:: a wiki project
I am a middle aged woman who's been a teacher for a couple of decades. I have been married for over twenty-five years. We have two kids, two dogs, and a house full of books--about ten thousand or so. That's because my husband is a professor, and I studied history in graduate school, and we both love reading!
I started writing novels about Sartorias-deles when I was eight, but the work was so hard I switched to making comic books of my stories. (I actually began making little books when I was six and seven, out of paper towels taped together.) I went back to novel writing when I was ten, and I never stopped. I tried sending out my novels when I was thirteen. I typed them on a manual, and wow, did that take a long time, especially since I was (and am) a terrible typist. I got letters saying "We almost bought this..." and "Try us again!" but nothing sold, so when I got to college, I figured I needed to learn something about writing that I just didn't yet grasp. It took fifteen more years to begin to learn about rewriting, but meantime I went to college, lived in Europe, came back to get my masters in History, worked in Hollywood, got married, started a family and became a teacher.
I discovered that studying history was a good thing for an author, because I learned how cultures are shaped, how people thought, acted, ate, and lived in the past. I learned what they really did, how, and most important, why. Reading history, plus getting one's own life experience, is the best way to help a writer create characters that are true to life, instead of copying them from other writers' visions in favorite books.
Wren to the Rescue was first written when I was seventeen. It was one of the ones I sent around all through high school, though in those days it was called Tess's Mess. It was the first one I sold after I began the long road (still on it!) to learn how to rewrite. Since then I've published over twenty-five books, many of them translated into other languages, like Russian. [1]
If you have any questions or messages for me specifically, leave them below this text instead of in the Suggestion Box. That way, I know where to find them.
Sherwood, sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you (see note on profile). About the site mirroring, that could end up being really complicated for collaboration sites, because one person isn't making all the updates, thus having synchronization problems. I could, however, set up a read-only mirror site, but I'd have to figure out how to do that :) faye September 30, 2007, at 11:09 AM
Okay I've been editing Character Profiles all day - during school and at home and stuff - because it's a crazy hobby of mine. All the "editedby" today (Jan 18th) for Flauvic and Russav and Elestra and Tamara are by me. Did I do an OK job about their personalites, etc, etc, or did I totally screw up, and make errors and stuff? Oh, and I'm dying to ask you, who was that "disappointment in love" Alaerec suffered? Didn't he love Elestra? Mousselinerocks
You have done a WONDERFUL job! I've just done some teeny fixes here and there. Alaerec did indeed love Elestra, she just wasn't his first.
You're welcome, it's no big deal doing the linking and trails etc. Better use of your time to put information up and we can organize and format it. It's awesome to see the atlas finished! lauroragirl Feb 18, 11pm
One more thing I noticed on the Goerael Northern Peninsula there is a country listed as Sar Loriseh, is it the same as Sar Lorise? Which spelling is correct? lauroragirl Loriseh and Sar Loriseh are countries--I got dyslexic. Loriseh is between Aroth and Egan-- 19 Feb