I am a pop culture addict. Books, tv, movies, comics - they not only make me happy, they also help me survive. The addiction probably began with the Chalet School series of books when I was very, very young. Then, at about 12, I discovered The Lord of the Rings and started to read it once a year, usually around exam time. It was a habit I kept up even when I stopped doing exams - one year I spent a summer working in a hospital and LOTR was the reading that kept me sane. If you read Five times Dean tried to read Lord of the Rings, well, Sam's attitude in that is pretty much mine. I love too many books to even begin to list them here. Trust me, there's a lot.

Then there are the TV shows. The X-Files were an enormous help when I did an honours year in 1995, although when my flatmate wasn't around I had to get another friend over to watch with me because I was scared! Then Buffy the Vampire Slayer got me through my PhD. Really it did, I even mentioned Buffy in the acknowledgements at the beginning of the thesis. The entire Whedon-verse, Buffy, Angel and Firefly on DVD, helped me with my last degree. And now Supernatural is making the transition from years of academia to a real, responsible, job so much easier.

I've always mentally added to the stories I loved, but it has only been in the past few years that I've discovered that I'm not alone in that, that there's this thing called fanfic that hundreds of other people are addicted to as well, and that there are places where I can read what they've written and share with them what I've done. It's taken a long time to go from lurking and reading to writing and posting, but with the encouragement of a fannish friend I've finally maanged it.

Apart from that, I'm in my mid-thirties, I live in Australia, I have a job that I love but which is bloody hard work, and writing fanfic has become one of those things I do to stay sane.