Step 42: Answer The Ultimate Question Of Life, The Universe, And Everything

If you don't get the reference to this post title, that's okay. I've never actually read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I consider myself to be one of the foremost experts on geek culture.

Shame indeed, Septa Unella.  SHAME INDEED.

The Twitter event #PitchWars is coming up, which is sort of like a pre-published author version of The Hunger Games. Or Battle Royale, if you're an 90's anime weaboo like I am.

If you weren't ~*blessed*~ to grow up with Sailor Moon, I feel sorry for you.

Some writers are pimping out their Author Bios under the cleverly-titled hashtag, #PimpMyBio. So I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring, even though for me writing a personal bio is about as much fun as jerking off using a hedgehog.

On the one hand, ow. On the other hand... I mean, you're still masturbating. /letscallitadraw

Shall we get started?  First and foremost, here's some basic stats.  I am:

• 31 years old but forever 17 in my head
• A cisgendered female
• Happily married to a man but would identify myself somewhere on the queer spectrum
• A San Diego native
• A 2007 alumna of the University of California, San Diego with a B.A. in Visual Arts

I've worked professionally as a freelance illustrator in the comic book industry since 2009, but my real passion has always been in graphic novels (Blankets changed my goddamned life--seriously, go read it right now). My short graphic story, Strawberry Wine, was a winner of TokyoPop's 2008 Rising Stars of Manga contest and was published nationally in their anthology book. The manuscript that I am currently peddling about, Defining Lines, actually started life as a graphic novel, and I would love to revisit the medium one day (time and finances permitting).

And so long as my drawing hand doesn't fail me.

At any rate, this little spiel of mine is starting to sound suspiciously like a query letter, so lets move on to the fun stuff.  In my spare time, I like to:

• Cosplay
• Draw
• Read
• Play video games

Pertaining to that last one, I am an especially avid fan of the Final Fantasy franchise. My all-time favorite game is Final Fantasy X, and I will fight anyone who says Final Fantasy VIII is a shit game and not worth playing.

Take your FFVII superiority complex and shove it.

I also enjoy decorating my Lakeview Manor house in Skyrim with the bones of fallen dragons I have slain:

Unless they slay me first.  It happens.

And to round this post out, I'm going to link to a few random .gifs that are relevant to my interests:

When u sneeze so hard u regenerate

Exhibit A: My first sexual awakening

Real men wear pink.
(Alternate caption: Bye Felicia~)

Data with his emotion chip is just the best I can't even

Welp, that about sums it up!  I hope you enjoyed this little stroll down .gif lane, and I'm looking forward to #PitchWars! May the odds May the Force Live Long and okay whatever good luck everyone!

EDIT:  Most mentees appear to be including some info about their manuscripts along with their bios, so here's mine in a nutshell--

DEFINING LINES is the story of an awkward girl who suddenly becomes popular and--hahaha just kidding, awkward girl stays totally awkward and unexpectedly finds her Prince Princess Charming! YA Contemporary LGBTQ+ Romance with a sprinkling of David Bowie and pop culture, complete at 92,000 words.

Step 16: Phone In A Title (Cause I Can't Think Of A Good One)

I went and saw Captain America: Civil War last night! As much as I'm a Cap fangirl (DID YOU SEE CHRIS EVANS' BICEPS???), it was Black Panther who stopped my heart as soon as he stepped onscreen:

Eat your heart out, Wolverine.

Truth be told, the movie had plot holes so big you could navigate a helicarrier through, but I was too busy being distracted by all the shiny footage and witty quips to give it much thought until after it was over. I wish I could have ignored the problems with The Force Awakens as much as I did with this film, because I left the theater feeling giddy and free of the fatigue I've been saddled with after watching approximately 49038409583 superhero movies.

The only part of TFA worth watching.

Moving on, I finishing up a new character design for my book this morning:

Project yourself onto her, ye who enter here.

Defining Lines is written in the first person, and told through the eyes of the character above. In a lot of ways, she represents a high school version of me; the book deals with some heavy themes, and I felt like the only way I could accurately portray the story is by how someone similar to me would react to it. She's friendly, if not a little self-absorbed in her own little world, and she's supposed to be somewhat of a diamond in the rough. I think I drew her a little too pretty for her ultimate transformation to carry weight, but I'll try harder next time.

