I'm Libertarian, Unitarian, and generally contrarian-- not to mention a pedant who's convinced she's always right! Oddball and crank, that's me. But an oddball and crank with a quirky sense of humor, who loves to laugh, and could no more give up singing than breathing. I met my (equally-eccentric) husband in a Star Trek fan club; we're approaching our silver anniversary and have a perceptive young-adult son who long ago picked up on the fact that we're weird. (He's used to it by now.) Also, as you will have guessed from my profile picture, I like cats. We have two.

I've been doing the "fangirl" thing since I was a gawky adolescent -- and now I'm officially a senior citizen, so it's been a while. Star Trek and its various incarnations, particularly Voyager and TNG, have always been my first loves, but in the twilight of Trek I've also developed powerful affections for other properties, especially Harry Potter, Battlestar Galactica, and The Big Bang Theory. I've been an X-Men fan for what seems like forever and six weeks, too, though luckily for me I became one at such an advanced age that there are absolutely no fanfics extant of a Brenda-analogue showing up at the X-Mansion. I can't take too much credit, though -- the only reason you won't find my Star Trek Mary Sue anywhere on-line is that I wrote about her long before the advent of the Internet!

As an author, I like to think of myself as a craftsperson, shaping my little works with care. My perfectionist tendencies and my relatively short attention span, though, do make completing longer works problematic. I wouldn't post a creation of mine if I didn't think it was at least decent, but I do have favorites. Of those that appear on this site, my personal pets are "Little Boy Blue and the Man in the Moon" and "There Will Your Heart Be Also" (ST: VOY), "The Cogenitor's Tale" (ST: ENT), and "Elegy for Bail Organa" (SW).

As a reader, I enjoy fics with well-written characters and a sense of humor. Good drama can hook me like nobody's business, though, and decently-done melodramas are among my favorite guilty pleasures. My readerly turn-offs include most Mary Sues (yes, I understand the impulse to write them, but that doesn't mean I want to read them), canon characters acting out-of-character, and really bad grammar. I refuse to read anything whose summary indicates it was written during class or in a study hall, not because I dislike works by younger writers -- some of my favorite stories are by teenage writers -- but because I have learned the hard way that that usually means the story in question hasn't been proofread, and may make my aging eyes bleed.

People have told me I don't look like what they'd expect from reading my writing. I didn't know what that meant until a friend explained affectionately (well, she SAID it was affectionate!) that I look like a geek who shouldn't be capable of stringing two sentences together, and instead I string them together by the carloads.