About the Author

[entitled]

hmm... A short bio, huh?

i'm ent, one of those women that's shy of 30 by a couple of years and trying to find myself. i was the one that was different from the beginning. In a rush to come out, in a hurry to excel, and the one more accepting than most children.

An early childhood experience caused a turnaround in the direction of my life. Raised to be a good little Catholic girl, i was threatened with excommunication from the church at age eight for standing up to a visiting cardinal. It was at about that time i was told i would never bear children. Up until that point it had been my goal in life to become a good wife and mother. Those two events made me rethink things.

From that point on i made it a point to do things unexpected from a small girl. i started researching religions of the world (imagine somebody who looked to be about six years old requesting latin texts from the library), went to work doing simple chores on a horse ranch and eventually worked my way up to breaking the yearlings, went camping on a regular basis, played football, and a variety of other things. While that was happening my family fostered a love for the finer things in life. Everything from foods to music to fine art was offered to me, and i devoured every bit of it i could.

Unfortunatey, hearbreak caught up with me after a fairly content childhood. My first fiancee was killed. He died while i was holding him. The people that did it to him tried for me as well. i still bear a small scar on the side of my head where a bullet grazed me. i became something close to a hermit while recovering from that and learned the more womanly arts in that time. Soon after returning to a somewhat normal way of life i met a Russian man. We fell madly in love and prepared to marry. Three days before the ceremony he discovered his mother had died and returned to Russia for the funeral. He was never allowed to come back.

After finding myself sexually, i decided it was still possible to become a mother. After five miscarriages i carried two children to term. They were born 14 months apart, both scored perfect tens on the APGAR scale, and the second nearly killed me. Being both physically unable to work and unwilling to leave childrearing to a stranger i became a stay at home mother while my husband - who i met while pregnant the first time - worked. A couple of years later my youngest was born. While in the hospital after her birth i had a tubal to prevent further pregnancies. The last one had nearly killed me as well.

Now i'm preparing to get a divorce and strike out on my own again, children in tow, and hope for the best.

 

[TheEarl]

Loved your one Pear. Beautifully succinct and told us a hell of a lot about what you consider important in your life by the details you chose to pick out.

The Earl

 

[NoJo]

Wow, perdita & entitled. I've led a very simple and easy life by comparison with you.

 

[Guest]

Wow, perdita & entitled. I've led a very simple and easy life by comparison with you.

Jose, I've learned that no one on earth has a simple and easy life (which may be one reason there are so many stupid people on the planet ).

Perdita

 

[Guest]

 

[carsonshepherd]

Great bios. Love them.

I want more!

 

[carsonshepherd]

I have a pathological relationship with attention--I chase after it like crazy, then get terribly unhappy when it finds me and I try to hide, so I can't write these bios. Just can't. I had to submit something once to some publisher but I quickly forgot what I said and I refuse to go back and look at it. Hopefully, I lied like crazy.

Best I've seen was Boota's though. It said something about him spending his time locked in a back room with a pistol and a bottle of tequila and the shades drawn, and I liked it so much I bought his book.

Writing this bio was sort of like hiding by exposing the truth about myself, if that makes any sense.

 

[CharleyH]

Someone on my writing journal asked me for a bio, so I wrote this.

***

I'm 31, an Aries, and I grew up in the middle of the corn field in the middle-left of Illinois. I have one brother two years older whose emotional torment is the reason I'm screwed up in the head. The day after my seventh birthday I had a bad accident that landed me in the hospital and rehab for many months. The doctors told my parents I might never walk again but obviously they were wrong. This, according to my brother, is the reason I'm spoiled rotten. I started reading at four and making up stories even before that. Art was my passion but I don't really have any talent, so finally I started concentrating more on the stories that went along with the pictures instead of the pictures.

My parents split when I was eight and my mom took my brother and me away from the farm. I went to five different elementary schools in several states between grades 2 and 6, which is probably why I have trouble with basic math. Moving and being the new kid was a nightmare for me because of my deep anxiety in unfamiliar situations. I bounced in and out of gifted programs but I never fit into conventional learning. School and I just don't get along. I was a very neurotic child who was convinced we were all going to die in a nuclear war, if a brain tumor didn't kill me first.

