Writing bios

I've had the good fortune lately to have several different folks ask me for bios for several different purposes. (I'll try to remember to announce the appearance of the bios and the related materials as they occur.) Each of these people, however, wanted a bio that met their particular needs. Cheeky buggers, eh? Seriously, all the requests were quite reasonable, and so I set about to fulfill them.

Unfortunately, that meant I had to, well, write them.

I find that quite uncomfortable. My books and shorter fiction pieces are about the stories I'm telling. These blog entries are about their topics, even if some of their topics happen to be aspects of me. The bios are basically ads for myself, so I always feel like I'm on the edge of mutating into one of those distressing people who talk about themselves in the third person.

"Mark likes fly fishing, thumb wrestling in the dark, and sprinkles and whipped cream on his bacon cheeseburgers."

"A Pisces, Mark often sits at the bottom of a pool when refining his plots for world domination."

"Formerly the lead singer for the instrumental group One Fine Comb, Mark now spends his retirement luring skinks into terrible science experiments."

You get the idea.

Despite these misgivings, I'm doing the best I can with each little bio, and I'm sticking to the truth as best I know it. Here's hoping they're not too boring.