LOOK GUYS I GOT A BLOG AWARD TAG THING WHOAAAAAA
Thanks to Jamie Krakover for tagging me in this fun little award / game / project / thing, of which I am very proud to be a part. So without further ado, here are seven things you may not know about me:
1) In 7th grade I legitimately thought I might have a volleyball career coming my way. I was pretty good at the time – one of the best in my class. And I knew I could get a lot better. Unfortunately, my body didn’t know that. When I topped out at five foot three inches in seventh grade, that dream died a quick and bloody death. I went on to play all through high school, even on varsity, but my body never did catch up.
2) Before I started devoting my life to writing, I was convinced I was going to be a winemaker. I still love wine – I work for a wine distributor and I sell it to restaurants as a day job. And I’ll be making wine again this fall as a part of the grape harvest in Oregon. And if writing ultimately doesn’t work out, I’ll be happy as a clam to settle back into working in the cellars and the vines.
3) I really love to play piano. Sitting down at a keyboard and pounding out a piece – be it one I actually know how to play or some drivel I’ve just made up – clears my head like nothing else. But I’m really not very good at it – I’m decent, that’s about the best that can be said. Anyone want to teach me?
4) The first ‘book’ I ever wrote was a blatant rip-off of Brian Jacques ‘Mossflower’, one of the books in the Redwall series.
The book featured mice and other various rodents swashbuckling, drinking dandelion wine, and eating scones. Not very original, as you can see. Then again, I was nine. It was only later in life that I learned about ‘plagiarism’, and by that point the book had been happily relegated to the basement.
5) The second ‘book’ I ever wrote was a long piece of fan-fiction featuring Fawkes, Dumbledore’s phoenix from the Harry Potter series, as the protagonist. The book was well seventy pages typed and probably could have passed for a novella – had it had a reasonable plot or, you know, an original story. I posted it on fanfiction.net and it got, actually, really good reviews. But by that point I had learned not to be satisfied with ripping off other authors, and, dejected that I couldn’t think of anything as brilliant as Harry Potter to write about, I shelved my fiction-writing tendencies for ten or so years.
6) My favorite pastime is horseback riding. Though I can’t do it around here. I have a very good friend in Oregon who is kind enough to let me ride her horses with her, and if I could, I’d do it all day long, every day. Or at least in the intervals when I’m not writing.
7) I am secretly a SUPERHERO code name VOLCANO GIRL. Ha ha! Just kidding. That one was to fake you guys out. But the real thing you might not know about me is that my first and true love will always be geology. I know, right? Kind of weird. But when I was a kid, I was determined to be a geologist when I grew up. (This was my dream job between ages four and ten, with a short interlude when I wanted to be Aragorn.) Lots of people are like ‘But rocks are so boring, man’. And I always want to shout at them BUT IF ONLY YOU KNEW WHAT HISTORY, WHAT POWER, WHAT KNOWLEDGE THOSE ROCKS CONTAIN. I love geology. To me, the word itself might as well translate to ‘The History Of The Entire World Written In A Secret Language That Only Really Smart Badasses Understand’. If you need a little extra boost of enthusiasm to clue you into why geology is so awesome, read Bill Bryson’s book ‘A Short History Of Nearly Everything’. There’s loads of geology in there that is incredibly instructive, and Bryson does a wonderful job of writing about it in an entertaining manner.
So, there you go. SEVEN THINGS you might not previously have known about me. Have a great day!
The Z-Axis 
giggling about your volleyball aspirations. I remember as a freshman in college standing at the beach volleyball net… and the bottom of the net was a few inches over my head. eeek! Still love that game tho. And who doesn’t love horseback riding? 😀
I’m so glad you can sympathize! It’s nice to know we have so much in common 🙂
I loved Mossflower! And most of the Redwall series until Jacques started to phone it in. I got to meet him when I was younger–interesting guy.
Also, your fanfic about Fawkes sounds awesome.
Haha, the fanfic was really fun to write, and I was pretty devoted to it. I still have it somewhere, collecting dust.
Jacques definitely ‘phoned in’ as you say after a certain point. Was really depressing to me when I realized how formulaic his books had gotten. But in his heyday they were brilliant. When did you meet him?
I think I met him in the late ’80s, maybe early ’90s. I had lunch with him and a few librarians before he did a reading. I have a very vivid memory of the lunch, because he told some inside stories about the characters and the books that I thought he revealed just for me…but then he told the same stories and shared the same insights at the public reading a few hours later.
oo what a fun list! I love this! my superhero name is Rocket Girl… ok not really I just made that up on the fly. :p
That’s another good one! Definitely apropos for the rocket scientist. Thanks for tagging me in your post, it was a fun assignment!