Open Diary Entries

You can contact me at SwankiVY2@aol.com , or IM me on my AOL screenname SwankiVY2. I have a Web page if you feel like obsessing over me for several hours.

For those who don't choose to make the above trip, here is the standard description of me.

I am a mid-twenties girl who works in a bookstore and hopes to become a professional editor and maybe one day a published writer.

I have a degree in elementary education that I never plan to use. I decided I had to choose between being a writer and being a teacher, since both are something you have to BE full-time, and both would suffer if I didn't choose one. Since I suck at teaching and I don't suck at writing, I picked the selfish way to go. The children of America are now breathing a sigh of relief.

I am a writer, not just a person who writes. There is a difference. A big one.

I enjoy the following hobbies:

• Writing annoyingly long character-oriented fantasy novels. (Working on Book 5 of a series right now, actually.)
• Using my soprano voice to its fullest.
• Playing ridiculous pranks.
• Working on my personal Web page, which is threatening at this moment to take over the Internet.
• Reading books that don't insult my intelligence.
• Doodling in the margins, occasionally fairly well.
• Beating other people at their own games.

• Imitating the voices of several cartoon characters.
• Identifying grammatical errors, typos, and things in language that are just WRONG.
• Playing musical instruments; I play eight instruments with varying degrees of incompetence.
• Memorizing useless things and finding odd times to recite them.
• Surprising people with my unbalancing honesty.
• Typing. Approximately 100 wpm.

• Japanese animation, not including hentai and tentacle porn or excessive violence.
• Mythology and religion, especially that which is Pagan in nature.
• Intellectual movies that poke fun at life.
• Science fiction and fantasy writings, with focus on character rather than plot. Favorite authors include Joan D. Vinge, Francesca Lia Block, Octavia E. Butler, Katherine Dunn, Vanna Bonta, Douglas Adams, Scott Cunningham, Roald Dahl, Lemony Snicket, Philip Pullman, Ivan Stang, and of course myself.
• Music. That includes ethereal type of the Enya/Loreena McKennitt camp; geeky music of the TMBG and Moxy Früvous camp; funny music of the Arrogant Worms/Weird Al camp; folk music of the Dar Williams/Ani DiFranco camp; and all kinds of music from Simon and Garfunkel ninteen-sixties to Ween, Alanis Morrissette, Björk, the Indigo Girls, Tori Amos, Suzanne Vega, and Kate Bush. (And I like musicals.)

• I am a tiny person with long blonde hair, a condition that has caused certain people to call me an elf (which has subsequently caused me to beat them into oblivion).
• I am a vegetarian.
• I live alone.
• I consider myself a Pagan, though "witch" also works in most cases.
• I've written six novels. (Working on the seventh.)
• I am never bored or depressed.
• I've got a horribly filthy mouth, which unbalances people who expect me to have a clean vocabulary since I look like an innocent thirteen-year-old.
• I used to work for AOL and I regularly use it. That does not mean I am stupid, so hold your tongue, vile beast.
• Sex does not interest me. That fact interests many.
• I live in Gainesville, Florida.
• I am a registered member of the Church of the Subgenius.
• I've never had a driver's license.
• I was born in 1978. On a Tuesday.
• There's a lot I'm not sharing.

"When things go out of date, or out of mind, they're thrown by the wayside. You'll be surprised what treasures you'll find there if you just wander for a while."