Finally, my brother and I moved in with our dad and stayed put. In high school I met my bestest friend and soul mate, OhMissScarlett, and lots of other great friends. Once I made peace with never being like everyone else, I was a lot happier person. My dad died of cancer in 1990, when I was just 15, and we went to live with our mom, who had moved home to be nearer to us. She wasn't working then, she drank instead, and we were extremely poor, but I had a car and I mostly stayed with Scarlett and her family. I was embarrassed at how we lived, but I considered it a test: if someone couldn't handle the way I lived then they could fuck off. In the midst of all this, I was learning my sexuality and all the drama that went along with that.

I went to college at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri for a year, but the Mississippi River decided to wipe out our house, so there was no money to go back, even with financial aid. There was no home to go back to, so I did the best I could. When I looked up, I was living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with my ex. We lived there for 5 years and then moved here to a large city in the south, his hometown, in 1999. We split up, but I've stayed here with my current lover, whom I've been with for 5 years now. I'm close enough to home to visit, but not close enough to get roped into babysitting. *g*

Right now I live in a little yellow house on a quiet street. I have a day job, four dogs, and a relationship. I write. As a writer, I'm self-taught. I don't know all the terminology or methodology, and I don't have a piece of paper to prove I know anything. I observe people closely and try to write what I see and feel. None of my characters are me, but at the same time there's a little bit of me in all of them. This past year, I've finally come to the realization that I have moderate social anxiety disorder, and that has made the picture of my life much clearer for me. I'd like to go back to college and get a degree, but I'm really not sure in what. All I've ever wanted to do is write, and you can't learn how to do that in school. You just do it.


***

Anyone else want to do an "About the Author?"

No offence but would you put that on the back of your book?

PS: I could say - the truth if brave:

I am Tracy. I can't stand bored people so don't bother talking to me if you use the word. I have had an adventurous and intriguing life, but it might be due to my perspective and recountings of my every day. I am fun, funny and get along well with teens if you are one, otherwise I am vain, so won't say more because I offend people a lot, but in a nice way.

PS thanks for sharing and being brave to share - is it real though?

 

[ChilledVodkaIV]

1925 was a cold, cold year, as it progressed to 1926 I finally achieved probably the greatest event that any person could hope for: I was born.

I knew nothing of the general strike, nothing of the october revolution, nothing of coming out from under an imperialist yoke into the bright blinding light of freedom.

They made me learn Russian, they taught me as best they could what I would need and as much as they knew. I was bi-lingual before I reached school age.

The farm was hard but pleasant, and persistent and more educational than most any other life. From Sex to economics. From religion to politics.

The war gifted me with a great opportunity working daily for the reich and watching American shells overshoot our labour force, while they practiced their gunnery. One day I stood and watched a bright copper topped shell spinning on its nose in the street before my feet, waiting for the end.

By now I spoke Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Serbo-Croatian, German and a little bit of French. 3 or 4 years later I added English in order to get out of the camps as quickly as possible and work for thirty odd years in the black and dust, but first I had to fail the exam as often as possible in order to stay put with my brother who I'd met again.

In the late nineties I went home for the first time in 50 years, an old woman in the dusty unused halls of the old school called me by name on first sight.

So here I am, or what remains in my sons and daughters.

 

[carsonshepherd]

No offence but would you put that on the back of your book?

PS: I could say - the truth if brave:

I am Tracy. I can't stand bored people so don't bother talking to me if you use the word. I have had an adventurous and intriguing life, but it might be due to my perspective and recountings of my every day. I am fun, funny and get along well with teens if you are one, otherwise I am vain, so won't say more because I offend people a lot, but in a nice way.

PS thanks for sharing and being brave to share - is it real though?

No, I wouldn't put that on the back of a book because it's too long and it's not funny. One of my readers wanted to know about my background, where I grew up, where I went to school, who I lived with. I wrote it for my journal, not for the dust jacket of a book. It hits the high points, anyway.

 

[CharleyH]

No, I wouldn't put that on the back of a book because it's too long and it's not funny. One of my readers wanted to know about my background, where I grew up, where I went to school, who I lived with. I wrote it for my journal, not for the dust jacket of a book. It hits the high points, anyway.

I thought it might be satire or funny - but did not say because - I didn't say because well - did not want to offend you in the just in case (JEEZ I REALLY NEED MY DOMME BONE BACK) Where did it go?

