Hello, everyone.

I'm Derek Andersen. My given name is...oh, never mind.

(It's not that I never use handles/nicknames/etc., it's just that I didn't feel like using one here. The only moderately-consistent name I've used is my old TinyTim character--Corporate--and that was just something off the top of my head that has (perhaps unfortunately) stuck, since I'm still using my seven-year-old character there...but it's not one that I really use for much beyond games anymore.)

I'd say I'm a college student, but that's not entirely accurate. I was a college student, and I probably will be one again, but I'm not one right now. If I were still taking classes (the last time I was enrolled in a university was last summer), I'd be a senior--albeit a senior without a declared major.

Thus, I'm on hiatus while I try to figure out what I want to major in (current leanings being either history, philosophy, or (as a distant third) computer science).

I really started reading UF (and, shortly thereafter, HL) back around '95-96, or about when I first started attending the University of North Texas (technically, I was enrolled in the Texas Academy of Math and Science as a high school junior, but I (and all of the other new TAMS people) were roughly equivalent to college freshman). Coincidentally, that also happened to be when I first started to get into anime--mostly Escaflowne, since that's what the UNT anime-club-thing was showing at the time (ooh, poorly subtitled third-gen VHS copies, yay), but also Urusei Yatsura, Robotech (well, we sat down and watched the whole thing through...once), and whatever else was lying around. I think I can safely blame my not being invited back to TAMS for a second year on anime and UF--although my general apathy towards school at the time must shoulder some of the blame, I suppose.

The rest of my high school career--both before TAMS and after--doesn't really bear mentioning, except perhaps to note that the transition from a university to a public high school (the first such I'd ever attended) is highly unpleasant.

Anyway, from there I went to the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs (UCCS, though they seem to be trying to get people to call it "CU the Springs," which is just strange); lots of variety in the classes (the only real constants being Japanese and art classes), lots of pointless dithering about, no real results. Best not to worry about that, either.

(Wow. That was probably far more than anyone will ever need/want to know about my school career.)

I won't burden you with my tastes in music, games, or books--suffice it to say that they cover a very, very broad range and would be even more tedious than the education bit.

Well, okay, I lied. I will divulge one bit of game-related info: I'm very big on mecha-related games. Mekton Zeta, Jovian Chronicles, Heavy Gear, Gear Krieg...oddly, no Battletech. While I enjoy playing the games themselves, I spend much more time (easy five times as much) designing things and playing with the construction systems than anything else. I suppose my preference for Eyrie 'fics (I hardly read any other fanfic nowadays) has something to do with this, though that's a rather half-assed reason.

Actually, I'm quite glad that this board is up--even though I've been reading EPU stuff for the near side of forever, I've never written to any of the authors involved. Ever! I'm a horrible fan. Seriously, I have this odd problem with just sending mail to people without knowing them beforehand...a forum, for some reason, doesn't seem nearly as intimidating. Go figure.

If I can think of anything vaguely interesting, I'll post it...but I don't think there's much more to tell.

Oh, yeah--I write (I've been writing fiction (almost exclusively on computers, practically from the beginning) since I was, oh, seven or eight years old...don't ask what I wrote at that age, but I was certainly writing). I don't write fanfiction, though--believe me, I tried, but I just can't write within even the loose restrictions of somebody else's world. I enjoy world-building. In fact, I spend so much time on it that my actual writing output suffers...

Okay, I'll stop now.

Derek Andersen

(See? I warned you it would be long.)