Finding My Self

As a writer: I'm an unpublished novelist in my (limited) spare time. I've been a member of the Ink*Specs writing circle. My primary project is a large fantasy novel with the working title Traitor's Home.

As a fan writer: I have written for several 'zines and web sites. I won the Aurora award for fan writing in 2002.

As a convention runner: I have attended over 170 conventions, including eleven Worldcons, eight of which I have volunteered on. I am currently a director of SWOC (parent corporation of the Seattle in 2011 Worldcon bid) and the Chicago in 2012 Worldcon bid, and I am also committee or staff for Ad Astra and FilkOntario in Toronto, Confusion in Detroit, and Demicon in Des Moines. In the past, I have been head of programming for Cascadia Con, the 2005 North American Science Fiction Convention in Seattle in 2005 and I was deputy head of programming for the World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto in 2003.

As a science fiction fan: I believe in progress and I welcome change as a means to that end. I'm always willing to work hard for the betterment of the community. I say what I think about how things can be improved, I believe what people tell me, and I don't hold grudges. I'm also loyal to my friends. In particular, I don't always accept that a system which excludes people I care about is working correctly, so I work to change things. These traits work well in organizational contexts, less well in political situations.

In my day job: I help manage a technical support team for a global networking organization. Job functions include scheduling, training, coaching, and hiring staff, defining processes, developing support processes for new products, writing technical documentation and supervising and editing the documentation created by the team, vendor relations, customer escalations, writing network incident reports for customers, resource planning and budgeting, etc. I spend a lot of time in meetings and get a lot of email.

As a gamer: I wrote Tredroy for Steve Jackson Games, playtested GURPS and James Bond 007 RPGs, have written articles for Dragon magazine and other publications as far back as 1979. I managed The Worldhouse game store from 1982 to 1995.

I married mvt years ago. Most of my relatives are engineers, educators, or work in other technical fields.

I am busy all the time.


Re LJ friends: I tend to add people as friends in LiveJournal who (a) I know personally and (b) I like. I travel to a lot of conventions, so if I'm going to be in your area and you want to hang out, let me know. More than a third of items here are friends-locked, mainly details of my personal life.