So, I've dropped off the face of Fanfiction.net for a good two or three years. Now that I'm back with some actual content to upload, I figure it's time to update the bio. I'm no less geeky than I've ever been. If anything, I am more extensively geeky. I may be doing more original work and less fanfic, but that doesn't decrease geek quotient.

I'm a graduate student in music composition at the University of California in Riverside. This means I am a dedicated geek who writes music (and hopes to make a career of it) and is surrounded by palm trees, desert wind, and seismic hazards. I play viola well and piano and violin decently. I have just started learning viola di gamba and recorder for a Renaissance music consort, guitarron for a mariachi band, and various key and gong instruments for a Javanese gamelan. I am making nothing up here. Even if "bonang" probably doesn't sound like a real word to the majority of the people on this site. In terms of classical musicmaking, Gustav Mahler is my hero in life. He turns up in many of my stories -- even the ones that aren't really supposed to be about him. Dmitri Shostakovich is also a common occurrence in my writing. I also do a lot of visual art. I'm working on a couple of long-term projects, namely the illustration of all of Mahler's songs and a graphic novel involving characters that are days of the year.

I am a fan of a bunch of things, but in terms of the compulsion to write fanfiction, my domain is Redwall. I've been following the series since 1993. I administrate the Redwall Fanfiction Board. Every once in a while, I'll try to swear off writing fanfiction because think I have enough decent original ideas, but Redwall keeps drawing me back in. I break canon as a rule, though, using the familiar Redwall setting as a backdrop for reflection on and reframing of events in our real world. I tend to play off of significant names and words, dates and places. It is entirely possible that I put too much time and energy into making those things line up. But then again, writing fanfic in general implies putting a little bit too much thought into a universe that isn't one's own, so I don't think there's any problem or complaint here!