know, I hadn't - I don't know how many 18-year-olds she had who had just been published in The New Yorker, but I wasn't one of them. You know, I've been published in my high school literary magazine, and a couple of other little things, you know, for high school students. And she made me feel like I was already behind, I was already a failure.
And then she was going to assign me a poem to memorize and that we were going to meet all of us outside and recite our poems. And I have no - there's nothing wrong with memorizing a poem and reciting it. I've - at the time I was 18, that was my primary seduction technique. Not an effective one, I should note. For anyone who stood by it. And I was really - I was put off by the whole experience. I thought - oh, I'm interesting in writing and read, I'm not interested in being demeaned and being assigned things to memorize. None of that seemed like what I wanted to do.
And I really - I say this in the book. I said, I felt like I walked into a medical school on the first day and fainted at the sight of blood. I thought, oh, I guess I'm not a writer, because I'm not interested in this. I don't know what this is, but I can't do it. And it was quite a shake-up for me because that was kind of my plan, was to become a writer, and the class by the famous writer was not good.
And then I met Kit Reed, who I'd never heard of. And she told me she taught a writing class, and that her writing classes you turned in 10 pages every week, and that you met with her alone in her kitchen to discuss them. You, in fact, only met the other people in the class - there was like a little first gathering, and then there was a midway kind of lunch, and then there was a party on the last thing. That was the only time you met the other writers.
And she gave you very individual attention. She gave you very individual advice. I would run into other students from time to time and say, oh, I bet that Kit made you read this that I'm reading. And they would say "no, she made me read this whole other thing." Because she had this wonderful, wonderful kind of open mind and open heart about what literature is and that it was boundless, that there were innumerable traditions that you can belong to or not belong to, that you can take things from that you can synthesize, and she was so open about, like, bona fide diversity of writing. Not just kind of the individual profiles of the writers, but all of these traditions from all over the world that you can sink into.
She was not a snob. So there were people who were writing, you know, kind of trashy genre stuff, and there were people who were writing very highfalutin stuff, and she was open to all of it, she was enthusiastic about all of it, and it was really contagious.
And then also, she made you write a whole lot. You couldn't hide behind your own pretension or your own beautiful vision of how wonderful it was going to be when you published and you had a great photograph of yourself on the cover. She wasn't interested in that. She wanted you to get better and better and better.
And - you know it's been said by many times - I feel it's often credited to Malcolm Gladwell, so I'll credit him now, that to be a writer you have to write, you know, a certain number of terrible pages first. And that was not how it was presented to me, but I think that is the idea that Kit just said yeah, you're terrible because you're young and you're learning. So let's try to write as often, as much as possible, try to get this nailed down, try to learn all this, and then you'll get better. Let's get rid of the bad part of your writing, you know, as quickly as possible.
And she became a real mentor for me, not just in writing, but, just, in kind of approaching life, and just at the perfect age. Because, you know, 18, 19, 20, that's when you can be the most insufferable, snobbish person you'll ever get to be in your life. And I was plenty insufferable, it wasn't like she managed to vanish that, but it was really wonderful to have someone to just remind you, this thing you're having trouble with, is a problem that many people have had, this literature you're reading is part of a long tradition, this literature you want to write is a part of a tradition you want to be thoughtful about. And she was just so endlessly generous in that way. And I really, really miss her. She died a few years ago, and hardly a week goes by that I don't have the bona fide urge to pick up the phone and say "Oh I just read this thing" or "I have a funny story for you" or something like that because she was endlessly enthusiastic.
Fans of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" will notice that there's a character named Kit Snicket who was named after Kit Reed. That was kind of the best thing I felt I could do for her, you know. I think, you know, other people who are lucky enough to be successful who have a mentor want to buy them a yacht or, you know, a case of champagne or something. And I know that Kit tickled pink to find her name in a book. And that was just - yeah, we just had a really, really wonderful time. I feel so lucky to have known her. Her husband, too, was kind of another kind of mentor for me. And sometimes I think it probably looked to some people that they were almost parental figures, but they weren't because they were friends of mine. They took me seriously at my age. They never indicated that I was tiresome in some undergraduate way, even though I was tiresome in every undergraduate way. And then I love meeting her readers, because that's a whole other kind of secret club. Her own writing really defied genre in a lot of ways.
When I'm in a used bookshop, I most often see her in sci-fi. Science fiction magazines. And she was one of the few women - you know you often see like, Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert and then her or something. And she was often one of the few women, or the only woman in some anthologies and magazines. And some of her work definitely can comfortably fit in that category, but she was really interested in just kind of the strangeness of life and how it happens to people and - [Interviewer: Just what you're interested in] - I mean, it's just what excites me. And also just, like, kind of all my favorite writers and artists, there's something where you say they're not quite that, they kind of go in this category, but they're not. And I always think that's when you are remind that literature is real and that categories are false.
