Name: J
Age: 24
Shoe Size: 8 1/2
Blood Type: B
Star Sign: Virgo
Spawning Grounds: Portland, Oregon
Occupation: Renaissance Woman
Pets: Reggie - Long-distance dalmatian
  Indy - Ball python in training
  Phoenix - Abusive pink betta

About J...

I was born and raised Catholic, and still am.  I was born and raised Republican...I have since altered my political views.  I am misanthropic, overly sensitive, bisexual, and masochistic in every way possible except when it comes to my beloved literary characters.  In that particular case, I'm unusually bloodthirsty.

I write, therefore I am.  Seriously.  I'm a creative individual -- I sing, I draw, I read and I wax poetic from time to time.  I'm a bona-fide moviephile, too.  But nothing comes easier to me than writing  Perhaps it's because I'm an escapist.  Perhaps it's because this body and life of mine seem to be a little ill-fitting and I prefer to play-act as someone else.

I think the core of it is the joy of bringing something and someone to life.  And in a setting like The Shadow Between I am privileged to do that with another person -- a close friend and an amazingly talented author.  I think that a writing project like this gives me a faint glimpse at the joy of parenthood -- conceive of something new and individual and special, something that belongs to you and to itself all at once.  Care for it, make it grow, cry when it feels pain and feel that impossible glow inside when it experiences love.

Emmett came to me one day as half an idea.  Originally a villain for a Weiß Kreuz fanfiction I was writing, I fleshed him out as a possible character for an Estet-based online RPG.  And then, Emmett met Dietrich.  We wrote it as something of a writing exercise.  Zak needed to let Dietrich have some exercise after a long stretch of silence, and I needed to actually play Emmett with somebody I trusted -- to test our compatibility, his language, his action.

We never intended for the two of them to fall in love.  Never.  We were as utterly surprised as they were.

Needless to say, Emmett never got to play in that RPG.  He had found something much more important.

My characters, my muses, are real to me.  They sit in my mind and speak their words and let me feel their emotions.  Emmett has a voice of his very own, there in my head.  Some people would call me schizophrenic.  But I know there are many who experience this -- the truly open at heart, the truly creative.  And so these characters live, perhaps still just a construct in my mind, but a damn convincing one.  And I feel blessed to have them.  I feel blessed to have my dear co-author, too.  This experience, this story, has made me -- and is still making me -- a better person.

-- J
11/2004

Email J

- My Livejournal
- Crimson-blue.org, my yaoi anime/manga fanworks page
- Nerd-Empire, home base for Crusaders Comics, on which I'm an editor.
- Cosplay.com - My profile name is BrightAngel
- Overclocked Remix - Because videogame music is your god.  Submit.
- Something Awful
- The Friend Society

Name: Z
Age: Deceptively mature
Shoe Size: Cloven hooves need no shoes
Blood Type: Salty
Star Sign: Pisces
Spawning Grounds: Buttfuck, WA
Occupation: Olympic-level stress, and inserting catheters
Pets: One pukey dog                        
 Four cats that always need letting outside.
Three deviantly-sexualized parrots.      

About Z...

Alright, my bio’s not gonna be anywhere NEAR as cool as J’s. It’s just not. 

First off, I’m not listing my whole name. And no this picture is not what I really look like. Hey, I got a rather sensitive job and the LAST thing I want to happen is for somebody show up at my work, read my nametag and go “OH MY GOD! You’re DIETRICH’S writer!!! I READ YOUR PORN!!!”

Uhhhhh, yeah. So you can see why I’m a little vague on my personal details. But I can tell you a little bit about why I’m writing.

Dietrich Volkmar came about in 2002. He started out as a bit character, hardly more than a plot device in a much larger story I was playing with in an effort to remember how to write fiction. (Most of my work during that time had been dry, technical stuff.) This started out as a lark and when people began reading, it turned out to be kind of fun. Then I found out my best friend was dying and pouring myself into Dietrich’s story was about the only way I could cope with my impending loss. 

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised then by how important this character would become to me.

Dietrich’s original story has long since gone by the wayside, but the character himself simply will not go away. He’s been in other stories, been in several RPG’s, he’s even been a pseudonym that I’ve written under. He’s got more pictures and portraits than *I* do and he haunts my dreams almost constantly. He’s much more than just a character to me and it surprises me how much writing him *matters* in my life.

Shadow-Between is a long, convoluted affair and I don’t think J or I planned on it ever existing. As she mentions in her bio, Emmett was just supposed to be a villain in this other game we were going to be involved in. And she needed someone to play him against to flesh out his character more so we sat down one day and fooled around with potential circumstances.

I have a weakness for J’s characters. I really do. She imbues so much LIFE into them that even her minor ones reach out and grab hold of my heart. In this case, however, Emmett had my full and undivided attention from the moment I laid eyes on his rough-out. The man was complex, difficult, prickly, full of arrogance and carefully hidden self-doubt. I plagued J with questions about this character, plagued the character HIMSELF with questions…

…and here we are. 

In a very long epic that neither of us ever intended to write.

This story has been a gift, a gift to me. It deepened a friendship in ways I would not have imagined. And it has brought me more joy than anything I’ve ever written. There have been plot twists, major plot changes, and characters who simply decided to rebel and change the entire direction the story was going. Every time we sit down to write, there are new and unexpected facets. This story has become a journey and I’m so grateful to J for inviting me along.

-- Z
3/1/2005

Email Z

- I have no links because I'm lame and disinterested :)