Anjeli Intro

This first post is a basic "Hello!" and a glimpse of what I'll be bringing to you in the future. While I'm tempted to throw a bunch of information at you all at once, I'm afraid that might be a little much so early on. Because, between you and me and the wallpaper, I have LOTS to talk about.

Let's start with just telling you a little about myself. I've been a medical records clerk in a local hospital, and participated in pulling records to help identify bodies in a crematorium fiasco. I've worked as a job coach to adults with developmental disabilities, where I got to know some amazing people who really touched my life. I've been a corrections officer, and gotten involved in a very different spectrum of human culture that I think changed me as a person, making me more alert and more assertive, while also making me a little more understanding of the conditions of life. I have also worked in a dairy, which is hot and cold and dirty and very physically difficult work.

I've always had a love for the outdoors. I'm an avid fisherman (and a non-toxic feminist who believes that the suffix "man" can be added to any human being without diminishing their value or attacking their gender). I love to go camping, hiking, canoeing, and I'm fairly lethal with a bow (I get that skill from my mother who hunted bear with a bow when she was younger. Badass amazons in my family *grin*).

I'm a sucker for animals. I love them all. Fuzzy, finned, feathered or scaled. I'm a single mom of several pets, and you will probably hear a lot about them (and see their pics) in the future.

I've loved horror and science fiction and fantasy since I was just a kid. My mother (an avid reader), read Alien in the last days of her pregnancy with me, and we like to joke that it shaped me into the weirdo that I am. My mother read to me as far back as I can remember. And I don't mean kiddie-board books. I mean this woman was reading Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan series to me when I was in kindergarden. When we finished that series, she started Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. And when that was finished, she started The Arabian Nights.

Needless to say, I was well ahead of the game in language and reading as a kid. I believe my mother's contributions to my life (via epic bedtime stories) shaped me into the writer I am today. Not that my father didn't help to make me who I am, but his contributions were very different (and very positive). We'll talk about him another time.

More later, my friends. There's plenty of page-fodder for the days to come.