Back in November 1968, I was (reluctantly) born.
To this day it can be a major chore to get me out of bed.
I was born in Roanoke, VA, and have lived here almost all my life (except for two brief abodes in the New York area). I started my education at a local private school, where I quickly discovered how unwise it was to display intelligence or a love of Star Trek.
Despite that, I muddled through. Well, actually I didn’t; having my head in the clouds early on didn’t equip me for everyday life very well. I had some great teachers who tried to inspire me, and one or two decent friends, but I slipped into apathy and depression pretty often when I was a kid. A year or so after puberty, hereditary migraines kicked in just to keep things difficult.
Things could have gotten even uglier, but thankfully, around my junior year in high school, I discovered science-fiction fandom, and slowly began learning to cope with life from people who’d been down the same road. Though I still made a few of the poor decisions that any teenager might make, I started to kick the headaches and angst, and build myself a real life.
Then my 1977 Mustang II decided to blow a tire on the interstate. I hit a mountainside at 65 miles per hour.
I learned how grueling it is to get around modern civilization in a wheelchair; graduating to crutches was a wonderful bit of freedom. Out of pure cussedness, I made myself walk unsupported months before my therapists expected me to. Unfortunately, the damage to the bone in my upper left leg was worse than they’d hoped, and they sent me to Duke University to be assimilated into the Borg Collective.
It took a few years more for me to gain control of my life for a second time. Then, just when I wondered what I was going to do next, I met the lovely and intelligent Rain. We spent most of a decade having an incredible time together, though unfortunately, as time passed we grew in different directions.
On a whim, I submitted a resume to Decipher, the trading card game company. They hired me, and I had to pack up books and models and computer and drag myself out to Norfolk, Virginia. Life is pretty good here; I like living in a larger city more than I’d expected, and I’ve met some lovely people here. I even got more of my fiction published and contributed to a major card game release. Too soon, though, Decipher had to cut staff drastically, and I moved on.
It’s been a heck of an adventure since then, but I’m not sitting still: I’m trying many new things with my life. As I said in a previous version of this bio, it’s fun trying to guess what’s in store!
Stuff I’ve done that is vaguely cool:
I certainly have a creative urge banging around inside of me, and I’m always looking for new ways to express it.
I started writing fiction around the age of 7 or so. A lot of what I’ve done has been Star Trek fan fiction based on the original characters and starships created for our local fan club chapters. There’s a few examples of the more coherent stuff on the Fiction page. I’ve written a couple completely original stories, and a Shadowrun article of mine even appeared in GDW’s Challenge magazine for role-playing gamers. Of course, the company folded before they could pay me the promised $30. Now, I’ve written supplemental fiction for Decipher’s WARS trading card game; both my current published pieces are on their WARS fiction page. As well, I wrote the ‘flavor’ text for the Maverick subset of the game cards. I’m a semi-pro now!
I’ve always wanted to be musical, but a lack of dexterity and patience has kept me from learning any instrument. To make up for this, I make friends with musicians and even married one. Recently, I hooked up with the filk-singing group White Plectrum; I’ve written a couple songs for them, constructed their web site, and do an okay job running the sound board.
Building is a passion with me; I have high-level Lego skills, and I enjoy assembling and painting scale model kits. At one Sci-Con, a model-builder for Paramount Pictures told me that my kitbashed Jules Verne “ether flier” was professional-quality work – I’ll post some pics of it if I ever find the diskette. (I say that a lot on this web site.)
As mentioned, my fingers aren’t steady enough to play an instrument, but by locking my hand around a pencil or pen and doing all the work with my wrist, I can draw a picture or two. Once I even taught my friend Rhapsody how to draw characters in the Japanese cartoon style – now, of course, he’s a lot better than me. I’ve tossed some of my material on my Artwork page.
When friends of mine ask for volunteers for their projects, I keep forgetting to shut up. I’ve helped start two Starfleet International chapters, the USS Pathfinder and the USS Collins, and worked on the staff of such local conventions as RoVaCon, Rising Star, Technicon, KatsuCon, and MarsCon. For my efforts (and a large cash donation) I was chosen Fan Guest of Honor for the 2002 Technicon.
Since reading David Gerrold’s description of breaking into television in his book The Trouble With Tribbles, I’ve thought to myself, “Hey, I could do that!” Thus the beauty of amateur film – you get to, if you want: write, direct, produce, act, supply props and costumes, scout locations, edit, score… in fact, you usually have to do all these things and more whether you want to or not. I’ve acted for Galtham Films, written, directed, and acted for Black and Blue Productions, and have a project or two in progress. I even took to the stage once in a Showtimers production of Arsenic and Old Lace, but my future is in digital video and desktop editing.
Of course, there’s more than one way to create a world digitally. Since I knew the game engine of the Marathon series inside and out, I jumped at the change to help revisit it for the Excalibur: Morgana’s Revenge computer game project. I’ve posted E:MR screenshots from the levels I worked on.
That’s everything I can think of – as you can see, I keep busy. When there’s more to tell – there will be more here.
Shadowrun Information
Back in 1989, I picked up the first edition of the Shadowrun role-playing game, and I’m still playing it. Even though it’s in 4th edition, I’m still running a 2nd edition campaign, stealing whatever timeline and rules stuff I like from the later versions. This is in part because by this time, I can practically quote every rule and stat in the 2nd ed. rulebook without checking.
TeeFive is now part of our ancient campaign lore, but twice a month (when everyone’s up to it) we are running a new campaign for Team Jackalope, and this site will tell parts of both groups’ stories.
