A bio, eh?

Well, I'm a guy, born in the year of 1984 (which gives me a somewhat unique gratitude that Orwell's vision hasn't yet come to fruition).

I was homeschooled up through high school, then graduated from the University of Michigan, Dearborn. I'm a computer programmer by trade--a geek, and well proud of it. Personal interests--aside from the obvious writing/reading intrests implied by this very site--include anime, manga, and video games. Which is to say (again) geek, and proud.

Concerning my fanfic tastes, I tend to float from fandom to fandom--there's a whole lot of cool stuff out there, and it's great fun discovering it. As for my own fics, I tend to be a bit on the slow side as updates go, but I'm grimly determined to finish every fic I start.

FAQ:

I've recently started up a little FAQ for the Dark Lords of Nerima series, using this site's forum functionality. Basically, it just covers some of the more obscure interactions between that series and the two series from which it pulls, answers common questions that come up in reviews, etc.

Fanart:

Sadly, thanks to this site's linking rules, I can no longer directly point you to the awesome images people have drawn for this fic over the years, but I can give you the best lead on where to find them if you're interested. Unfortunately cumbersome, but that's the world we live in. I still wanted to spotlight (as much as I can) the artwork for the fics that have been drawn, since I'm incredibly grateful for all of them!

Thanks to the incredible generosity of EternallyLostRyouga, he commissioned two pieces of fanart from the amazingly talented Nadiezda on DeviantArt! The first is the cover image for the first fic in the series, which is unfortunately no longer on DeviantArt, but the second can be found on Nadiezda's account by searching for "Three Way."

Also, the most excellent Pusakuronu has turned his pen to create an extremely sweet fanart of a scene from Chapter Seventeen, which can be found on his photobucket by searching for his name and "Dark Lords".

In addition, Nano0429 also put together a title page for what a comic version of the story might look like on their DeviantArt, which can be found similarly, by searching for their name and "Dark Lords".

Also, the incredible SailorPtah drew a gorgeous rendition of a scene from the grand finale of The Dark Lords Ascendant, which you can find on her DeviantArt page (where she goes by "ErinPtah") by searching for "Zero Hour".

Also, ever since this site added the ability to add cover images to fics, I've been toying around with the idea of doing something with that. Nadiezda's art above made for a beautiful cover for the first fic, but it didn't feel right just having one fic with a cover and not the others. So I decided to go ahead and commission pictures for the other two fics in the "Dark Lords" series to match, followed by some of my other stories as well.

The cover art for The Dark Lords Ascendant has been drawn by the awesome pen of sbel02, which you can find by searching for their name and "commission_alliance".

Also, the cover art for The Dark Lords Strike Back has been drawn by the amazing NammyLank, which you can find by searching for their name and "Ranma and Queen Serenity".

And the cover art for A Secret Little Game was breathtakingly drawn by AkubakaArts, which you can find by searching for their name and "Shikamaru and Tayuya".

TV Tropes Page:

Some really awesome folks have set up a TV Tropes page for the Dark Lords series over on the TV Tropes site. I'm super grateful for them putting it together; I know for my part, it's a quite fun experience to read other peoples' analysis of the story, and see what tropes and themes they're seeing and finding in it, so I definitely get a kick out of reading it.

Betas:

My constant and deep thanks go out to my beta readers, who hack through my rough drafts and bludgeon them into something readable.

Lathis, a truly excellent fanfiction author, and a master of crossovers prominently featuring our favorite Lost Boy. I highly recommend his writings as some of my favorite works around.

Also, my dad, who's been reading my stuff and giving me feedback ever since I was very, very little (and believe me, back then my stories were very, very painful). If it weren't for him suffering through all those missteps, and showing me how to improve, there's no way I'd be writing anything fit for human consumption today.

Update 9/26/2023: Given some of the instabilities of this site that I've observed recently, I'm looking into archiving some of these stories over to Archive of our Own, to make sure they're still available even if something were to happen, as a backup. So don't worry if you suddenly see another "claymade" account posting this stuff over there; that really is me...