Hi there. Welcome to my profile bio. My fanfiction portfolio is admittedly pretty sparse, mainly because I’ve only written the one multi-chapter story, which is still a work in progress. I don’t really like starting something and then abandoning it in favour of something else, hence why there’s only one proper story. Hopefully I’ll be able to write more in the future.

I’ve been writing my own original stories for as long as I can remember, but I like writing fanfiction because it’s a great tool to practice writing dialogue and to work on characterization, themes and the finer details of writing in an already-established universe. It’s much easier to write fanfiction for me, because I don’t have to worry about the heavy task of worldbuilding or wondering how everything fits into place. There’s a pre-existing framework for my story in fanfiction, which I greatly appreciate, and that leaves me to work on the actual writing aspect. Though I’ve spent years working on my original stories, I’ve yet to share them with anyone because they’re not ready for public consumption.

As for reading, I read just about anything. Romance is my favourite for non-academic/non-serious reading, but I’ve had a really hard time finding romances that I can get into and which have realistic characters and don’t rely on excessive drama. My favourite book is The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I’ve read lots of Russian literature for my university degree, from Tolstoy to Gogol to Solzhenitsyn to Makine, though my favourite by far is good ol’ Dostoevsky. My favourites by him are the short stories White Nights and Notes from the Underground, as well as his novel Crime and Punishment. As one of my Russian literature professors so accurately put it, there are two kinds of people in this world: Tolstoy and Dostoevsky people. Guess which one I am!

As for intellectual things, I’m most interested in languages, and that comes through in my writing as an interest in characterization through language. I like thinking about giving each character their own set of idioms, expressions, curse words and vocabulary, since we all have a personal set of sayings that we tend to repeat. My native language is English and I’m also fluent in French. Since Canada is officially bilingual, I learnt French growing up and continued with it in university. I’m also fluent in Ancient Greek and Latin (though about as fluent as one can get in a dead language). I’ve done a few years of Russian and understand the grammatical cases, constructions and grammar, my major weak spot being vocabulary. I have an interest in philosophy as well and have done some courses in university, but I’m not particularly good at it and prefer to read about it instead. If I’ve gotten enough sleep to have a fully-functioning brain, then my favourite areas of philosophy to think and read about are determinism, free will, and morality, as well as early Greek thought.

Besides writing and school, I spend a lot of time with my two horses, which are the two in my profile picture. The grey is named Freyja (after the Norse goddess), the black one is named Luna. They’re both girls, and Freyja can be a bit of a nutter since she’s an Arab.

Yeehaw!