About Me

I've been playing around with the layout of B.E.'s Writerly Space this morning, and trying something new - PAGES!  They're all static, but they'll have information some day that will point you in the direction you want to go.  Right now, the only one that's not 'under construction' is the About Me page. 

Go take a look and let me know what you think.

And don't forget to follow the blog over there for a chance to win a scrumptious kringle. 

The Evils of Bio Writing

I was having a chat the other day with a friend of mine about bios.  Okay, I was bitching and she was helping me bitch.  You see, I'm back out there doggie-paddling through the query pool, and some agents I've been researching want a bio.  So, in desperation and, I'll admit, more than a little sarcasm, I wrote one:


You want to know about me? I used to live in Salt Lake City where I was the secretary to the president of a multi-million dollar private school system. Before that I managed telemarketers in Tallahassee, Florida. Prior to those glory days, I was a manufacturers’ representative for electronic components (the little gizmos that go into all our technological wonders) where my southeast Michigan territory encompassed both Flint and Detroit. ...:portions redacted for privacy's sake: My life is kinda dull, more than a little drab, and often just short of hermetic, but it works for me. It’s also why I spend 75% of my time living in my head remaking the world in my own image. The other 25% is mostly spent reading, blogging, visiting my friends on the internet, reading (it was worth saying twice), doing housewifely pursuits—i.e. cooking, cleaning, baking, crocheting… *yawn*—spending time with my husband and daughter, as well as playing slave to my two cats. (Too many more felines and I get to be that crazy cat lady you always hear about.) The point is: I write, I imagine, I dream, I research and learn, then I turn it all into pages and pages of stories. In short, I’m a writing machine and that works for me, too. 

And I sent it off to this friend.  She thanked me for the laugh and then commiserated.  How does one write a bio with anything writerly in it when nothing in your writing career has happened yet?  I mean, it's not like I can (or would) say that I'm an ex-government agent or a firebug - because, ya know, that's what this book is about.

For fun, though, I sent her some personal taglines:

"B.E. Sanderson: Personally boring, professionally brilliant."
"B.E. Sanderson: Looks normal enough, but internally psycho."

I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet.  For now, I'm rotating the bio-requesting agents farther down the list, but I can't put them off forever, cuz that would be stupid.  And who knows, maybe I will just go ahead and send the tongue-in-cheek bio.  At least then they'll know who they're really working with.  ;o)

What about you?  Are your attempts at the evil bio scintillating or flat?  Got any good taglines for yourself?

(Yeah, that's me up there.  I think I was about 14-15 when it was taken.  I was cheesing it up for the camera - cuz that works for me, too.)

Who Am I?

I was thinking about my author bio this morning and I came to a realization.  On paper, I'm boring. 

Seriously.  I'm a housewife, living in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere.  I spend most of my time in my house, dorking around on the internet, reading, crocheting and teaching my kid what few things I have left to impart on her High School Senior person.  And, of course, doing writerly things.

Want to see what my bio paragraph looks like right now?

When I’m not writing full time, maintaining my blog, or doing other writerly things, I’m a housewife and homeschooler, who reads everything she can get her hands on and watches too much TV.  Before I dropped into this semi-hermit existence, I spent the majority of my time in corporate America—schmoozing, consulting and administrating wherever my unfinished degree in Speech and Psychology would suit me best.

Yup.  That's it.  Total snooze-fest.  It's also totally accurate.  Sentence one tells what I do now.  Sentence two tells what I used to do (and imparts a bit of what I'm still capable of, despite the fact that I am now boring).  :yawn:  That's me in a nutshell.  Snooze-a-rama. 

People I know don't find me boring - I hope.  My Facebook and blog friends haven't given any indication that I'm a yawner to be around.  Hell, I have more fun inside my head and around the house than anyone can imagine.  I don't think I'm boring, but I can see how it might appear that way.

The problem is I have one paragraph to boil who I am into a rich and meaty stew any agent would be delighted to enjoy. 

I've been places and done things way beyond the confines of this dinky place on the eastern plains of Colorado.  I've driven the mean streets of Detroit and Flint.  (Okay, yeah, I was too chicken to get out of the car, but wouldn't you be?)  I've weathered the edge of a hurricane in my apartment in Tallahassee.  I've explored the back roads - sometimes at the risk of great bodily harm - of the Wasatch Mountains.  I've hung out with artists in their gallery in Salt Lake City.  I've dined with the CEOs of multi-million dollar companies - once on a yacht on Lake Michigan under the glow of Chicago.  I've driven through wildfire smoke so thick I could hardly see and tornado force winds where the tumbleweeds were blowing sideways as the car shook around me.  I've endured frostbite and heat stroke and brain damage and physical therapy that would make a grown man cry (and judging from the other patients, it often did).

How do you take all the rich experiences of a life and turn them into a paragraph?  Especially one that relates to writing?  All the things I've done go into who I am and what I write.  Those words up there in italics are totally accurate and at the same time, wholly insufficient. 

Who am I?  I'm a former road-warrior who's often gotten herself into scrapes she almost didn't get herself out of, who is willing to break herself into tiny pieces if it means getting the job done, who married a man she spent a total of six days in the physical presence of before the wedding and then moved 600 miles to the middle of nowhere to be with that man, who dropped everything to homeschool a child who was failing in the public education system.  Sure, I live most of my life now in my head, but I have 40 years of life experiences that go way beyond what it says in that one little paragraph.

Who am I?  I'm a writer. 

Do anyone really need to know anything else?