Shadow Muse

I am the Amazing One-Beast Menagerie.

Important Entries:
Things I assume you know about me.

I write porn/erotica/pulp adventure/fantasy; fiction, in other words, which explains why I am so bad at writing bios. The most interesting things that have ever happened to me never happened at all. Did I ever tell you about the time I was dragged behind the Flying Dutchman?

My second love is art; I paint a lot of fantasy-themed jewelry and trinket boxes. My work is on display here on LiveJournal, and also at my Etsy shop and Morningstar Hall, my site.

Sometimes I limp like a pirate. I also swear like a pirate, so you'd probably better get used to it now.

I'm bipolar type II. Being bipolar is a lot like being a werewolf, which is why you'll find all my entries on the subject tagged with "lycanthropy." When I refer to myself as a werewolf, or a lycanthrope, this is probably what I mean. It's a metaphor for my condition.

This house is full of snakes -- deliberately -- and is also host to one benignly stupid catbot called Sif, a flatulent feline zeppelin named Fish, some sort of revolting devil-spawned hellcat known only as Etrigan, and all must bow before Commander Snuggletooth Squarebottom Yeti Blofeld Von Smooch, known as "Smooch" to his minions.

I have a husband, too. His name is Sargon the Terrible. Our mutual adoration of cartoons, cheesy adventure novels, and horrifically bad movies says questionable things about our taste as well as our sanity. We've been together for almost 20 years, though, so clearly we don't taste that bad.

We live in Oklahoma, which is only sometimes as dreadful as it sounds. We are also happily childfree.

Sometimes I talk to people who don't exist, or talk about them as though they did. This is either part of being a writer or part of being crazy. Opinions vary. I'm sure these imaginary people would say much more interesting things about me than I say about myself. Ask them sometime. They love to chat.

Fiction of mine is available in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4 and The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 6, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; also at www.scarletletters.com, here, and at The Edge of Propinquity, here. Read, enjoy, let me know what you think: naamah_darling [at] livejournal [dot] com.

Also, since I get this a lot, yes, I have read Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books. I loved them. Thank goodness, because I already had chosen that as my dance name and online handle about a year before I read them, and now I am apparently stuck with the name for life. "Naamah" comes from mythology -- Naamah was a title of Astarte, and later, a Hebrew demoness and one of the four angels of prostitution, who was known for strangling babies and luring men away from their spouses.

We're a good match.

"Nothing about her is human except that she is not a wolf; it is as if the fur she thought she wore had melted into her skin and become part of it, although it does not exist."

— Angela Carter, "Wolf-Alice"