Sorry for the rather dramatic first post.

Probably a better place to start would be: who am I?

Me, I'm a third year English Language student at Lancaster University (the real one in the UK). Currently I'm seriously behind with my degree, and found out this afternoon that I've missed the deadline for my draft dissertation proposal. Oops. At the same time, the department's got their eye on me because I've missed a few too many seminars this term. Oops again.

On a personal level, I'm a reasonably shy person, and very conciliatory as well. If I have a grudge against you, you've really, really managed to piss me off, and I hope you burn in hell (and preferably just before you die as well, while I watch). I admit it, I do have one of my former flatmates from the first year in mind when I say that.

I like to think of myself as being trustworthy and considerate, but hey, everyone lapses occasionally. Then I feel incredibly guilty about it afterwards. I seem to spend a lot of time apologising to people, which some use to accuse me of being weak, but I disagree. An apology is used to a) make the apologiser feel better, b) make the apologisee feel better, and above all, c) address and resolve the error/misunderstanding/unfortunate incident that necessitated the apology.

Hobby-wise, I seem to spend a lot of time involved in roleplaying and wargaming. Not actually doing it, most of the time. At the moment just one evening of RPGing and one afternoon of wargaming, at the moment, but the rest of my time seems to be spent discussing it online, in the Portent and Dark Millennia forums (see the links to the left). On Portent, I'm Fulsrush, while on DM, I'm Archangel. (I used to be Fulsrush on that too, but all their records were destroyed by a cyber-terrorist attack, so I rejoined under a more current netname.)

Other than that, books, films and computer games do it for me.

Oh, and writing. How could I forget that? My life is basically me trying vainly to become a publishable author. I've tried sending stuff off for publication, but it always seems to go nowhere. Take my last book proposal, for a Warhammer Roleplay sourcebook. I sent that off to Hogshead Publishing a few weeks ago. Take a look at the previous post to see what happened to that one. [sigh]

My friend, Mish (one of the housemates in Students Unzipped, see left), did a bit of scrying a while back at the university Pagan Society. I'm not actually any kind of pagan, more of an atheist with an interest, and they forced me to join so that they could say they had an official Jedi on their roster. (That census thing, trying to make Jedi an official religion? I did it.) Anyway, I asked (and these are supposed to be cryptic), "Will the archangel get the hog's head?" Pretty obvious to you, probably, since I've already told you about it, but Mish was in the dark (and a weird trance, actually).

The mumbled reply was, "Midwinter...sun rises...blood on the side."

Like I said, I'm an atheist, and I don't believe in this kind of thing, but just for fun, to see what'd happen, I tried to interpret it: Sometime in winter, I'd get an acceptance from Hogshead (the sun rising bit). Blood on the side? I don't know. It could very easily be a sourcebook title, or maybe there's an RPG writer out there called something Blood, who'd be working on it with me? Or possibly the Church of Blood (an evil cult described in the sourcebook), would get involved in some other product Hogshead were developing? I'm already working on a WFRP adventure called Donations to the Church of Blood. Maybe somehow, something's going to come of that?

Christ, I'm clutching at straws here, considering I don't even believe in magic in a mystical fashion. (I tend towards magic and religion being a psychological phenomenon, normally beneficial, but confined to a person's own worldview, there's nothing concrete in the universe. Fee free to disagree.)

Maybe I'm just desperate to get published. :-)