I like to refer to myself as an observer.  At school, when my friends get into arguments, I usually don't take sides.  The things and people I observe are what inspire me, usually.  On a rare occasion, I'm inspired because of the up or down mood I'm in.  Maybe contributing to my eagerness to write about exotic and differing characters with interesting personalities was growing up in Houston, Texas.  I was born on April 15, making me an Aries, the Ram: initiative, courage, impulse, enterprise, thrust, passion, leadership, egotism...fire element, active, outgoing, enjoying a challenge.  Living in Houston, a fusion of different cultures and backgrounds, a blend of ethnicities and religions, a concoction made up of an assortment of people with different ways of life, has made me open-minded about people in general; I enjoy creating eccentric characters from foreign, non-existent places who wind up in strange situations.  I thrive off of the idea of Houston being such a large city with a downtown area and outskirts, within Texas, such a large state, with densely-populated urban areas and also "outskirts" that give Texas its reputation for being so beautiful.  To me, Houston, Texas is the best place in the world to live in and to understand mixed people, traditions, environment, atmosphere, milieu, etc...  Twenty-first century United States is also the best time and place to live, as there is no segregation between "white" and "colored," women are finally at the point where they are about equal to men in almost everything, and even children are beginning to be recognized as parallel to adults when expressing our needs and viewpoints and aspirations.  My dream for the future would be for all ethnicities to be so mixed that no one will really know where they're from anymore and it won't matter.  Something gives me the feeling that that won't happen for another few hundred years, but I may as well hope.  My personal goals are to get degrees in marine biology (I love dolphins!), art/computer art, writing, perhaps computer science, and philosophy.  Some of my favorite current hobbies are writing fiction and poetry, drawing, listening to the radio and CDs, bicycling, surfing the web, dancing, and swimming.  Enjoy my and Holly's poetry and my artwork...I hope you can relate.