DEBBIE'S INTRODUCTION

Happy Saturday!

I'm thrilled to be invited to guest blog today. I'm relatively new here, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to tell you a bit about myself. First off, what to call me? I know my formal signature says "Deborah", but I answer to Debbie or Deb as well. I grew up in Sacramento, CA (actually in Fair Oaks, but no one will know where that is) and I lived in San Jose from 1988 until we moved to Salem last year. I'm not a complete newbie to Oregon--I lived in Pendleton for a year in the early '80s.

I've been a voracious reader since I was a child. I'm also one of those people who are constantly telling themselves stories. Up until the last few years those stories stayed safely in my head. I'm not sure why it took me so long to put 2 and 2 together and realize that what I was doing was a precursor to writing, but there you have it. In 2003 I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo. I wrote 65,000 words in one month and was hooked! The story went nowhere and the writing was crap, for want of a better term, but the joy in writing that I found--of getting into a zone where the words seemed to flow from some heretofore undiscovered reservoir within me--was a revelation.

I kept plugging away, writing another 50,000 words o' crap for NaNo 2004. Then I got sidetracked by professional stresses as well as a health scare with my husband and I put my writing goals on the back burner for a time. I continued to read and try to learn more about how to improve at the craft of writing. When we made the decision to move from California to Oregon last year, I decided that I was ready to get serious about writing for publication. It's daunting to realize that I have a long way to go, but I'm determined to succeed. I also knew that I didn't want to go it alone, so I looked around and found RWA. I was impressed by the support and encouragement offered and by how welcoming the organization was to new and unpublished writers. I joined in November of last year. Through RWA I found the MWV chapter and joined in February.

I'm still discovering where I want to go with my writing; in which genre I'll fit best. I don't write romance novels, per se, but my stories always have strong romantic elements woven through them. In fact, when I think of the genres I usually read -- Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery and Suspense -- the authors I gravitate to are those who incorporate romance in one form or another as an important part of their stories.

I also work. I've got a degree in Computer Science and work as an IT Solution Designer for a high tech company based in the CA Bay Area. I'm responsible for architecting our internal calendaring and instant messaging solutions. I've done a little bit of everything in IT, from pulling cables and installing hardware, to writing programs and scripts, to creating web pages and wiki docs.

If you're ever doing research and need information about northern California (especially the Sacramento region or the Bay Area) or about high tech companies, I'll be happy to try to help. I'll also be glad to help with technical questions, if I can. I don't talk PCs--I can find my way around one, but that's about it. I'm strictly a UNIX gal (Solaris, Linux and Mac OS X). I should warn that I'm one of those weird people that hardware and software seem to love. Tech just tends to work for me, even when it won't for someone else. I've long suspected it's due to some mutated gene in my DNA, but don't quote me on that.

I'm attending the National conference this summer and can't wait, although I find it a bit ironic that the first convention after I move from the Bay is in San Francisco. No pitches for me, yet. I'm excited just to be going!

So, that's a little slice of me. I've enjoyed meeting many of you at the meetings and here on the blog and am looking forward to getting to know you better. In that spirit, if there's something you'd like to ask me, please do. I'll do my best to answer!