I lOve kit and lacy and I’m super excited to read more of the last place on earth!! If you’re looking for a request, perhaps a sorta role-reversal where kits sick and lacys gotta help her or if you wanna stick with lacy maybe one where she’s really sick and ends up like going to kits house in the middle of the night absolutely a mess? alsjdnjd I’ve never requested any writing before so I’m really sorry if these aren’t what you’re looking for!
I know my next fic was supposed to be for FMA (and I do have 500 words of that one done! It’ll happen!) but I was suddenly inspired (by compliments from someone who probably knows who they are but I won’t embarrass them by tagging them lol) to write for my girls from The Last Place on Earth, formally titled Miss Missing! Thank you so much for loving them, everyone who reads these fics: I love you!
Kitty Reed was a heavy sleeper. Roni liked to say that she could have an entire parade in the bedroom and Kit wouldn’t notice until her own internal clock woke her up at precisely 8:15 a.m.
So when someone knocked at the door at 2:00 in the morning, Roni was not at all surprised when she was the one who startled awake while Kitty simply snored and rolled over in her sleep. She sighed and swung her legs over the side of the bed, stepping around until she found her slippers, then tugged her fuzzy robe down from where it hung on the bathroom door and wrapped it around herself and put her glasses on before heading downstairs to see who was at the door.
Peeking through the peephole at the porch, she immediately recognized her wife’s younger coworker and unlocked the door, swinging it open to reveal Lacy standing in front of her with windswept hair and a coat covered in snow.
“Lacy, honey, what are you doing here?” she asked. Lacy startled as if she hadn’t noticed the door open but barely skipped a beat in flashing a warm smile.
“Mrs. Reed,” Lacy greeted cheerily, “sorry, I know it’s late. I was on a walk and really needed to warm up before I could get home.”
Veronica’s jaw dropped. “You walked here?” she verified, feeling horrified when Lacy shrugged, then nodded. Even as an avid jogger, Roni only ran about halfway to Lacy’s apartment every day before turning back, and it took her a good 25 minutes even at a brisk pace. “Come inside; you must be freezing.” Sluggishly, worryingly sluggishly, Lacy followed her gesture, allowing Roni to take off her coat—soaked and frozen—and sat on the couch where she was directed. Roni took the decorative quilt from the back of the couch and wrapped it around her tightly, tucking it to entrap any warmth she might still have in her.
“S’Kit at work already?” Lacy asked, her words colliding with one another. That, too, was upsetting—she clearly had no idea what time it was.
“Not yet, sweetie. I’m going to go get her, though, as soon as I make you a hot drink. You really need to warm up.” Lacy’s eyes tracked her to the kitchen, where she took a pot off its handle and lit the stove, then measured out about a cup’s worth of 2% milk and began to heat it. Glancing back at Lacy once more to ensure that she was still warming up comfortably, Roni bounded back up the stairs to wake her wife.
“Kitty, love, wake up,” she spoke softly, harshly contrasting with the ice cube she pulled out of her robe pocket and pressed to Kit’s neck. It did the trick, waking her almost instantly, however rudely.
“What the hell, Roni?” she demanded, rubbing her eyes before managing to focus them on the clock. “It’s only 2:15.”
“Bit of an emergency,” Roni said, and Kit was immediately awake, all business, sitting up in bed wide-eyed and ready to handle a situation.
“Did Sophie call?” she asked, barely managing to hide her worry.
“No, not in days; nothing unusual there,” Roni sighed. Kids, she thought. She should give their daughter a call tomorrow.
“Then what?” Kit pressed while Roni was sidetracked in thought. “Your dad? Or is something wrong with the house?”
Roni shook her head. “Your protege is downstairs,” she replied, smiling a bit as Kit looked confused.
“Who?” she asked, and Roni raised an eyebrow exasperatedly. “Medina?”
“Yes, who else?” Roni said fondly. “She says she walked here.” It was Kit’s turn to be shocked by that.
“Her place is like four miles from here,” she pointed out, and Roni nodded. Kit sighed and got out of bed, her oversized t-shirt hanging over her pyjama pants as she stood. “I’ll go see what she’s up to,” she announced. Roni followed her down the stairs but went to the kitchen rather than the living room so that she could stir the cocoa, but heard surprisingly little yelling from the other room, which only became more suspicious as the minutes ticked by.
Kit had already assessed the scene. She wasn’t FBI material for nothing, and Lacy hadn’t exactly set up a challenging scene—a blanket, recently unfolded, strewn across the floor, a coat dripping on the coatrack, and two sets of wet footprints: one leading toward the couch, and the other leading out the door.
“Damn it,” she cursed, “she left. Did she say what she wanted?” Her worried wife stood against the doorframe in her silk nightie, watching her shrug on her coat proudly, already knowing that she was going out into the snow after her even in her PJs.
“No,” she replied, “but she really didn’t look good, Kitty. She was pale and not talkative, which is really unlike her. I don’t know if she was just cold or what, but we need to get her warmed up.”
