In addition, "Guardian", though it did not win, was nominated for a James B. Baker ("James") award (announced in the March edition of Sam's Dot Publishing's "Expressions") at Sam's Dot Publishing for the best short story published by their company in 2003! It's definitely cool to have this happen for my first published story!
My husband Andy is of the erroneous opinion that I am a strange creature known as a Wumpy. I’m not, of course; Wumpies are mythical creatures (and though I may have been accused of being mystical, I’ve never yet had anyone tell me I was mythical).
On the other hand, Andy is a soing. What? You don't know what a soing is? Click here for a silly informational page about soings. (Trust me, you really need to look at this!)
I’m actually a writer and a mom. I’m primarily interested in writing fantasy novels, but I also write short stories. I’ve currently got a finished novel on the back shelf, The Roots of Healing, and am also revising a fantasy trilogy to send out for publication. I've completely finished the first book, Winterweave, and am working on the complete revisions for Coldsong and Winter's Fire. My current project is a continuation of this story, entitled Ice-Rose. Well, to be fair, they’re not my first novels -- they’re my first novels I’ll let anyone see. When I was in junior high I wrote a really bad one (with two revisions taking it into my college years), and when I was in college I wrote one which might someday see the light of day, but which will be hacked to bits and reassembled first.
This is a picture of Traedis, the main character of my trilogy (the artwork is by Ed Heil, a very talented artist and a good friend). (Check him out in the "Links to Friends" at the bottom of this page).
REE DECORATIVE 
ETTER ICONS!I've recently gotten into designing a few simple graphics. Here are some initial letters available for free downloading. Take as many as you want! Some are better than others.
I am a survivor of physical, emotional and sexual abuse (not all from the
same source). The poems "Afterword" and "Survivor" listed above are about this, and I also have
a number of links for various survivor resources at the bottom of this page.
However, I've realized that people weren't reading what I most wanted them to
down below, probably because they're skipping over my lists of links, so I'm
going to place this up here instead. This is my own experience, and I really want people
to read this.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly: what is essential is invisible to
the eye."
-- Antoine de St. Exupéry, The Little Prince
I started college with the idea of becoming an astronomer, but rapidly decided that physics just wasn’t my idea of a happy fun time, and switched to Linguistics, with a minor in English (almost accidental -- I discovered before my last semester that I only needed one more class for an English minor, so I dived into Shakespeare. The reading was fun, but the class itself was comparable to a visit to the dentist.) I also had a brief stint in a graduate program in Anthropology, which ended when I was told that even though the department didn’t require an undergraduate degree in the same, I was expected to have one anyway. I got a 4.0 out of pure irritation and quit the program.
I am still trying to work on my dollhouse kit (the San Franciscan) but am going pretty slowly. It's exciting -- if I can't have a real mansion, I'm going to have one that I could fit into if I were 1/12 of my size! This one is a beauty, with a tower and three stories plus an attic. I'm looking forward to getting to it -- as soon as I finish the 30 other projects I have going.
Dylan, Alex,& Davey, May 2003 Wheeler Family, May 2003 Andy & Beth, May 2003 
My mom skills are still being honed and tested. My older son, Dylan, is seventeen (I’m not quite sure how he got that old), and in eleventh grade. He’s quite a kid -- at the top of his class in just about everything, and still gets along great with other kids. He's currently involved in a self-improvement plan which includes weight-lifting, taking great pains with his appearance, and keeping his grades up while doing everything else he's interested in. At the moment he's seriously into theater, both technical and acting, and is considering a college major in wildlife biology. He likes reading, RPGs, and plays the mandolin and the piano. He's got a wonderful sense of humor (and timing!) but still asks deep and serious questions about the nature of the universe, religion, death, the origin of God, and why things are the way they are. Oh yeah, and he likes cute girls. Big surprise!
My second son, Davey, now eleven, started off his life by tying himself through his umbilical cord, and proceeded on an active career of total havoc. He started picking up objects at a month old, and began to sing at five months. He’s got a very sweet nature, but he’s determined to get what he wants, even if he has to do it himself. And the do-it-yourselfism has included getting into every remotely accessible treat, working caps off child-proof bottles, fighting with his older brother, and generally sticking stubbornly to his guns. He loves reading and jokes, and enjoys video/computer games, Yu-Gi-Oh, reading the instructions to games, and surfing the Internet. He's also in the accelerated learning program at school. My mother refers to him as “busy”.
