09/10 "The Smallest Spark" is now out in the September, 2010 issue of Aoife's Kiss. This is actually my favorite story, and I'm really glad that it's seen print! Same world as "Training Ground", "Fidelity's Reward", and The Herd Lord.
01/10 "Fidelity's Reward" appeared in the January, 2010 print edition of Golden Visions Magazine, another small press publication. For anyone in the know, it's set in the same world as "Training Ground".
In addition, "Guardian", though it did not win, was nominated for a James B. Baker ("James") award (announced in the March 2004 edition of Sam's Dot Publishing's "Expressions") at Sam's Dot Publishing for the best short story published by their company in 2003! It's definitely cool to have this happen for my first published story!
Me:
I’m actually a writer and a mom.
I’m primarily interested in writing fantasy novels, but I also write short stories. My current
project is a novel entitled Etched in Fire.
I’ve got a finished novel (which needs serious rewriting) on the back shelf, The Roots of Healing, and am
also revising a fantasy trilogy to send out for publication. I'm working on changes for the first
book, Winterweave, and hopefully will soon get around to revisions for Coldsong
and Winter's Fire, as well as a continuation of this story, entitled Golden Rose.
Well, to be fair, they’re not my first novels -- they’re my first
novels I’ll let anyone see. When I was in junior high I wrote a really bad
one (with two revisions taking it into my college years), and when I was in
college I wrote one which might someday see the light of day, but which will be
hacked to bits and reassembled first.
This is a picture of Traedis, the main character of my trilogy (the artwork is by Ed Heil, a very talented artist and a good friend). (Check him out in the "Links to Friends" at the bottom of this page).
REE DECORATIVE 
ETTER ICONS!I occasionally enjoy designing a few simple graphics. Here are some initial letters available for free downloading. Take as many as you want! Some are better than others.
I am a survivor of physical, emotional and sexual abuse (not all from the
same source). The poems "Afterword" and "Survivor" listed above are about this, and I also have
a number of links for various survivor resources at the bottom of this page.
However, I've realized that people weren't reading what I most wanted them to
down below, probably because they're skipping over my lists of links, so I'm
going to place this up here instead. This is my own experience, and I really want people
to read this.
I started college with the idea of becoming an astronomer, but rapidly decided that physics just wasn’t my idea of a happy fun time, and switched to Linguistics, with a minor in English (almost accidental -- I discovered before my last semester that I only needed one more class for an English minor, so I dived into Shakespeare. The reading was fun, but the class itself was comparable to a visit to the dentist.) I also had a brief stint in a graduate program in Anthropology, which ended when I was told that even though the department didn’t require an undergraduate degree in the same, I was expected to have one anyway. I got a 4.0 out of pure irritation and quit the program.
I am still trying to work on my dollhouse kit (the San Franciscan) but am going pretty slowly. It's exciting -- if I can't have a real mansion, I'm going to have one that I could fit into if I were 1/12 of my size! This one is a beauty, with a tower and three stories plus an attic. I'm looking forward to getting to it -- as soon as I finish the 30 other projects I have going.
Dylan, Alex,& Davey, May 2003 Wheeler Family, October 2005
My mom skills are still being honed and tested. My older son, Dylan, is twenty-three years old (wow!), and is currently working, as well as going to school. He’s a great young man -- gets along almost anyone, and has a core of close friends who are pretty cool people! He loves theater, both technical and acting, and has studied stage combat, and has gotten seriously seduced by Shakespeare. He also loves the outdoors. He likes reading, RPGs, plays the mandolin, the piano, and the guitar, and is the main guitar player for the small Celtic music group Silverthorn. He's got a wonderful sense of humor (and timing!) but still asks deep and serious questions about -- well, everything. Oh yeah, and he likes cute girls. Big surprise!
My second son, Davey, now seventeen, with a shoe size of 13, started off his life by tying himself through his umbilical cord, and proceeded on an active career of total havoc. Right now he's navigating the sticky waters of high school, with a small group of good friends. He loves computer/video games, surfing the Internet for extremely silly games, reading, jokes, fantasy novels, and fantasy RPGs, as well as doing technical theater. He's contemplating where to go to college, and has recently gotten a job at the local Hy-Vee grocery store. But he still hasn't caught up to his feet! My mother refers to him as “busy”.
