There's not much to say that you can't deduce from hanging around the site itself: I'm a writer, and a grad student, and I talk too much, and I tend to bite off more than I can chew.

My real name isn't Cleolinda Jones. Cleolinda is one of the names used for the princess in the George and the dragon myth, and in some versions, she helps kill the dragon. Jones--well, anything sounds cool with "Jones" after it. Try it.

I have no formal artistic or design training, but I like making graphics and icons and things. Also, I have a thing for fonts. Love the fun fonts.

I have scary amounts of writerly training, however. I went to the Young Authors' Conference in grade school and got a silly little story published when I was eight and was the poetry editor, and then the editor in chief, of my college's literary magazine. I started a series of open-mike prose and poetry readings and worked as an English tutor in our writing center. Oh, and I was the city spelling bee champion in fifth grade, which may explain to you why I'm so incredibly anal about orthography.

I love books, but I tend not to read much mainstream fiction. I hate books and short stories all about the Incredible Empty Emptiness of Sitting Around and Doing Nothing, Very Existentially. I loved that kind of thing in high school. And then I grew up. Since I hit college I've been more and more interested in nonfiction. True crime and biographies (particularly royals) are particular favorites; I will read anything by Alison Weir without even asking the title. I have a weakness for articles about crime and/or Hollywood and/or royals in Vanity Fair. I love Jane Eyre. I love the first half of Lolita, and The Martian Chronicles, just about anything that Louisa May Alcott ever wrote. I love children's fantasy--the Chronicles of Narnia, and Harry Potter, and Lemony Snicket, and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

I love researching random stuff for my writing (but hate doing it for term papers).

I don't watch much TV. "The X-Files" pretty much broke my heart, and I'm afraid of long-term TV commitment now. The Lovely Emily is getting me into "Six Feet Under," though. Oh, and I'd already gotten myself addicted to "Carnivāle," wonky ā and all. I did spend most of 2002 and 2003 with the TV locked on Turner Classic Movies, however, and got to the point where I'd watch anything that came on, and usually wasn't sorry I had.

I love movies. I really love the old '30s and '40s movies, old thrillers and melodramas and romantic comedies--there's some sort of flavor to them that's just so different, at once more innocent and more adult, in some ways. I hate watching romantic comedies made in the last 20-30 years, because they seem so pointless--you know exactly how they're going to end. At the same time, there are all kinds of bad movies that I love for their badness. I'll have to put up a list of some of my favorites, good and bad, some day. Still, I would say I have pretty good taste in movies.

I have hideous taste in music. Well, no, let's rephrase that--I have an extremely high crap threshold when it comes to music, because I can hold my head up and say that I like Garbage and No Doubt and Tori Amos and David Bowie and Air and Depeche Mode and movie scores. So it's not that my taste is hideous... it's just that I still cling to my Belinda Carlisle tapes. (Okay, I went and bought new copies on CD. You got me.) And I refuse to explain why I have Samantha Fox MP3s on my computer, or Richard Marx CDs, and songs from that last Jewel sell-out CD that got used on the Schick commercial. Good taste in movies. Baaaaad taste in music.

There are other things that I could tell you, but I've probably incriminated myself enough.


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