READER BEWARE: I ENJOY TALKING ABOUT MYSELF.
The Origin Story
I got my start, as so many of us did, roleplaying via instant messenger and message boards online. I started my first novel circa 2000 on the family desktop computer(it was about dragon-themed magical girls), only to have it gobbled up by an unannounced hard drive reformatting. After my father learned what had happened, he was so upset that I shortly after got my own computer, so that at least next time it wouldn’t be his fault if my work were erased.
He was always a huge inspiration and encouragement to me in all of my artistic pursuits, making sure I always had the tools I needed to pursue my interests in music, art, and writing. I also owe a great deal of that creative talent to him, a very gifted musician and artist himself.
In high school, I played percussion in marching band, bass guitar in a garage band, and dabbled in drama. I also worked with our school librarian in a grassroots movement to revamp the summer reading program. We took a languishing program that offered students the choice of reading one of two dry classics over the summer, and turned it into a contemporary program that included works by new Young Adult authors, Stephen King, and Harry Potter, just to name a few. It was a huge hit, and made students dread summer reading less, which is always a success in my book. I presented the program in a speech to my entire high school, designed and drew posters for each book we’d added to the program, and gave talks on the book 1984 to rotating groups of students as part of a book fair day to drum up interest.
Rise To Power
In university, whilst pursuing a bachelor’s in history and a double minor in French and English, I began branching out into tabletop RPGs, cutting my teeth on White Wolf’s New World of Darkness system. From there I would end up dabbling in Dungeons & Dragons Exalted, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Doctor Who: Adventures In Time And Space, Firefly, and After The Bomb, as well as blowing my money on that quintessential cardboard crack, Magic: the Gathering. My first and foremost love, however, will always be Werewolf: The Forsaken.
When I wasn’t procrastinating on homework in these noble endeavors, I worked as a one-on-one tutor. I also cut my editing teeth, helping students plan, research, and proof their papers. Here, I discovered that my strongest ally in teaching was humour. People pay attention if you tell jokes, and then you can always bait-and-switch them into learning something as well.
Before relieving my school of my presence, I managed to appear in a production of The Laramie Project, present a paper entitled ‘The Futility of War Against the Intangible’ at a symposium on the sociology of terror, become vice president of our local chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, and write a Valentine’s Day themed story for a creative writing class that was so brutal it became legendary within the English department as ‘The Screwdriver Story’.
I later went on to haunt the halls of another unfortunate institution whilst I pursued an MA in historical studies. Here, too, I tricked people into listening to me give a riveting presentation on my research. With both degrees, my dissertations were about eugenics. At the undergraduate level, I wrote about public opinion of eugenics in Germany. My master’s level dissertation was a comparative analysis of eugenics in the US and UK.
Renaissance
Post-matriculation, I moved to the blasted wasteland of the American Deep South™. I commenced work at a small railway museum, where the staff stretched thin. Thus I wore a lot of hats for this institution. I ran special events, negotiated and managed film productions, and ran the library and archives with an iron fist. I also drove locomotives for our passenger operations and after hours switching operations. So I can also now say that I’m an engineer.
It is now that my writing career really starts to flourish. In addition to this, I write short stories and flash fiction on Wattpad and for submission to various literary magazines.
I attended Publish15, the Atlanta Writing Workshop, and TLC’s Writer’s Day. In addition, I have trawled the lectures, panels, and workshops by agents, publishers, and authors at various conventions such as CONjuration and Dragon Con.
Going Mainstream
As of 2016, I’m now back in the UK and permanently settled, both into my new country and also into my professional writing career. My first independent published piece was with Who Writes Short Shorts? and I started hosting workshops, the first of which was an introduction to poetry.
These days, you can find me amongst the throngs of people on most Twitter pitch parties, as well as participating in writing tags. It’s a great opportunity to get involved with the writing community and share the darlings you didn’t manage to kill.
I’ve also participated in regularly scheduled, round table critique groups before, and run my own. I’m available as a critique partner who will absolutely tell you when your science is bad. If you’re interested in using me as an editor, beta reader, or critique partner, just drop me a line.
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