Since my profile is still ridiculously inadequate, I present this truth about me: I am a nerd.
And an unapologetic one at that. I have an unabashed love of everything geeky–science fiction, video games, the nerdier the better. The first pleasure-reading book I bought as an undergrad (and that’s saying a lot, since I was an English major) was a complete selection of Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
I got into science fiction and fantasy novels in high school; I devoured all of the Dragonlance novels, and everything by R.A. Salvatore I could get my hands on. I was already a complete Star Wars fanatic, and so every time I found a new SW book at my local library, I’d pick that up, too.
I was born in ‘83, and so I grew up with video games. My parents had an Atari–a little before my time–and when I was six or so, we got a Nintendo. I still rock at Duck Hunt–and I still play video games. I’ve been addicted to World of WarCraft for quite a while, and I’ve got Kameo and several Wii games on the back burner.
For me, I think the immersion is what makes the world of science fiction & fantasy. I was a natural bookworm as a kid, because I loved being able to read page after page of action, adventure. I just loved words, really, which is why I’m now getting my MFA in creative writing.
There’s finally a chill in the air in North Carolina, and the arrival of fall, for the last few years, has always heralded a special time for me: when I bundle up in blankets on my couch and reread all the Harry Potter novels. I could probably recite vast portions of them by now, much the same way that I recite all of the lines to Shrek whenever I watch it. And of course I was involved in all of the hype with Deathly Hallows; I wore my Ravenclaw badge to the midnight release of the book, and started reading as soon as I got in the car that night.
The buildup leading to that release was like the culmination of my love for this crazy genre; at the pre-release party, I saw a lovely Trelawney, a scarily accurate Argus Filch (complete with cat on shoulder and wonky eye), Mario & Luigi, and a guy dressed as a Transformer. I took a whole lot of pictures that night, but unfortunately, most of them came out blurry–except for this gem. It sums up a lot about that night, I think.