Our youngest, Alex, is eleven years old. And this kid loves to read! He's a natural speed reader, is currently getting excited by Pokemon, and as always, the animal world. He draws obsessively, loves singing (and sings in perfect tune), and is plays piano and string bass. He still loves his stuffed "friends" (to which he gives wonderful names like 'Ikidikidik' and 'Vuvvy'), has an extraordinary vocabulary, and is a definite cuddler. At the moment he's in fourth grade, blowing their curve. He has also been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (an autism-spectrum disorder characterized by hyper-verbal ability, but difficulty with non-verbal communication) and rampant ADHD.
Other interests, fascinations, and defining characteristics:
I’m 1/8 Welsh -- my great grandfather came from Llanfairfechan (I think that’s the spelling) and I have always had a fascination with that country, even before I learned that was where my most identifiable ancestry rested. I did study medieval Welsh in a college course alongside my sister and mother. One of the interesting things we learned was that the Welsh joke that had been passed down through four generations was still recognizably coherent and translatable. Of course, if I ever try looking for the genealogy of that line, I’m going to have a problem, since my great-grandfather’s name was John Williams.
I like to do various projects, though none of them full-time. A few years ago I made some calendars of fantasy art based on our gaming campaign for some friends of mine. I was actually rather proud of them, so check them out! (The picture below isn't a sample -- I just like the graphic.)
In addition to that, I've gotten quite addicted to Photoshop. I'm currently making my family and friends into a bestiary. Here's what I've done so far:
My two loves apart from the family and writing, are music and reading. I’ve got a very good voice -- I’m a dramatic soprano with some training (my voice might be professional quality, but I don't have that level of training). I play a little piano -- I’d play better, but I never learned to read music properly, since my teachers never realized that I was memorizing my pieces. I’m self-taught on guitar, which means I’m not all that bad, but don’t expect me to get up in public; and I can eke out a tune on recorder, even if it squeaks every third note. I'm currently still trying to learn the harp, and feel really at home with it, surprisingly enough. I'm also learning the three-stringed dulcimer, due to receiving a family heirloom dulcimer this year. British folk music is my favorite type, though I also enjoy classical, some rock, the occasional jazz, and a lot of things that fall into the completely unidentifiable category. I’ve also been writing filk music for a few years now. Samples of sorts of music I like: Silly Wizard, Andy M. Stewart, Phil Cunningham, Pigyn Clust, Sian James, Stravinsky, Therese Schroeder-Sheker, Gordon Lightfoot, Ogam, Robin Williamson, Jethro Tull, Loreena McKennitt, Connie Dover, Palestrina, The Alan Parsons Project, Alfred Deller, The Tannahill Weavers.
I devour books (arranged neatly with a sprig of parsley). My all-time favorite is The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery. I recently discovered that it is the third most read book in the world, after the Bible and the Koran! Other authors I love are Lloyd Alexander, Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, Judith Tarr, Roger Zelazny, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ursula LeGuin, C.J. Cherryh, Diana Wynne Jones, Madeleine L'Engle, Alan Garner, Margaret Mahy, Tom Deitz, Patricia McKillip, Diane Duane, Peter Beagle, R.A. MacAvoy, Susan Cooper, Zenna Henderson, Alexander Key, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Barbara Hambly, L.M. Boston, Jenny Nimmo, Robin McKinley, Sylvia Louise Engdahl, Terri Windling, Juliet Marillier, and Sharon Shinn. Note -- some of these are indeed children’s authors. I’m fairly well read in children’s fiction, and often hit the children’s or young adult sections of the library because they have some of the best stuff (adult books often get too pretentious or attempt to earn an R rating by adding unnecessary parts). I hope someday to be able to write some children’s books as well as adult books -- it’s quite a challenge to keep the depth of a story intact while simplifying its elements.
I am also an avid gamer and enjoy role-playing games. I’m currently in a campaign world which has been run by the GM for over nearly thirty years, taking on amazing depth and color. It’s one of my few “non-mom” activities, and I relish my gaming nights. I’m semi-active in science fiction and fantasy fandom, and love dragons (along with half the rest of the known universe -- but at least I can say I was a dragon fanatic a long time before the dragon craze started!)
If you’ve read this far, you probably don’t have anything better to do. So drop me a line!
Oh yes, does anyone want to buy a printing press?
And I suppose I should mention my business page -- if you're interested in t-shirts, mugs, or mouse pads with my artwork, check out:
