![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So someone tagged Melinda Snodgrass with the "eight facts" meme: lay out eight facts about yourself that not everyone knows. Melinda, in turn, tagged George RR Martin, who tagged me.
I generally ignore memes, but hey, George holds my WILD CARDS fate in his devilish little hands. So: eight facts. You may feel free to skip to the next post on your friends list now...
1) I met Denise when I was a junior in high school, at a bowling alley. I was immediately attracted to her, though we wouldn't actually start dating for some time. Once we did -- with the exception of a brief break-up while I was in college -- we've been together since.
2) I once had several inches of hair burnt off by a flash pot while playing a gig in South Carolina.
3) I once had my luggage pulled from a plane because of a noise it was making. Said luggage was also full of machetes and hatchets. (The fact the luggage wasn't immediately blown up on the tarmac tells you how long ago that was...)
4) I can't stand not to fiddle with and 'improve upon' games if I like them. During my band days, I designed "Monotony" -- a version of Monopoly for local musicians. A friend and I once became obsessed with Risk, and I designed a "World of the late 19th century" Risk board that had LOTS more countries and connections, required two sets of Risk pieces to play, and had games that could go for DAYS. When I started running role-playing games, I eventually tossed out AD&D and created my own set of rules and characters and such...
5) Perhaps as a corollary to #4, the part of writing I enjoy best is when the draft has been written and I'm revising the novel. Revision is the fun part; it's also when the story (hopefully) starts to get good.
6) The first 'novel' I ever wrote was a horrible 're-imagining' fan-fiction of a "Sea Hunt" novel (anyone remember Lloyd Bridges?) I read when I was ten or maybe eleven. My novel took place in Baja Mexico, and featured me and three of my friends in the neighborhood as the characters, and involved scuba diving and pirates and a sunken treasure ship -- despite the fact that at the time I'd never been scuba diving, or been further west than Indianapolis. I wrote every night for a few months -- literally under my covers with a flashlight, scribbling in pencil onto loose leaf pages -- until I had what I remember as quite an impressive stack in the drawer where I kept the manuscript. Then I had a falling out with one of my friends and decided that I needed to re-write the story and take him out... and that ended it. Don't know where the manuscript eventually ended up. Hopefully it's lost forever.
7) In high school, my then-best friend Steve Trapp and I would write science fiction stories together. Our pen name was the single word "Straigh." We wrote several pieces together, and published a few of them in Moeller's literary magazine Squire. Our collaboration ended when Steve and I couldn't agree on which way a story I'd started needed to go, and I stubbornly refused to listen to him and wrote it my way and published it as "Sleigh" -- thus starting my career as a solo writer. (BONUS FACT: "Sleigh" was how I always signed my art work in high school, and it became my nickname through high school and into college. Most of my bandmates still call me that... when they're not calling me other things.)
8) I have once and only once failed a class. Art, in grade 8. Sister Rose Julie (also known as Sister Rose de Sade to me) was making us do ugly, crafty flowers. I refused... and drew airplanes and rocket ships instead. Sister Rose Julie (who told my parents that I was a 'disturbed child') gave me an "F" in Art. I was appalled and furious. And purely to spite her, to give her the metaphorical finger, a month or so later when I went over to Moeller High School to take their entrance test, I also signed up to take the test for their Fine Art program. And was accepted. Yes! Take that, Sister Rose Julie! Nyah, nyah, nyah!
***********
Hey... that was strangely fast once it got going. Heck, I could have easily doubled the list and still not had to get to the "stuff I would only tell in private to a few good friends." Now let's see... I need to tag someone myself... (Looks around as people try to avoid eye contact.) I tag![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
haniaw! I don't care if you're in France (actually, I do -- and I wish I were there with you!), it's your turn.
And in fact (since as you know from the above that I love to 'revise' games) I'm going to break the rules and tag TWO people... Just to keep the "writer-to-writer' bit going, I'm also going to tag Daniel Abraham, who lurks here in LJ asbram452. Daniel, drop and give us eight!
I generally ignore memes, but hey, George holds my WILD CARDS fate in his devilish little hands. So: eight facts. You may feel free to skip to the next post on your friends list now...
