NAME(S): Hellga, Anna

FAVORITE CITIES (of the ones I have visited): Ekaterinburg, Russia; St. Petersburg, Russia; Berlin, Germany; Vienna, Austria; Merano, Italy; Washington DC, USA; Boston, USA; Stockholm, Sweden; London, UK.

COUNTRIES VISITED: USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Austria, Italy, The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

LANGUAGES: Fluent - Russian, English; conversant - German, Italian; can deal with - Spanish, Quenya, Sindarin.

REAL-WORLD ALTER EGO: Evil pharmaceutical industry minion, though I still am a practicing pharmacist too. It's such a zoo that I can't give it up.

AGE: Old enough to have two graduate degrees.

INTERESTS: Pharmacy, linguistics, anthropology, parasitology, Tolkien, Elves, castles, High Middle Ages, assorted Hapsburg monarchs, Norse mythology, cake decorating, rococo...

FAVORITE CHARACTERS: Finrod, Caranthir, Maedhros. Secondary favorites include but are not limited to Emeldir, Tuor, Ecthelion, Glorfindel, Faramir, Frodo, Elendur, and vast majority of First Age Noldor.

TOLKIEN'S BOOKS READ: LotR, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, The Unfinished Tales, the History of Middle Earth I-XII, the Letters, The Children of Hurin, and most of the non-Middle-earth-related ones. I read The Hobbit as a kid, but it was when I read LotR twenty years ago that I truly started to love Tolkien. And when I read The Silmarillion a year later was when I started to feel that Tolkien created a whole new world and not just a collection of stories...

NON-TOLKIEN FANTASY BOOKS READ: I am generally not a big fan of fantasy... I have read the Wheel of Time up to about book 5 where it got boggled down - and then restarted at book 10 or 11. I have read the Narnia books and the Harry Potter books, and a lot of old-time writers like Stephen Donaldson and Fred Saberhagen who are no longer en vogue. I like some Pratchett but only in small doses. Song of Ice and Fire is a slow read for me but I am getting through it - on my third attempt at it. I love Gordon Dixon's the Dragon Knight series and a lot of Barbara Hambly... I remember liking Dragonlance in my early teens but I have tried rereading them some years ago and realized I could not. I only plowed through three of the Forgotten Realms books... I like intelligent, logical fantasy - and there is simply not a lot of it out there.

PETER JACKSON'S MOVIES: Ever since someone gave me the brilliant idea to view the movies as a fanfic rather than an attempt to film the books, I started liking them a lot more. I tend to like FotR, somewhat like RotK and intensely dislike most of TTT. I love the Hobbit movie so far, some rather stupid changes notwithstanding, but let's see what the other two parts bring...

PET PEEVES:

1. Spelling/grammar errors. It's just sloppy.

2. Canon characters twisted so badly out-of-character that only name remains the same.

3. Not bothering to learn the canon.

And use the "But it is [only] fanfiction!" excuse. Key word is FANfiction. Meaning, you have to be a fan. And fans - normal fans - try to learn as much about their fandom as possible...

Silmarillion Marriage prospects (not allowed by FF.net) are at http://www.geocities.ws/crazyhellga/silm/mp.html

I have largely retired from fanfiction and Tolkien fandom in 2004, when real-life demands have started consuming 99% of my time, but I do stage occasional come-backs.