 

[carsonshepherd]

I thought it might be satire or funny - but did not say because - I didn't say because well - did not want to offend you in the just in case (JEEZ I REALLY NEED MY DOMME BONE BACK) Where did it go?

That's the cutest thing I've read all day.

 

[cloudy]

I(JEEZ I REALLY NEED MY DOMME BONE BACK)

ah, Squirrel Queen, I adore you.

 

[drksideofthemoon]

My bio...

I am remarkably unremarkable. I am who I am, nothing more, and nothing less.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I was born the year that four kids were killed at Kent State, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix died and the Beatles disbanded. I don't think it was my fault. I grew up in a small suburb outside of Detroit back when subdivisions had fields and woods surrounding them and kids could play all day outside until dark without parents worrying too much about anything happening to them. I began writing at the age of six, when my father was diagnosed bipolar. I wrote a story about a wayward elf named Nub who broke into the hospital, complete with superhero cape, to rescue him. My mother still has that, and a poem I wrote for her birthday when I was twelve, hanging on their wall. I started writing novels with a girlfriend before we entered our teen years. We were our own two-girl authors hangout, spinning tales for hours, writing in notebooks until our fingers grew calloused, and then reading our efforts out loud to one another. I got married and had a baby when I was 20, and had another one at 23, and divorced and remarried at the age of 30, and had two more babies right in a row, so I've pretty much turned around when I heard the word, "Mom" my whole adult life. I stopped writing for a long time, even journals. Part of the reason was that between my bachelor's degree in English and my master's degree in psychology, I was already writing an average of 1,000 words a day just for the world of academia. Enough already! I had forgotten how much I love it, how the imagination is a muscle and writing is a skill that needs to be honed. I have had my share of joys and tragedies, my story is just a story, no real beginning, no real end... it goes on, as all of our stories do, ad infinitum. Blessed be.

 

[Munachi]

okay, trying... doesn't have a lot to do with writing though...


When I was maybe six years old, there was an exhibition at our local church in a village near Berlin, showing pictures from Africa. Looking at them, I told my mom that I was going to go there some day. Her reply however was, that with how things are, the only way to ever be allowed far enough out of the country, was maybe if I became a doctor and did charity work there. "Well," I said, "then I will become a doctor." Fortunately the wall fell before I had to decide what to study, and I could concentrate on languages and literatures instead of medicine.

It was quite clear to me, that when I grew up I would travel the world and write books about it. For now though summer holidays with my parents didn't take me further than Poland or Sweden (which my father claimed to be "almost like America"), and my wish to receive a journey to India as my confirmation present was contered by my parents suggestion to rather have a horse back riding vacation in the north of Germany.

In fact however my family was very understanding of my wish to get away - after all they had been not allowed to travel except to our communist brother states, so every relative donated something to give me the chance of a high school exchange.

Thus, at the age of 17, I finally went into the big wide world: Six months Ada, Oklahoma, and another six months Copiapó, Chile. What I found in this big wide world where other small worlds, just like the one I had left, but knowing they all existed somehow made everything make more sense. I couldn't really sit still since: Every year or two I need to escape for a few months, and every movie, book, or song that reminds me of all the yet undiscovered small worlds out there, makes the wish to get away more urgent.

I am working on making this more permanent, on working or studying abroad for a few years at a time, or maybe forever - by now worrying all those well meaning relatives, who think it might be time for me to settle down.

But, considering I still haven't been to Africa at all, the time to settle down has not yet come.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

This is an amended version of my writer's bio. In comparison to those already posted, mine is like the proverbial pair of brown shoes in a world of tuxedos. Consider yourself warned.

Rumple Foreskin

==

At one time or another, I've been a country grocery store clerk, oil field roustabout, infantry soldier, paper-pusher for the government, out of work, and a newspaper columnist. I'm now trying to add published novelist to my resume.

Way back when, I usually got along with siblings. That I happened to be an only child and they were someone else's brothers and/or sisters was, no doubt, a contributing factor. There were 21 in my high school graduating class (I kid you, not). Though a fair hand at history, writing, and BS, I was neither the smartest nor the most talented. Reflecting the socio-economic structure of our small, all-white southern hometown, the class was divided into two groups: those from families on welfare and those from families trying to get on welfare.