1) I met Denise when I was a junior in high school, at a bowling alley. I was immediately attracted to her, though we wouldn't actually start dating for some time. Once we did -- with the exception of a brief break-up while I was in college -- we've been together since.
2) I once had several inches of hair burnt off by a flash pot while playing a gig in South Carolina.
3) I once had my luggage pulled from a plane because of a noise it was making. Said luggage was also full of machetes and hatchets. (The fact the luggage wasn't immediately blown up on the tarmac tells you how long ago that was...)
4) I can't stand not to fiddle with and 'improve upon' games if I like them. During my band days, I designed "Monotony" -- a version of Monopoly for local musicians. A friend and I once became obsessed with Risk, and I designed a "World of the late 19th century" Risk board that had LOTS more countries and connections, required two sets of Risk pieces to play, and had games that could go for DAYS. When I started running role-playing games, I eventually tossed out AD&D and created my own set of rules and characters and such...
5) Perhaps as a corollary to #4, the part of writing I enjoy best is when the draft has been written and I'm revising the novel. Revision is the fun part; it's also when the story (hopefully) starts to get good.
6) The first 'novel' I ever wrote was a horrible 're-imagining' fan-fiction of a "Sea Hunt" novel (anyone remember Lloyd Bridges?) I read when I was ten or maybe eleven. My novel took place in Baja Mexico, and featured me and three of my friends in the neighborhood as the characters, and involved scuba diving and pirates and a sunken treasure ship -- despite the fact that at the time I'd never been scuba diving, or been further west than Indianapolis. I wrote every night for a few months -- literally under my covers with a flashlight, scribbling in pencil onto loose leaf pages -- until I had what I remember as quite an impressive stack in the drawer where I kept the manuscript. Then I had a falling out with one of my friends and decided that I needed to re-write the story and take him out... and that ended it. Don't know where the manuscript eventually ended up. Hopefully it's lost forever.
7) In high school, my then-best friend Steve Trapp and I would write science fiction stories together. Our pen name was the single word "Straigh." We wrote several pieces together, and published a few of them in Moeller's literary magazine Squire. Our collaboration ended when Steve and I couldn't agree on which way a story I'd started needed to go, and I stubbornly refused to listen to him and wrote it my way and published it as "Sleigh" -- thus starting my career as a solo writer. (BONUS FACT: "Sleigh" was how I always signed my art work in high school, and it became my nickname through high school and into college. Most of my bandmates still call me that... when they're not calling me other things.)
8) I have once and only once failed a class. Art, in grade 8. Sister Rose Julie (also known as Sister Rose de Sade to me) was making us do ugly, crafty flowers. I refused... and drew airplanes and rocket ships instead. Sister Rose Julie (who told my parents that I was a 'disturbed child') gave me an "F" in Art. I was appalled and furious. And purely to spite her, to give her the metaphorical finger, a month or so later when I went over to Moeller High School to take their entrance test, I also signed up to take the test for their Fine Art program. And was accepted. Yes! Take that, Sister Rose Julie! Nyah, nyah, nyah!
***********
Hey... that was strangely fast once it got going. Heck, I could have easily doubled the list and still not had to get to the "stuff I would only tell in private to a few good friends." Now let's see... I need to tag someone myself... (Looks around as people try to avoid eye contact.) I tag
haniaw! I don't care if you're in France (actually, I do -- and I wish I were there with you!), it's your turn.And in fact (since as you know from the above that I love to 'revise' games) I'm going to break the rules and tag TWO people... Just to keep the "writer-to-writer' bit going, I'm also going to tag Daniel Abraham, who lurks here in LJ as
bram452. Daniel, drop and give us eight!![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Your comment made me google Sea Hunt, though. The series ran from '58 to '61 (so from the time I was 7 until 10). A 210-page hardback book titled SEA HUNT (authorized edition based on the television series) was written by Cole Fannin, illustrated by Gerald Hannah, and published by Whitman (1960) -- there's even a copy for sale on eBay, and it's definitely the cover I remember. As I recall, the book was well-used when I got my hands on it; it was probably a year or two later (which does correspond with me being 10 or 11 at the time).
From:
no subject
Btw, I friended you back.
From:
no subject
Welcome!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject