Gracious.

[truepenny]

There are over 500 of you.

::waves to everybody::

Since I have to write a synopsis of The Mirador today, and since synopsis-writing is an activity which I both hate and am incredibly bad at, I'm going to issue an open invitation:

Tell me something about yourself.

It's an invitation, obviously--nothing even as strong as a request--so if you don't want to, no harm, no foul. But if you'd like to (and this applies as much to the people I know as the people I don't) ... tell me something. Make it as long or as short, as serious or as goofy as you want. If you are a reader who doesn't have a LiveJournal account, that's totally cool, too--just please remember to sign your comment.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Something about myself: I hate writing synopses.

No, wait! That's something about everybody who writes fiction! About myself, hmmm. I have a birthmark on my right wrist, a little squiggly brown mark, and when I was little I pretended that it was a map of the island where we were really from, and someday we would go back there and wade through the snow to retake our castle, which was made of light grey stone and had big fires burning in the hearths all the time.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Now, see, that's not fair. That's being born with an advantage, a whole fantasy novel right there on your wrist...

[larryhammer]

I come across as taller in person than I do online. Odd, but it's a frequent comment when I am defictionalized.

---L.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Of course you do. Online you're not as tall as the first joint of my thumb; in person, much taller. Also I think your head is proportionately smaller in person. (This should not be taken as a criticism.)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Attagirl: displacement activity to the max. It's good for you, it's good for me - being as I am exactly where you've been these last weeks, in mid-rewrite, mending broken book. Plus I have the advantage of being sick today, to set against the urgent approach of the delivery-date; I think of this as being like a spear where you set the butt-end of it into the ground, so that the oncoming monster will impale itself, hurrah...

Ah, but what can I tell you about me? Writer, cat-lover, queer, cook: and the greatest of these is - well, probably cook, actually. It's the one I do best. My books and my cats have all been heterodox, which I think must be my fault; and I'm inveterately single, so QED on that one.

I met Tolkien one time, that's a thing to say, but I say it too often. And I was in correspondence with Mary Renault when she died, but that's actually relevant today, because her Alexander dies on account of drinking wine when he has a fever; I'm not sure if this is an accurate diagnosis, but I'm going downstairs now to make the experiment. I've got to do something useful today, so I'm going to open a bottle of wine and sit at table with manuscript and scribble, scribble. Come tomorrow, if I'm found slumped dead across said table - well, tell them I died like Alexander.

[sovay]

And I was in correspondence with Mary Renault when she died

That's marvelous. What were you in correspondence about?

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I like knitting more than chocolate, but not more than books.

[godream.livejournal.com]

I have six more neverending weeks of tedious debugging left for my summer job -- but my world is still a wonderful place because I get to bake tiny pies with fresh blueberries tonight! Mmm, blueberries. Mmm, pie. Mmm, baking.

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

heh. So here's a comment guaranteed to get me lynched.

I actually *like* writing synopses.

I like taking the giant amorphous pile of goo, flinging it at the wheel, and turning on the motor, muttering, "Let's see if we can make a pot out of this, shall we?" If you screw it up, just mush it back to the component goo and try again. Once you've gotten it looking like a solid, well-proportioned pot, then you can invest the time and energy to detail, decorate and fire it. But first you need the goo-to-pot conversion step.

Writing a synopsis for a completed book, on the other hand ... well, it's marginally better than ripping out a nail, but only because you recover from it faster.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'm a middle-aged technical writer living in beautiful Northern California with two adolescents, a husband, and a standoffish cat. I love your books a lot. At the moment, I'm obsessed with Doctor Who; before that, as you know, it was Buffy, with a brief dip into Farscape in between.

I love lute and viol music.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Oh, and inspired by mrissa: I used to have very strong synesthesia. I still do, to some extent, with music; I often remember musical themes as shapes in the air. Contrariwise, foods get remembered as music -- garlic and ginger are bass, lemon and sugar are soprano, bread is a nice middle range.

Did anybody else, as a child, think numbers and letters had distinct personalities? Two was female, as was three; five was very male. And the letter "e" in "evil" was itself evil.

[cammykitty.livejournal.com]

500??? Congrats. That's overwhelming.

And my hair is much longer, but less curly in person than on line.

Sarah, we've met at cons & I must apologize. Last time we met I said hi to a group of you who were still travel-lagged and I was in that "turn off the shy" con mode, where we are all united in our geekdom. You I'm sure just wanted to figure out what restaurant you were going to go to.

Ummm... synopsis... looks like the root word must refer to some Greek monster that trampled towns in half the time it takes Godzilla to trample Mobil Oil Stations. Oh, I'm thinking synapses, as in procrastination preceeds synaptic overload. Good luck!

[sovay]

Up until two summers ago, I had vestigial gills (which I did not know about) in my nose.

[cammykitty.livejournal.com]

Does that mean you have an affinty to water? Or you were one of those Age of Aquarious babies born in water?

[eruthros]

I fear geese.

I've been attacked by Canada geese three times: I don't know what they have against me, personally, but I think they must be mistaking me for someone else who committed crimes against geeseity. There are few things in the world quite as startling and baffling as walking along, mellow and not in a hurry, suddenly feeling sharp pinches on the back of your leg, and turning around to see a goose squawking at you, beating its wings threateningly, and nipping at your bum.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

geeseity

Anserity, I suspect, as the adjective is anserine (tho' my fingers really don't want to type 'anser' without a w in the mix; aren't fingers fabulous?). And come to think of it, as you have anserophobia, you probably don't want to know the word for it. Sorry, sorry...