I've been a sports and general interest columnist, print and net, for over twenty years, have a bachelor's and a master's, both in contemporary American history, and had academic work published.

Some of the less disreputable places where my short stories have appeared include: Rose and Thorn, New Works Review, DeadMule, Chick Flicks, and Long Story Short. The latter named "WC 101: Wiilie and the Brain," which is also posted here at Lit in a slightly varied form, as Story of the Month. In the same issue they ran an excerpt from my second novel.

That same novel was named a semi-finalist (work-in-progress) in last year’s Faulkner competition.

After receiving a Combat Infantry Badge and Purple Heart in Vietnam, I lived off and on in New York City from 1970-1972 while getting my one remaining eye overhauled. That became the time and setting for my first novel, a semi-autobiographical love story about an emotionally numb, wounded Vietnam vet from Louisiana (that’s me) and the idealistic Jewish nursing student from Queens (that’s my incumbent wife unit) he meets.

At last check, my personal inventory included three kids, two dogs, one wife, and a house in Dallas.

 

[NoJo]

1925 was a cold, cold year

...

So here I am, or what remains in my sons and daughters.

You have no idea how close that is to my mother's bio.

 

[NoJo]

I'm loving this thread. Respect to everyone who's posted here.

 

[carsonshepherd]

I'm loving this thread. Respect to everyone who's posted here.

Me too. It's so cool.

 

[entitled]

I'm loving this thread. Respect to everyone who's posted here.

*insert oddball ent-ese connection here*

R E S P E C T
Find out what it means to me

*shakes that thang*

 

[Guest]

I am in my late 30’s and I’m still wondering what the future holds for me in regards to a career. I have ‘done it all’ and yet, focusing on one particular activity is enough to make my skin crawl.

A believer in ‘Everything happens for a reason’, it is difficult for me to be depressed or down for periods of time, as long as I can focus on causation.

I grew up on the edge of the Atlantic, lost in thoughts of fancy, fishing and torturing crustaceans when I wasn’t striving for attention. I am one-seventh of a very convoluted functionally dysfunctional family. It was hard to get the attention I craved so I went about ways of getting what I needed…good or bad.

I was awakened to writing in my teens. A voracious reader, I took pen to paper and re-wrote the ending to Gone With the Wind. Having found Penthouse Forum in my mother’s bedside table, I began to scribble naive erotica.

Married at 18 to escape a future of unknowns, I grew up swiftly. We had a house at 19, a baby at 20 and 28 and several attempts to go to college, squashed by a mentally abusive husband. Divorce set me and my children free 17 years later and I finally obtained a worthless degree in computer sciences.

I am married again, only this time I am married to a woman 10 years my junior. She is my inspiration. I don’t know what I would be doing if I weren’t with her…but then again, ‘Everything happens for a reason.’

 

[cloudy]

okay, I'll try:

I was born too late to be a flower child, and too early to be a yuppie. It must've been an omen, because I've been in the middle for most of my life.

In the middle of five kids, two brothers and two sisters, I learned quickly how to smack the hell out of the younger ones when they were bothering me, and lie about the older ones to my parents when they did. And my storytelling began.

I was California dreamin' up until the end of high school. Long days and nights on the beach inspired many a daydream, and in junior high, those daydreams started to take form with words on a page. I also had my first success then, when I sold a children's book for publication: Albert the Moose. Albert was also a middle child, and told of his trials and tribulations.

My family moved to Tennessee in the middle of my senior year of high school, and I successfully held a grudge about that until I left six months later for college - also in Tennessee, since I couldn't afford the out of state fees to go back to California. The effects of culture shock are underestimated in teenage girls - 'nuff said.

I promptly forgot about writing in the whirl of college, having kids (my first at 19), and then beginning a career in business. Why I chose that is anyone's guess.

Writing stayed forgotten until a few years ago when I had quit working, and complained to my mother about being bored at home all day.

"Write," she said.

So, I did.

 

[MichelleLovesTo]

beat ya... I'm 35 and still livin' here...

although, I was born the year you started writing for yourself... so you got me beat there!

I lived there until I was 36 years, 11 months, and, er, it was like 2 days before my birthday.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I am a fiction. I am a book talking to you, writing itself. There is no author, nor ever has been, save that wished into existence by the words themselves. I am not here. I have no existence.