Since she hadn’t seen her that day, it had slipped Kit’s mind, but Lacy had gone home sick. Kit had clocked out for two hours for a dentist’s appointment, and in that time, Lacy had clocked on and lasted about 45 minutes on the floor before Eve told her to go back to bed. Kit had still been a little high on novacaine when the text had come through, but it definitely hadn’t been a dream, and Eve was as strict about not sending people home unless it was necessary as Lacy was serious about getting enough hours to pay the rent on her criminally-expensive studio apartment. Her coat was old and worn and already had a mini flashlight in the pocket for emergencies and she slipped her wool-sock-clad feet into her winter boots.
“Do you want me to drive you around to look?” Roni offered, and Kit shook her head.
“I don’t think she could’ve gone far,” Kit replied, confident that both illness and the snow would slow her down and keep her close, but also knowing that if Lacy was good at one thing, it was disappearing.
“Call if you can’t find her, or if you need me to pick you up,” Roni instructed, kissing Kit on the cheek as she left and shivering against the chill of the winter night as the door opened and shut.
Kit had been right about Lacy not going far. She was still walking down the sidewalk, coatless and unsteady, looking almost drunk from Kit’s distance. Not wanting to shout and wake all the neighbors (or, more specifically, not caring that she’d wake the neighbors but knowing that VERONICA wouldn’t want her to do so, and loving her wife), she rubbed up and down her arms reluctantly before taking off after Lacy, carefully avoiding the slick spots.
Lacy wasn’t so careful, and Kit took off running when she saw her hit a patch of ice and fall onto her back and not get up.
“Medina,” Kit breathed, both from exertion and relief, “are you hurt?” Lacy looked up at her, squinting against the streetlight’s glow miserably, almost tearfully. Kit almost cursed.
“Kit.” The word was a puff of smoke, hot air into the freezing night. She could visibly see Lacy’s plea for help hanging there, floating up to the sky and scattered by a breeze.
“Jesus,” Kit muttered, stooping down beside her, “okay. Anything broken?” Lacy shook her head, already scrambling to her feet, slipping a bit once more before Kit steadied her. “Hey, go slow,” she instructed, not liking just how much of Lacy’s weight was being leaned against her or how little she was wearing—a long-sleeve shirt, not even a sweater, and sweatpants, all grey, looking like it hadn’t even been a premeditated plan to go out in the first place.
“Sorry,” Lacy apologized, allowing Kit to lead her toward the house. Thankfully, she did seem fine, at least as far as the fall was concerned, not limping or hobbling, which was one less thing to worry about.
“No reason to be,” Kit brushed her off. “What are you doing out so late? I thought Eve sent you home.”
Lacy took long enough to answer that they’d managed to get all the way to the front door, where Roni let them in, relief evident in her face.
“I’m glad you came back, Lacy,” Roni greeted, helping to settle her back on the couch, tucking her legs extra tightly into the blanket as if it might restrain her. The mug of hot cocoa was sitting on the table, with a whipped cream cap and tiny chocolate chips on the top. Kit rolled her eyes. Her wife was so extra. “It’s not too hot, but you should still blow on it,” she warned as she transferred the mug from her own hands to Lacy’s chapped red ones.
Kit watched her drink for a few moments before continuing the interrogation. “So, care to tell me why you were running around in the middle of the night in the snow?”
Lacy averted her eyes. “I don’t really remember,” she admitted. “My head hurt, and my apartment felt too hot, so I went for a walk. I just ended up here.”
“Yeah, you probably should’ve taken a fever reducer or a cool shower, not walked through the snow to come scare the shit out of my wife.”
Lacy looked scolded, and Roni swatted Kit on the arm.
“What she means is,” Roni translated, “we’re glad you reached out to us when you needed help, but next time, just call. We’d have come and gotten you in a heartbeat.”
Kit rolled her eyes. “How are you feeling now, kid? Head still hurt?” Lacy nodded, fighting against the closing of her eyes.
“Mostly just tired,” she replied. Kit frowned, knowing that it might be dangerous to let her go to sleep half-frozen.
“Well, you can sleep once you warm up a bit,” she said, lifting up one side of the blanket to nestle close to Lacy on one side of the couch and watching her wife do the same on the other. “In the meantime, scoot over. There’s a Wives with Knives marathon. That’ll keep you awake until you’re not freezing anymore.” Lacy allowed herself to relax against the warmth and clutched her mug close, already starting to shiver again—a good sign, she knew, but annoying and uncomfortable. The fever would come back soon, and she’d probably be out for a few days, but she wasn’t sure when or if Kit and Roni would allow her to go back to her apartment to wish for death in peace. She wasn’t even sure she was upset about that.
The spectacular author Kit Reed is dead.
She was my mentor and saved my life.
She is Kit Snicket’s namesake.
She insisted on no memorial so please sit in a kitchen and laugh with people you love in her honor.
