Personal

I'm a 23-year-old woman currently working on her Masters in Library and Information Science, with the goal of becoming a Young Adult librarian. I prefer "tween" books, but am also fond of items directed at older teens.

I enjoy cooking (I'm best at Italian, but really wish I could cook Indian), gardening, and making lists. The latter turns against me whenever I look at the list of books I want to read, which grows about 3 times faster than I can read, at least.

I would love to learn karate, though I am also convinced that it is destiny to get the snot beaten out of me at least once in my life, and each situation I avoid manages to be more dangerous than the previous one (the last one involved me almost pushing a skin-head out of a convenience store).

My boyfriend recently turned me into a complete girl when he proposed to me, making me think of color schemes and china patterns for the first time in my life.

I like to think that my writing style most closely resembles Douglas Adams, though I also hope I am moving away and developing my own voice. I love sarcasm and dead-panning, but worry that my language is a bit too "frilly" for the works I am trying to emulate.

The majority of my inspiration comes to me when I am listening to the radio, feeling devious, or in bed. Sadly, the "in bed" ones are often lost, because I fail to get to a notebook before I go to sleep. When developing a longer story, most of the plot is sketched out in a single day, and is influenced by whatever music comes up on my iPod (set to shuffle) or the radio.

I am "joined" in my writing by my muse, Jigsaw (whose name is a reflection of my writing style, where I basically piece together a rather long list of highlights), who is either the imaginary friend of a 23-year-old woman or a sign of burgeoning schizophrenia.

I have a major addiction to Mead composition books. As addictions go, it's actually a good one. Ten dollars every six months it not bad. Now, filling all of those...there's a challenge.

Favorite authors

Comedy: Christopher Moore, Douglas Adams, Jasper Fforde

Tween/Young Adult: Eoin Colfer, Jeff Stone, Meg Cabot, L.A. Meyer

Sci-F/Fantasy: Orson Scott Card, Todd/Anne McCaffery

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.” -Aral Vorkosigan, from Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga

“One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.” -Josh Billings

“I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders.” -Jewish Proverb

“There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.” -George Bernard Shaw

“I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't.” -Mark Twain

Sheriff of Nottingham: Locksley! I'm gonna cut your heart out with a spoon.
Guy of Gisbourne: Why a spoon cousin? Why not an axe?
Sheriff of Nottingham: Because it's dull, you twit, it'll hurt more.

From "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves"

"Just to spite you, I will go to hell!" -Unknown, when talking to religious protesters

"Don't make me come down there!" -God

"This guy is gonna teach me about the universe?" -My old astronomy teacher

"Radians are God's units. Just because you don't see them doesn't mean they don't exist." -My old astronomy teacher

"Boomerang! You do always come back!" -Sokka

"There's no such thing as altruism when you're in love." -Unknown

"The great thing about infants: they're portable." -Unknown

"And it's sure that, if he is alive, he will try to finish the job. Probably when you are sleeping. And he'll probably look like someone you love, just to make it worse when he murders you. So, you know, be on the lookout for that. And, you know, be careful when someone loves you." -Haggar the Horrible, from Wizard People, a fan-commentary of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"I hate the museum of tolerance." -Unknown

"I love you more, damnit!" -Unkown

"Ghandi II: The Mahatma Strikes Back." -Lynne Truss

"Hamlet II: Where the FuXX is Everyone?" -Sound and Fury

“This library has something offensive to everyone. If you are not offended by something we own, please complain.” -Seen outside some libraries, inspired by Dorothy Broderick

"I want to blot out all those white-bearded tired-ass old men, and pray to a gorgeous woman who crushed snakes with her bare feet. You just watch it. She's the one who'll set us free." Carrol, in Ya-Yas in Bloom by Rebecca Wells

"Okay, any other concerns before you sign the lease?" / "I'm concerned that we're sitting here like I'm a responsible adult. I'm pretty sure I stopped growing up in my teens and have been faking ever since. For God's sake, you're entrusting me with a building. I still make LEGO buildings sometimes." / "Sir, does any of this impact your fulfillment of the lease terms?" / "I don't know what you just said, because I was thinking about Batmen." -From xkcd #616

Quotes on Writing/Grammar

"I can't do journalism anymore because, as it turns out, there are two things that will get you locked up in journalism. One is malice. The other is reckless disregard for the truth. These are my hobbies." -Rick Harris

"An author must put a piece of himself in every character if he wants the character to come alive." -Paul Zindel

"Gondor needs no plot!" -The One Called Demetra

"Revising a paper is like a condom; not your first priority, but your first obligation nonetheless." MLIA #848097

"Evidently an A level in English is a sacred trust, like something out of The Lord of the Rings. You must go forth with your A level and protect the English language with your bow of elfin gold." -From Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss, page 19.