[mistri.livejournal.com]

I'm in my late twenties and yet I still go through phases. Writing is a constant, but (as examples), I've recently been obsessed with a) playing an online game to the point of addiction, b) spending too much money on (cheap) shoes, c) Buying BPAL perfume (still ongoing) d) watching Panda Cams.

My phases tend to start slow, then become very obsessive, until I realise I'm wasting time/money. This is why I don't gamble or do drugs - I don't think I could do either 'safely'.

[violsva]

I'm trying to think of something about myself other than I just had my wisdom teeth out, since even with painkillers that's the main focus of my mind at the moment.

I can make apple pie from scratch, crust and all. And very good bread. It's slightly painful to think about these things when one can't eat.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Today I am in silver and black. For some reason I feel much more like a mythos (or an archtype, maybe?) in those colors.

Maybe Zelazny's Amber books imprinted more more strongly than I ever realized?

[ombriel.livejournal.com]

I'm revising my first novel, and I have no idea what I'm doing.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Of course you don't, it's a bold and bloody adventure. Enjoy...

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

I prefer cheese to chocolate, and the cheese department at Whole Foods calls to me whenever I pass the store. In RL, I live in Monterey CA with my sister, in my imagination, I frequently live elsewhere :)

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Fun facts about Yours Truly:

Ego-googling my real name conveniently allows me to disappear in a sea of dead ancestors who had the same name. Except for that one unbelieveably creepy genealogy site that has me, my siblings, my parents, and an awful lot of data about us all, presented in the name of thoroughness in history.

Okay there will also be a few references to a computer-human interaction article I researched in graduate school, which was written by my advisor, and which was awful. It's so awful, one of the prominent hits is an explanation of why it doesn't make any sense.

In the course of researching that article (about automated abstrating and indexing), I discovered my advisor had never read King Lear.

To say that I found him an appalling Philistine would be somewhat of an understatement.

Have a fun synopsis-avoidance day!

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

I have an undergraduate degree in Classical Studies, and I recently bought a deck of playing cards with a Day of the Dead theme--the face cards are skulls in Funny Hats.

I have obstreperous cats and a good many books. More than I have shelves for, in fact.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I recently bought a deck of playing cards with a Day of the Dead theme--the face cards are skulls in Funny Hats.

Chaz wants. Waaaants...

I have obstreperous cats and a good many books. More than I have shelves for, in fact.

Got those already, allowing for a singularity of cats.

[st-egfroth.livejournal.com]

I'm an astronomer and a bassoonist. I also have a disreputable tendency to enjoy reading writing about writing, rather than reading the writing that the writing about writing is about. (I may tend towards incoherence occasionally, also).

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Not at all. For a bassoon-playing astronomer, you're perfectly clear. (My cousin & godfather Roger Griffin is an astronomer, and I still carry the commemorative moon-landing silver dollar he sent me in 1972 - tho' all the silver's rubbed off the edge, and it's copper underneath, boo swizz.)

[sterling-sara.livejournal.com]

I try and try to write, though most of it stays in my head rather than making it onto a page. What I do write down depresses me because it's not conveying the right impressions. I have wonderful characters, and when someone asks me for something of mine to read that I've been talking about I realize I don't have much, if anything, to give them.

I do realize though that I'm not going to die tommorrow, and if I keep trying I'll imorove and have better chances of getting something done. I have time if I don't waste it. :)

[hackerguitar.livejournal.com]

I share my meatspace name with a famous Aussie cricketer, which makes travel down under interesting, to say the least. It also led indirectly to the writing of a story which peripherally referenced the situation.

I make music. I enjoy listening to it, but making it, especially with other people, is ever so much more satisfying; it's a conversation without words.

I read. And read. And read. My DW is a librarian, so books are never in short supply; it's a lot of the reason we wound up together, I think. It's oddly intimate to be sitting reading in a room while one's dear one is doing the same in another chair.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I have always told myself stories inside my own head, since I was a very small child. But when I actually try to write, I never write those stories; it feels too dangerous.

MKK

[khriskin]

I am a more interesting person on paper than I am in real life. ^_~

I can fence (foil & historical), ride (bareback & english), program computers, train torrocos to land on my head on cue, write fanfiction multiple fandoms, produce relatively entertaining webcomics, resculpt and repaint small plastic horses, hold baby tigers/lions/snow leopards when asked (without getting bitten/scratched/etc), play tech support to various combinations of WANs, LANs, computers and operating systems, repair chainmail, convince a constricting snake to leggo of someone that it is biting/snuggling (cold water to the head works wonders), provide impromtu comedy skits with birds, snakes, and random coworkers. I have held over thirty jobs covering everything from summer school art teacher to zoological attendant, and have been paid to paint, write, exercise horses, serve beer at a Renaissance Faire, and train torrocos to land on my head (among other things).

Oh, and I exist primarily to hold up the cat. ^_~

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I exist primarily to hold up the cat. ^_~

Yup. I spent ten years as a mobile resting-spot for Sophie, who was so completely a shoulder-cat she would have eaten her dinner up there if she could manage it, if only she didn't keep on dropping bits. She used to fall asleep regularly, and snore in my ear. I still miss that.

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

I lived in Winnipeg for over a year. This was... oh, 13 or so years ago.

My favorite place there was the skyway system. If I ever write another urban fantasy, I'm going to base my magic system in the skyways.

...hm. On thinking about it, the whole love affair with skyways may be why I ended up in Minneapolis...

[teratologist.livejournal.com]

I I have eight rats.

And I'd rather write a synopsis than a car chase, which is what I'm trying to write right now.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

I have a pocket full of lampwork. I hope I don't fall and land on my hip.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Also, one of my many dreams is to have a German Giant rabbit.



He would have his own room, and wear little waistcoats, and eat at the table.