Greetings from Melbourne

[Rufus Coppertop]

Hello all,

I grew up in a Victorian country town and was a bit of rascal. I had my first driving lesson at one in the morning while stoned off my face. The driving instructor was my best friend and we had no idea whose car we were using at the time.

At the age of fifteen, while trying to conjure a demon, I almost started a bushfire.

I'd gone to Melbourne on the train and bought a grimoire. After making some paraphernalia and conning my granny into making a black robe (allegedly for a school play) I loaded it all into my schoolbag and rode off on my bike. If I'd done my time as an altar boy I would have known about self lighting charcoal blocks for the incense side of things.

In hindsight, sticks of charcoal from an art supply shop and a bottle of metho to make them glow was a bit of a mistake. Stamping out the fire ruined my magic circle and after that, I couldn't take myself seriously when I tried to resume the incantations.

The Catholic school I was at didn't think much of my religious interests and thought even less of the fact that I stopped turning up in year 12, so they kicked me out.

Fortunately the town I lived in had its very own psychiatric hospital. I realized pretty quickly that there was only one job I could do that wouldn't drive me mad.

Twenty years later, I'm a semi-part time uni student with three years of Latin, a harpsichord, a drug-****** swamp donkey of a half sister and an allergy to cats.

I've been writing a steam punkish YA fantasy for about two and a half years with one completed preliminary draft. The problem with it is, there's so much back story, that I have to write the back story before I get around to rewriting and polishing it.

I found this forum via links from absolutewrite.com (highly recommendable) and I'm looking forward to spending quite a bit of time here. The existence of a forum dedicated to sci-fi and fantasy is great.

So here I am.

[Rufus Coppertop]

Dear Moderators,

I just tried to put up an intro which had too much detail and rambled on quite a bit. A message came up that it had to be checked by a moderator before being posted. I couldn't send a PM requesting this because I don't have enough posts.

For some reason, this one has gone straight up on the forum.

So anyway, hello everyone.

Obviously a huge interest in my life is writing. Currently I'm working on a steampunkish thing. My main interests apart from writing are harpsichords, and Latin. I do psychiatric nursing in my spare time and I'm allergic to cats.

Cheers,
Rufus

[Dave]

You had tried to put a link in the first post. To prevent spam we only allow links in posts after a certain number of posts. I've allowed it in this case since it wasn't intending to promote that website and I've merged the two threads together (I don't agree it had too much detail and rambled on quite a bit.)

Welcome to Chronicles!

Dave

[The Judge]

Hello and Welcome to the Chrons. Sorry to hear about the insomnia, which, er, seems to have been edited out somewhere unless I'm in need of your professional services.

Don't worry about the rambling - that's pretty much par for the course around here. By the time a pringle-eating spider and other denizens have made their presence known, you'll realise you're one of the saner elements - and there's not many of us, I'm afraid.

Sorry if this post is causing you to sneeze, incidentally. I have 3 cats and the cat hair gets everywhere.

[Interference]

Seems I missed all the good bits. Links? Insomnia? Rats!

Welcome.

(Did someone mention rats?)

[BookStop]

Rufus, I read through your meet and greet intro - quite a lot of information in there to digest - and I'm really quite, and I mean mean the big kind of quite, appalled that you are allergic to cats! I mean, seriously, have you tried any forms of drug therapy to build up an immunity. Come on!

Oh, and welcome.

[The Ace]

Hi and welcome aboard. The aforementioned pringle-eating spider is Freda, usually friendly but seldom goes anywhere without her cat.

[Boneman]

Hi Rufus, if you take a cat hair, burn it at midnight under a coulibah tree, whilst walking backwards chanting "xilef, xilef, xilef" and inhale the smoke as it wafts upwards, no cat will come near you. Ever.

Welcome to the chrons

[Rosemary]

From the other side of the Stony Desert, Greetings and Welcome to The Chronicles, Rufus.

[Ursa major]

I'll assume that with a name like Rufus Coppertop, you must be well red. (Which is no bad thing at all. ) But are you well read? Beyond steam punkish YA fantasy, that is.


While you consider your answer, I'll say no more than:

Welcome to the Chrons, Rufus Coppertop!

and I hope you enjoy it here.

[chrispenycate]

I suppose "Hail, friend, well met." would be inappropriate for Melbourne? Don't worry about rambling; others have been known to do so here, and, as crimes go, it is not considered heinous.

Single or double manual harpsichord? No, no worries, I'll just tick next to "klavier", though how I'm going to amplify you through the small herd of electric guitarists we've accumulated I don't know.

Oh, yes welcome in; I hope you have brought anti histamines and an inhaler; the cat's likely to welcome you, and no few of us have feline reminders impregnated into our clothing.

This is not the only forum dedicated to Fantasy and science fiction, just the best, and the least escapable from (the tunnel team digging down from the discussion subforum hit a nasty path of unstable chatroom and were forced to backfill.

Please do not summon any demons here. Oh, they turn up all right, and bring cousins and grandchildren, mates and drinking chums and don't do any serious posting; almost worse than spammers, most of them.

Well, you're here now, ready to give up sleep, social life and harpsichord practice – no, actually, you could bring it with you and rehearse in la Bouée.

[SpaceShip]

You seem mad enough to join in with the rest of us here - so welcome.

[Dr.Jackson]

A slightly late Hello and Welcome to Chrons!

[Cayal]

G'day from Melbourne as well.

[Rufus Coppertop]

Thanks everyone! I certainly feel welcome.