I wasn’t paying attention yesterday when I posted my first Holidailies entry, and thus completely missed the fact that there are daily “prompts” and that yesterday’s prompt was to introduce ourselves and our blogs/journals/whatevers to our new readers.

So, I’ll just do mine a day late.

Name of the blog-thing, as you can see, is “Writing, Life, and the Stuff in Between.” I’ve had an online journal type of thing since 1996, though I’ve had a couple of hiatuses in there due to various Life Crap. It used to be called “Contradistinctions” mostly because I thought it was a cool word. But the new title seems to fit me a bit better, I think. I’m a writer, but I also have a life outside of writing, and there’s a lot of other stuff that happens to me as well. Though with my present job I’ve been tempted to change it to “Writing, Death, and that Life stuff too.”

The basic facts about me: I turned 40 this year, which really doesn’t bother me since I kinda like the whole bit about being taken more seriously. I’ve been married twice, still married to #2. I’m #3 for him. We have one daughter between us, Anna, who is a bit older than 2 ½. He has five other kids ranging in age from 30 to 18, as well as four grandkids, ranging in age from 5 to 1, with another on the way. I get alone really well with all of the kids, probably because I never tried to be their “Mom.”

I have a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Georgia Tech. Completely Useless Degree.

Back when I was still married to my first husband I worked in the Casino business, working my way up from dealer to Pit Boss over the course of about six years. After I divorced #1, I finally got tired of dealing with drunks and assholes and doing nothing to make the world a better place, and finally quit and became a cop, taking a 60% pay cut in the process. I still dealt with drunks and assholes, but at least then I was able to do so with the aid of a gun and pepper spray. And, I could do my little part to make the world a slightly nicer and safer place. I was a street cop for a few years, then a detective for a few years, then I worked in the crime lab doing computer forensics, digital analysis and video enhancement, as well as the regular crime scene investigation type of stuff.

This year I was approached by another agency, and after a short period of “wooing” I left policework and went to work for the Parish Coroner’s Office to do their IT work and forensic photography. For a lot more money. And less micromanagement. So I STILL deal with drunks and assholes, but now they’re dead.

I attend every autopsy and take pictures and fingerprints, and I’ve also been learning the basic morgue tech stuff which I will go into more detail about later on since that definitely merits an entry of its own.

I write as well. Mostly Science Fiction or Fantasy, though the novel that I’m clawing through rewrites on right now is a paranormal mystery. (Gee, it’s not like I have any practical experience for writing mysteries, y’know?) I’m in the last throes of this novel with probably a month of serious work left on it before it gets sent out to some first readers. I’ve made two professional short fiction sales as of this date. The first was a story called “Extant” that was published in the anthology The Age of Reason--Stories for a New Millenium, and it earned an honorable mention in the 17th Annual Years Best Science Fiction. The other sale was my story “Schroedinger’s Hummingbird” which won first place in the 3rd Quarter of the Writers of the Future contest. Writer’s of the Future Vol. XXII is out in all of the stores now, and my story starts on page 235.

So, there you go. I think that’s more than enough to get you started.