If you ever wondered who we were, here is where to find out. If you are a writer or an aspiring writer and are contemplating joining in the conversations on Writer's Notebook please feel free to do so. Also, feel free to send me your own biographies to be included here. The only requirement is that you are a participant in the Notebook. This is a fresh Bios page and hopefully you will see the bios start populated this page soon.

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Jerry Arthur Gordon Ericsson

I’m a writer. I write because I love telling stories, always have, but I became a writer about six years ago while attending college thanks to the ND Workers Compensation Bureau, who in their mandamus judgment declared that I would indeed be able to become a paralegal should I only attend college and learn the trade.

I learned that trade, yet when I began to work; it quickly became obvious that I could not do the job of a paralegal.

At any rate, while learning to be a paralegal, I discovered a love for writing. The story telling was always with me, I loved holding my kids, and my nieces and nephew’s on my lap and tell them ghost stories, or fairy tails but while in college I discovered that it was just as easy to tell the stories on paper and more people could enjoy them.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve never sold anything that I’ve written, not yet anyhow, in fact I haven’t even sent any of my writing off, unless you count that time not so long ago when Themestream.com was in operation, I sold them several articles, and quickly became read among the members, even got paid for that, although not much, thirty bucks if I recall, but it was something.

As far as being published, I had several of my essay’s written in college published in the college magazine, and to be truthful, it was thrilling to see my name in print; in fact it could be habit forming.

My past includes eight years in the U.S. Army, including one fun filled excursion to a little country in South East Asia called Vietnam. After the Army, I got a job on my hometown Police Department, and stayed in law enforcement for the next eighteen years, including eight years as a Chief of Police in two different cities at different times of course.

My past gives me a wonderful basis for my tales, as does my degree in paralegal studies. I have been coming to the Notebook for several years now (2/27/2002), and firmly believe that my writing would have died out from lack of use were it not for the wonderful folks here who encourage my writing, and who’s critiques have improved my writing skills.

In fact a comment from a recent Shorty exercise has led me to research the writer’s guidelines of several magazines with the full intention of editing that story and submitting it.

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Teekay.

Hi. By golly, it's hard trying to say something interesting about myself so I'm just going to have to settle for something.
Most importantly, I adore books. Everything about them. I get high on the smell of them. I have so many books in my house that if there were a fire we would have no hope at all.

I guess this adoration for the written word has led me to try my hand at writing. I started with poetry during my teen years and found it a great relief for my tortured soul, unfortunately it had the effect of torturing most everybody who read it.

From there I moved to short stories. I think they're delightful fun. Not too long and what an amazing adventure you can have with them, and still be home in time for dinner.

I'm also in the process of 'almost' having finished my first novel. I am at this point of time at the editing stage. (And to think I used to wonder how some people could take 20 years or longer to write a novel!)

On the non-writery side of my life, I am married to a wonderful man, and we have three sometimes wonderful, sometimes 'rip your hair out' infuriating children, and one very, very (no, there can never be too many adjectives in this case) very, very, very boring cat, a new rabbit and a new puppy, who, put together are more work and stress than the children ever were.

I also love handcrafts. Patchwork, quilting, knitting, I'm not necessarily good at it, but it's a great way to piece all the novel twists and short story plots together and not go insane.

My 2 most favourite writerly saying are:

'The only difference between a good writer and a bad writer is words.'

And:

'One of the most important things to being a good writer is being able to recognise the crap, another is being able to part with it.'

Anyway, if you're still reading at this point, I guess I must be doing something right :-D