"Unintentional sense from unmarked possessive: Dicks in tray (try not to think about it)." -From Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss, page 51.

"Meanwhile, lawyers eschew the comma as far as possible, regarding it as a troublemaker; and readers grow so accustomed to the dwindling incidence of commas in public places that when signs fo up saying 'No dogs please', only one person in a thousand bothers to point out that actually, as a statement, 'no dogs please' is an indefensible generalization, since many dogs do please, as a matter of fact; they rather make a point of it." -From Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss, page 81.

"As with other paired bracketing devices (such as parenthesis, dashes and quotation marks), there is an actual mental cruelty involved, incidentally, in opening up a pair of commas and then neglecting to deliver the closing one. The reader hears the first shoe drop and then strains in agony to hear the second. In dramatic terms, it's like putting a gun on the mantelpiece in Act I and then having the heroine drown herself quietly in the bath during the interval." -From Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss, page 91.

"The big final rule for commas is one that you won't find in any books by grammarians. It is quite easy to remember, however. The rule is: don't use commas like a stupid person." -From Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss, page 96.

"In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is the daddy and the commas is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises sic the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly." -From Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss, page 138.

"Yet there will always be a problem about getting rid of the hyphen: if it's not extra-marital sex (with a hyphen), it is perhaps extra marital sex, which is quite a different bunch of coconuts. Phrases about that cry out for hyphens. Those much-invoked examples of the little used ar, the superfluous hair remover, the pickled herring merchant, the slow moving traffic and the two hundred odd members of the Conservative Party would all be lost without it." -From Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss, page 168-169

Professor Childer's was my favorite teacher at UC Riverside. Sadly, I only discovered him in the last quarter of school, and this missed many wonderful hours of lectures and jokes. The following are the highlights of the one class I took with him. If you ever find yourself presented with the opportunity to take an English class with Childers, go for it. He is harder than some teachers, but worth the effort.

"If you come to my office and ask 'What did I miss?' I will laugh. 'The secret of life.'" -Welcome to class, Kit. You're screwed.

"Although, in good Victorian fashion, no one ever sees an ankle." -On racy Victorian-era novels.

"First love is always based on what? Lose self-esteem!" -Sometimes he makes me sad inside.

"Read Foucault? Heard of Foucault? It's not a French dish!" -Very rarely do my classmates seem smarter than me. This was one of those days.

"'Intimate is the language of lovers and sexual harassment." -Er...good to know?

"I think it's more imortant to win. Because, if I win, I'm right!" -Speaking from experience, there?

"Think of Mrs. Dalloway. Amazing novel. Not much happens. She's going to have a party." -Pretty true, from what I know. I need to read this book.

Childers: "It's called Norway because...?" / Student: "The Normans live there?" / Childers: "...and they're called Norman's because...?" / Student: "They're from Norway?" -Welcome to college. Please, place your brains under your seats for the duration of your stay.

"Good guess! Always guess the word it sounds like!" -Well, it is logical.

"Most people can't find the bathroom by age four, but Mill had mastered that and moved onto greater things. Or maybe he didn't, and still moved on." -A disturbing look into genius.

"If you see me in a crosswalk and hit me, you had damn well better kill me, because I will hunt you down." -He was kind of bitter. And violent. And scary.

"Yeah. He's a sadistic little shit." -On Tom Bloomfield.

"You could escape scandal by sending her to an asylum in the south of France. She could room with Van Gough." -On Bertha Mason, of Jane Eyre.

"Do you have kids? They are a burden. A lifelong burden." -Thanks for the pep-talk, man. No wonder I didn't want kids until grad school.

"It's only child abuse if you're laughing." -Again, great parenting advice.

"Romantic in the sort of 'June,' 'moon,' 'spoon' sense." -On literary genres. A lot clearer than anything else my teachers told me to define them.

"God is the ultimate pan-optic eye. He sees everything you do, so stop it!" -What! It felt good!

"It's a vice-president Cheney wet-dream." -On old English hunting practices.

"I tell my children 'You can want in one hand and shXX in the other, and see which fills up first.' Then they look at me in disgust...and look at their hands." -His acting during this was perfect. Ah, the teenage disgust...

"My son wouldn't piss on me if I was on fire." -Maybe that's because of the child abuse thing...

"I will answer everything, except where to go. I have suggestions, but none of them will help you." -On graduate school counseling.

"He's so ugly it hurts my feelings." -Seriously. This said by a college professor.

"Do we have to page Dr. Freud?" -I believe we did.

"Not all spiders are black widows. Not all black widows are spiders." -Alexander the Great did not exist and he had an infinite number of limbs.

"It's right next to the Chancellor's Office. Drop in. She loves to see students. Especially unannounced and especially drunk." -Professor Childers, on our school Chancellor, who had recently ordered a lot of very expensive furniture for her school-funded apartment.