thoughtfulHowever, I'm about to go to Charlotte for several days, and access to LJ will be spotty, as I'll be busy hawking stuff at the BOOM! booth at Heroes Con. So please do not respond...
Having said that, I did respond when
trillsie did the meme, and gave me the following words:writing: I've wanted to write for as long as I can remember. My mother
girasole loves telling the story of when I was wee and wanted to put together a "table of con-tens" because that was what books had. At age six, I wrote my first "book," a story called "Reflections in My Mirror," a six-page tale written on construction paper. (I still have it.) Writing is in my blood, in my bones, and in my soul. Luckily for me, I've been able to work out a way to do it for a living. I also seem to be good at it, which is even more lucky, as having this level of passion for something and sucking at it would be soul-destroying.NYC: I love my home town so very very much. I couldn't possibly live anywhere. There's just so much of everything here, and the city has so many facets, so many different things, that if I lived to be a hundred, I'd never explore all of it. And even if I did, there's always new stuff popping up. Every type of thing, every type of person, is in this city. It's glorious.
connecting: I don't know what it is about me, but I tend to be a bit of a vortex for people. Part of it is a family thing -- the Andreassis (my mother's side) are friendly sorts who tend to talk to and get along with, well, everyone) -- and the Internet has gone and magnified it. (Just today, I was amused to see people from very different parts of my life commenting at each other on Facebook.) Perhaps, though, my favorite description of this particular KRAD phenomenon came from Kevin Killiany in this post from 2008, describing his first memory of meeting me at Shore Leave.
Trek: I have no idea when it started, because I've been watching Star Trek since birth, but Trek has never not been a part of my life. I watched the show obsessively as a kid (Channel 11 showed reruns every weeknight at 6pm), started recording episodes when I got a VCR, played the FASA role-playing game in high school and college, saw every movie in the theatre, voraciously read the novels and comic books, and eagerly devoured The Next Generation and the other spinoffs. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be one of those guys who wrote Trek novels, and sure enough, I got to be that (for which I will always be grateful to John Ordover, for inviting me to write Diplomatic Implausibility in 1999). I don't know what it is about that universe that calls to me, but it always has. (And the novels that I think are my two best were in that universe as well...)
Geek Patrol: It all started when
drewshi was living with me and my parents in college, and we started watching an episode of Doctor Who every night. Eventually, he got his own place, and we'd get together once a week to watch fun genre stuff. Others got added to the group -- jafinnola, popfiend, the Lipchick, marinarusalka -- and now two decades later, we still get together as often as we can. We've also done The Chronic Rift together in two different forms -- public access TV show in the 1990s, podcast now. These are my closest friends who have always been there for me, and I can't say enough good things about them or how much I value that friendship. 