Welcome to my profile! Thanks for stopping by.

You may be curious to know why I chose this user name. My eldest daughter is the beautiful and talented Elvishkiwi who introduced our family to the cyber world of Fan Fiction. At first when I started reviewing I would use her user name and sign myself Elvishkiwi's mother, but after a while we discovered that the site would only accept one review from each user profile. Since most of the stories I was reading were recommended and enjoyed by her too, that became a problem. So I decided to get my own profile and have a cyber personality to match! It has always been my goal to be a really interesting old lady one day: When my hair goes white I intend to keep it long and dye it rainbow colours. I will also wear nothing but costumes which reflect my interests (mostly historical), and will use my appearance as a lure to attract curious young people so I can teach them to love me and learn from the great wisdom and joy I will have accumulated in my long lifetime. My husband (whom we dub "Elvishkiwi's Revered Patriarch") and I have a family vision based on one of our Favourite songs

"Oh for a thousand tongues to sing

my great redeemer's praise

my great redeemers praise

the glories of our God and king

the triumphs of his grace (echos)..."

We figured out that if we had 10 children and raised them to love God ant catch the vision for large God-honouring families, they might each produce 10 children and our one hundred grand children could each have 10 resulting in 1112 tongues to sing our great redeemer's praise in only 4 generations! and that doesn't even include spouces!

I am primarily a reader and reviewer, although I have great plans to be a writer some day when my full time career of raising 8 (so far!) children becomes a less time consuming task. I can tell you what my 'wanna-be' books are:

1) A half historical fiction, half self-help book about pain and suffering from the life of Job (pronounced with a long "o") which I will probably call "Yet will I trust in him". I got the idea of blending the hist-fic with teaching material from Heather Paulsen's book "Emotional Purity", where she shows her skill as a writer by blending several different genres to give her message the same "can't put it down" factor as a novel, but with the impact and relevance of a powerful public speaker

2) A romance novel in the genre of Jane Austen using her satire and language style but set (like hers were), in the setting I know best. In my case that is small town New Zealand in the early 21st century. The result will obviously be very different to hers because of the setting and the fact that New Zealand is a modern class-less society, but like her I am the daughter of a clergyman, and I have very old fashioned ideas about courtship and family dynasties so I hope I can claim it as a true fan fic, as she is definitely my model for this one.

I have made notes on both books but I am reluctant to post chapters because they are really still just random paragraphs of inspiration, and also I really want to get these ones published one day and I am afraid that posting them on here could jeopardise my options of future publishing.

I am considering writing some short stories which I could post because I feel ashamed that I am getting so much pleasure from all of you and yet contributing nothing in return. I also have one or two poems I could put on if they are allowed...

Since writing the above, I have discovered a wonderful group of people on this site. The Assembly of Christian Authors forum are such fun crazy people, who I have grown to love like a family. We are presently writing a story together as an exercise in developing our (and each others) writing skills, confidence, and experience in writing in a style we may not be used to. I am enjoying it very much and need to warn you that it can be quite addictive, writing with such talented people!

Check out the link http://www.fanfiction.net/topic/34546/2513819/12/#10057876

I have also written my first story which you may read by following the link below. It is just a small glimpse into some imagined background to a rather cryptic passage I was puzzling over, but if it drives you to want to study the original, then it has achieved it's purpose! I enjoyed writing it, so I hope you enjoy reading it.

Updated news: I have just changed the 7 children mentioned above to 8. Little Moana was born on 24th April 2009, and is filling our home with squeals, smiles and chuckles! That gives us a grand total of 7 beautiful princesses and one handsome knight... which has inspired me to write my Rapunzel story for our forum ficathon. So if you want to get a slightly glamorised account of what it is like to live in such a family... have a read!

Also I have completed my first chapter of a Northanger Abby story following the early life of Eleanor Tilney. I will not be posting it until I have half a dozen chapters on hold so it may be a year or more (mothers with teenagers AND toddlers don't get much writing time!). I am really excited about this project! My greatest dread was that I would end up writing a novel which I did not like. But thanks to my dear friends (Elvishkiwi; Clar the Pirate; Captain Fantastic and In Christ Billios), who are assisting me with ideas and editing and building my confidence it is coming together, and I love it! If you want to be notified when it comes out, I suggest you put me on author alert. (I can promise you now you will not be getting flooded with Story Alert mail!)