So just who is Penemuel, anyway?
I am a 30-something government employee who has been actively writing for at least 20 years. Because of the nature of my fiction, I write under a few pseudonyms instead of my real name. My pseudonym for Poltergeist: the Legacy fiction (and most of the other fic) is Penemuel, a name I picked specifically because of its origin: Penemuel was one of the Grigori, or Watchers, angels who were supposed to watch over the human race and instead mated with them and shared their forbidden knowledge -- and ended up Falling because of it. Penemuel taught writing, which the human race was supposedly never meant to know ("and thereby many sinned from eternity to eternity and until this day. For man was not intended for such a purpose" -- Enoch I, 7:8), and also taught children "the bitter and sweet, and the secrets of wisdom".
I write nearly exclusively slash fiction -- I tend toward the somewhat darker storylines and have a low tolerance for 'hearts & flowers'. I like my characters to have flaws; and all of them, good and evil, to be shades of grey, not black & white. I also have been known, occasionally (veg), to stray into the areas of graphically depicted rough sex, BDSM, and other alternative practices.
I also like Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Highlander (Methos!), Miami Vice, Wiseguy, Pretender, Homicide, Brimstone, Farscape, Total Recall 2070, Invisible Man, West Wing, Smallville, etc. etc. etc. -- I like lots of genre shows, and also cop & detective shows. My Muse tends to focus on one show at a time, so I have some partial fics written on a bunch of them, and some finished stories that are part of larger fic series including a lot of B5 fiction written under the pseudonym Galenn (and one piece that would have been slash but was first posted to the net on a gen B5 mailing list... I'm slowly working on putting the slash bits back into it, although if any slash-fan reads the gen version, they'll probably pick up on all of the hints anyway.)
I've written some Brimstone fiction which has been posted to the "Stonefic" list -- actually, only one story is finished so far, but since there have been requests for a sequel, I'm slowly working on it.
I'm in the middle of writing a story, "Sinister Eccentricities" for another obsession, Total Recall 2070, and eventually I'm also planning on eventually trying my hand at some Highlander fic, but need to do lots more research; and have the germ of an idea for a P:TL/BtVS crossover bubbling around in my brain. Could be a fun one...Ethan Rayne, eh?
Of course, I'm also a typical Gemini -- I've got far more unfinished stories kicking around than completed ones...When I get to the hard work part of it, I often get tired of it and go on to the next thing that's screaming to get out of my head.
I have a Muse who is very much like Xena, and she wields a mean baseball bat. When she starts whacking at me with it, I HAVE to write. Even if I got a cease & desist order from The Powers That Be, I'd have to continue writing, whether I ever sent it anywhere again or not...If I don't write, the stories & ideas start piling up inside my head & start making me crazy...[Shush, you...] The only way to keep from going crazy is to write, so I can get it out of my head & onto the paper...
I write longhand with a fountain pen, and then type everything into the computer -- that's why it tends to take me a while (although recently I purchased an HP Jornada 820 (handheld PC) which has PocketWord & Notepad, so I might be able to start getting things typed up much faster...). I also write very intuitively -- I have a basic idea of where I'm going, a basic outline; but everything sort of happens as it will. My best writing happens when I'm just chugging along not thinking about what I'm doing at all -- when I sort of get 'in the zone'...
I do a lot of research for things in my stories (you should see my S&M book collection I got for "Stolen Heaven"...), and am very fussy about using the correct words for things. Seeing a "your" when the writer meant the contraction for "you are" infuriates me -- I don't care that we're not professional writers, that is no excuse for not taking the care to make what you write the absolute best it can be. It's not so hard to tell "your" & "you're" apart, or "their" "there" and "they're", and when I see them used interchangeably, it makes me see red...The editor in me starts reading instead of the reader, and I lose all enjoyment of the story because I'm too busy mentally correcting it... (And I'm not the only one who feels this way, obviously.)
On the other hand, I do not write 100% grammatically correct sentences. I have my own style of writing, and while it tends to have too many run-on sentences and ellipses, I've had quite a few compliments on my writing and no actual complaints about the style, and it's just the way I am. I love having an audience for my stories, but I write mainly to keep myself sane, and as long as it works for me, that's the way it's going to be written...I do try to avoid any screamingly bad sentences, but they do creep in every now & then...I'm also terribly prone to typos...
Angel border is my own creation using the "Seraphique" font from Match Software. Background graphics from Deej's Angel Graphics