Needs more glasses and frizzy hair.

Step 5: Read More

It sort of goes without saying that if you want to be a professional writer, you have to read a lot. How can you know what reads well if you don't invest some time doing the research? All that aside, I have not been the best reader as of late. It wasn't always that way for me; scores of books lined the shelves of my childhood home, and a brief dalliance with a voracious reader in my twenties introduced me to the masterful works of Frank Herbert, Michael Moorcock, and Robert Heinlein. Ultimately, my glory years of reading were triggered by the appearance of this book in my hands:

A Star Wars literary masterpiece. /sarcasm

I should back up a bit. When I was twelve, my dad took me to see the Star Wars: Special Edition re-release. Before I entered the theater, I thought I was just going to watch some dumb movie from the 70's. I knew all of the pop culture references, and had even perfected my seven-foot-two-asthmatic-ass Darth Vader impression. After I left the theater... well, let's just say I was a changed person.

We had an old VHS copy of A New Hope that my parents had taped from a TV airing in the 80's (I know this because I can still sing the jingle of the Toyota commercial interspersed throughout the breaks), and I watched it obsessively. I would pop the tape in as I got ready for school, and resume watching it when I got home in the afternoons. When the credits rolled, I'd rewind it and immediately start playing it again.  My mother, worried about her daughter's compulsive addiction, spotted The Crystal Star at a book store and bought it for me in hopes that reading about Star Wars would be more productive than me turning into a boob-tube zombie.

Suddenly, on that summer day in 1997, I was introduced to the world of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Fifteen years later, I had read nearly every piece of Star Wars literature and comic book that was available.  I'll save my feelings about the EU reboot for another post, but suffice to say, I can thank Star Wars for my interest in science fiction and reading in general.

Great for my nerd cred; less so for my social standing in high school.

I credit my writing style to my favorite Star Wars EU author, the illustrious Aaron Allston, who sadly passed away a few years ago from complications with diabetes and a pesky lack of health insurance (the Affordable Care Act would be implemented a little too late for Allston, but hopefully future authors won't have to -literally- suffer for their art). My personal favorite of his books (and my favorite Star Wars novel in general), Starfighters of Adumar, didn't even feature any of the "Big Three", which just goes to show that even the most minor of characters can be used to tell a compelling story.

Yub Yub, Commander.

When Episode VII was announced and Troy Denning had impaled my heart on a spear, I lost interest in reading for a long time. My go-to source for escapism had evaporated, and I had a hard time finding a good replacement. I think I can count on both hands the number of novels I've read in the past five years; I picked up some bestsellers, and revisited some classics, but nothing aside from A Song of Ice and Fire really and truly grabbed me.

And we all know how well that worked out.

I read The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green...

Accurate.

I reread To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee...

Atticus Finch at peak DILF.

...in preparation for the release of Go Set a Watchman...

If racist Clint Eastwood things you're a bigot, you might want to tone down the KKK references.

I read Fair and Tender Ladies, by Lee Smith...

It's sort of like that.

...and All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr...

Another priceless gem, lost at sea for stupid reasons.

...until finally I bought Anna and The French Kiss, by Stephanie Perkins, which is what I'm currently reading right now. I picked it up because the title popped up several times in my search for "Best Young Adult Romances", which is in the same vein of what my book is about.  So far, it's pretty cute, and Perkins' writing style is easygoing and delightful. However, I can't help but balk a little at the new-girl-attracts-the-attention-of-the-most-popular-guy-in-school trope. It's not that I'm against the idea, per se--I mean, what nerdy girl doesn't want to catch the eye of Hottie McHotterson?--and I even use the scenario to set my own story in a way, but gosh if it hasn't been done a hundred times.

Then again, what use would we have for classic South Park gifs?

I'm not finished with the book yet, so it may still surprise me. And even if it doesn't, I always enjoy a nice feel-good story.  We read to escape the reality of our lives--lives which don't always result in fairy-tale endings. There's certainly something to be said about an emotional tear-jerker, but generally speaking, I don't go out of my way to punish myself with the literary equivalent of being run over by a bus.

I'm looking at you, Nicholas Sparks.