Our youngest, Alex, is four years old. So far he loves music and enjoys singing, drawing with crayons, pens, markers, or the Magna Doodle (he can even do faces!), likes stuffed animals (the bigger the better), riding "Bob", his rocking horse, climbs very well, has an extraordinary vocabulary, can count to one hundred (with a little help, but surprisingly little!), and is a definite cuddler. He's also reading just a very little(!). He adores the Muppets, Max and Ruby, and Bob the Builder.
Other interests, fascinations, and defining characteristics:
I’m 1/8 Welsh -- my great grandfather came from Llanfairfechan (I think that’s the spelling) and I have always had a fascination with that country, even before I learned that was where my most identifiable ancestry rested. I did study medieval Welsh in a college course alongside my sister and mother. One of the interesting things we learned was that the Welsh joke that had been passed down through four generations was still recognizably coherent and translatable. Of course, if I ever try looking for the genealogy of that line, I’m going to have a problem, since my great-grandfather’s name was John Williams.
I like to do various projects, though none of them full-time. A few years ago I made some calendars of fantasy art based on our gaming campaign for some friends of mine. I was actually rather proud of them, so check them out! (The picture below isn't a sample -- I just like the graphic.)
In addition to that, I've gotten quite addicted to Photoshop. I'm currently making my family and friends into a bestiary. Here's what I've done so far:
My two loves apart from the family and writing, are music and reading. I’ve got a very good voice -- I’m a dramatic soprano with some training (my voice might be professional quality, but I don't have that level of training). I play a little piano -- I’d play better, but I never learned to read music properly, since my teachers never realized that I was memorizing my pieces. I’m self-taught on guitar, which means I’m not all that bad, but don’t expect me to get up in public; and I can eke out a tune on recorder, even if it squeaks every third note. I'm currently still trying to learn the harp, and feel really at home with it, surprisingly enough. I'm also learning the three-stringed dulcimer, due to receiving a family heirloom dulcimer this year. British folk music is my favorite type, though I also enjoy classical, some rock, the occasional jazz, and a lot of things that fall into the completely unidentifiable category. I’ve also been writing filk music for a few years now. Samples of sorts of music I like: Silly Wizard, Pigyn Clust, Sian James, Stravinsky, Therese Schroeder-Sheker, Gordon Lightfoot, Ogam, Orealis, Robin Williamson, Jethro Tull, Loreena McKennitt, Palestrina, The Alan Parsons Project, Alfred Deller, The Tannahill Weavers.
I devour books (arranged neatly with a sprig of parsley). My all-time favorite is The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Exupéry. I recently discovered that it is the third most read book in the world, after the Bible and the Koran! Other authors I love are Lloyd Alexander, Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, Judith Tarr, Roger Zelazny, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ursula LeGuin, C.J. Cherryh, Diana Wynne Jones, Madeleine L'Engle, Alan Garner, Margaret Mahy, Tom Deitz, Patricia McKillip, Peter Beagle, R.A. MacAvoy, Susan Cooper, Zenna Henderson, Alexander Key, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, L.M. Boston, Jenny Nimmo, Robin McKinley, Sylvia Louise Engdahl, Gillian Bradshaw, and Terri Windling. Note -- some of these are indeed children’s authors. I’m fairly well read in children’s fiction, and often hit the children’s or young adult sections of the library because they have some of the best stuff (adult books often get too pretentious or attempt to earn an R rating by adding unnecessary parts). I hope someday to be able to write some children’s books as well as adult books -- it’s quite a challenge to keep the depth of a story intact while simplifying its elements.
I am also an avid gamer and enjoy role-playing games. I’m currently in a campaign world which has been run by the GM for over twenty years, taking on amazing depth and color. It’s one of my few “non-mom” activities, and I relish my gaming nights. I’m semi-active in science fiction and fantasy fandom, and love dragons (along with half the rest of the known universe -- but at least I can say I was a dragon fanatic a long time before the dragon craze started!)
If you’ve read this far, you probably don’t have anything better to do. So drop me a line!
Oh yes, does anyone want to buy a printing press?
And I suppose I should mention my business page -- if you're interested in t-shirts, mugs, or mouse pads with my artwork, check out:
